Saporta Report reported Monday that DeKalb County officials are planning on asking the Georgia General Assembly in early 2013 to approve a local option sales tax to be spent on various transportation projects.  From CEO Burrell Ellis’ budget recommendation to DeKalb County Commissioners, he writes…

“In 2013, we will seek the Georgia Legislature’s approval for a local option sales tax for Transportation purposes, in order to address this growing backlog of street resurfacing, sidewalks, intersection safety and congestion relief and related projects.”

The county has nearly spent all the 2006 transportation bond funds, and now wants to allocate $5 million from the HOST program to continue to pay for needed transportation repairs and upgrades.  But HOST isn’t enough to leverage all available matching funds, according to Saporta.  That’s why the commissioners and the CEO are pursuing this option.

New York Times book critic Dwight Garner wrote a piece recently about touring literary Manhattan, hitting the hotels, restaurants, bookstores, and (of course) bars that had connections with famous writers. I’ve been to a good number of these sites, including The White Horse Tavern in the West Village where Welsh writer Dylan Thomas had his last of many, many drinks before dying — at the age of 39. This location is also the meeting point of the Greenwich Village Literary Pub Crawl tour.

A true highlight of Ireland is the Dublin Literary Pub Crawl. There are also ones in London and Edinburgh, as well as Chicago. Don’t have the time to travel? The state of Nebraska offers a virtual literary tour.

Closer to home, there’s slim pickings. Savannah offers a Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil tour. There are self-guided tours of Flannery O’Connor’s home outside of Miledgeville.

As for Atlanta, a literary pub crawl in Atlanta might consist of an evening at Manuel’s Tavern, where Paul Hemphill sometimes had a drink.

A literary tour of Atlanta would require a bus, and wouldn’t need to stop too many times. There’s Joel Chandler Harris’ Wren’s Nest, the rebuilt Dump at Peachtree and 10th where Margaret Mitchell lived and wrote (and 17th and Peachtree where she was born and 13th and Peachtree where she was fatally struck by a drunk taxi driver), a house on 15th Street where Pat Conroy wrote The Great Santini, and … I’m running out of ideas.

What am I missing?

OK, I’m a little behind the 8-ball on bringing up this news, but there’s probably still a bit of interest in discussing it.  On Monday, the AJC reported…

Georgia’s third largest school district, DeKalb County, was placed on probation Monday after a six-month-investigation into scores of complaints of mismanagement.

n a scathing report, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools accuses DeKalb officials of engaging in bickering and nepotism while letting district finances wither. Mark Elgart, president and chief executive officer of SACS parent company AdvancED, also said the district had allowed academic achievement to slip.

The decision by the accrediting agency could have wide-ranging effects on the local economy, observers say, from discouraging businesses from relocating to DeKalb to depressing housing values, which already have dropped precipitously.

Yesterday, the AJC reported the reactions of residents and political-types to the threat of losing accreditation.  Some DeKalb cities just want out.