Another interesting item on tonight’s Decatur City Commission meeting.

The owner of 125 East Trinity Ave is requesting the installation of a crosswalk on East Trinity Place between Church Street and North McDonough Street and will pay the cost of installation.  This crosswalk would be similar in scale to the one on Ponce near Starbucks downtown, according to a letter to the Commission from Oakhurst Realty’s Fisher Paty.

The stated reasons for the crosswalk are…

• To provide a safer alternative to crossing E. Trinity Place. There is considerable vehicular congestion with lots of turning at both the N. McDonough and Church Street crosswalks where we have seen or been a party to several ·’close calls..

• To slow down vehicular traffic on E. Trinity Place

• To better integrate the retailers and activate the sidewalk on the south side of E. Trinity Place

If approved, I wonder what form the crosswalk would take, since there have been many issues with the faux-brick crosswalks since their installation a few years back.

Map of the location of the crosswalk, courtesy of City Commission agenda

Last month, Decatur received a low score from the Human Rights Campaign Municipal Equality Index, which was based on a variety of different municipal offerings and actions.  A debate ensued about the accuracy of such a rank, and it was noted by the City Manager that some criteria that Decatur didn’t meet were due to it’s small size.  But one thing that was revealed when looking closely at the data was that Decatur didn’t have a Domestic Partnership Registry, while smaller cities, like neighboring Avondale Estates, did.

Now, just a month later, Decatur seems to be remedying this.  Tonight, the Decatur City Commission will vote on creating a Domestic Partnership Registry.  From a letter submitted to the Commission by Asst. Manager Lyn Menne…

Another item on the agenda for tonight’s Decatur City Commission meeting – new parking meters!

Here are the details of the planned upgrade in a letter from Asst. City Manager Lyn Menne to the Commission…

[The parking management company has] developed a plan that uses a mix of single space and multi-space meter equipment that will utilize license plate recognition rather than a”pay and display”receipt option. Customer scan pay using credit, debit and smart card options as well as coins and have the option to set up prepaid accounts on-line tied to their cell phone. All of the on-street meter equipment is solar-powered.

In addition to the meter equipment, we will purchase upgraded, hand-held ticketing units, improved collection equipment that will enhance the security and tracking of revenue collections and court and collection software that will allow for the integration of citations directly into the court system and provide for more efficient and effective parking fine collections.

Cate writes in…

Male Australian Shepherd found [yesterday] (12/15/13 ~2pm) on North Decatur Road by Burlington Road.. No tags and no chip.

http://atlanta.craigslist.org/atl/laf/4245172279.html

Any help finding his owner would be appreciated .. thanks!

Map Above: “A very preliminary draft” of future annexations by the City of Decatur to prepare for City of Briarcliff

“…it is likely that by 2018, all of DeKalb County north of Memorial Drive will be located in either an existing or new city.”  Those are the words of Decatur City Manager Peggy Merriss in a memo to the City Commission.

As such, Decatur needs to get it’s often messy, complicated and controversial annexation house in order.

Over the past 5 years or so, Decatur officials have struggled to pass a larger scale annexation bill to incorporate more commercial property inside the city limits.  Opposition has come from both sides, with unincorporated DeKalb residents balking at Decatur’s higher tax rate and groups city residents cringing at the addition of any more residential property that could overwhelm the city’s popular school system.

Well there’s now another ship on the horizon – the City of Briarcliff.  According to a letter from the City Manager to the Commission as part of the agenda for tonight’s meeting, “the proposed borders of the City of Briarcliff surround the existing City of Decatur northern city limits on all sides. Once the city is surrounded by other municipal borders, our city limits are set and there will be no capacity to change. Basically, the city limits will be permanently set.”

Ms. Merriss suggests that the City of Lakeside – which runs along the southern side of the I-85 auto-river up in North DeKalb – has Republican backers in both the Georgia House and Senate, is the city most likely to be created in the coming legislative session in January.  But that doesn’t mean that Decatur or any of the other existing DeKalb cities aren’t going to begin getting their annexation ducks in a row now.  Again, the City Manager…

“…we anticipate putting together for your consideration in January 2014, a project budget proposal to include professional demographic, financial, capital planning and market analysis assistance to review and analyze potential annexation options and the impacts on the community. This group could also provide assistance and expertise with the efforts of the community-based committee’s work.”

She also states that the city should make sure that this potential annexation be a part of ongoing community discussions with the school system regarding enrollment and facilities, as well as maintaining good communication with the neighboring city of Avondale Estates to make sure that the cities’ plans are consistent.

2014 should be interesting.