Student enrollment at City Schools of Decatur rose by 12% since last year.  A great and/or troubling thing, depending on who you’re talking to.

But regardless, it should be noted that 12% is exactly the overall level of growth estimated by the Enrollment Committee’s “aggressive” enrollment scenario released earlier this year, which projected a total of 3,630 students this school year.

The actual number as of opening day?  3,627.  Pretty good.

Of course, there was bound to be a bit of over/under by grade…

…but overall that’s an impressive feat.  Keep it up enrollment committee!

Decatur Square, Decatur GA (pic submitted by Al)

We’ve received word that the much discussed Bank of America apartment project along Commerce between Church Street and Clairemont Ave has been taken off the agenda for tomorrow night.

According to sources, the delay is due to ongoing negotiations between the developer and the bank on where to locate a temporary operating center, so expect to see it back on the agenda soon.

You know when you find a clean $10 in your pocket after your jeans have been through the wash?  This is sorta like that.

An inventory project by the Georgia Urban Forestry Council has discovered that the original estimate of 3,200 city-owned and managed trees inside the Decatur city limits is likely too low.  Here’s the blurb from the GUFC’s newsletter…

When data collection was completed in downtown and the NW quadrant, it became clear that there were many more city trees than the 3,200 originally estimated. With only 40 percent of the area completed, we had inventoried nearly 60 percent of the budgeted number of trees! While this abundance of trees is a very good thing, we had to discuss with city staff options for how to complete the inventory since the total budget was for 3,200 trees maximum.

Some other interesting Decatur tree facts from the study…

• Of all 1,578 trees, 18 percent are flowering dogwoods, 15 percent are willow oaks, another 15 percent are crapemyrtles, and 9 percent are red maples; water oaks, flowering cherries, and Chinese elms account for an additional 4 percent each of the tree population in these two (2) sections
• 41 percent of the  trees are less than 6 inches DBH, and 76 percent are less than 12 inches DBH, verifying that there have been a lot of new trees planted in recent years, and that many of the trees are small maturing varieties; many of these new trees have been established through the efforts of Trees Atlanta, a strong advocate for increasing tree canopy cover in the Atlanta area
• The largest tree inventoried is a 49 inch DBH water oak located on West Ponce de Leon Avenue

Photo courtesy of GUFC newsletter

h/t: Patch