At last night’s Decatur City Commission meeting, Decatur’s Environmental Resource Coordinator Lena Stevens gave the commission an update on Google’s efforts to bring Google Fiber to the Atlanta metro.

Among a few other interesting tidbits, Ms. Stevens and City Manager Peggy Merriss made it clear that obtaining Google Fiber wasn’t a competition between other Atlanta cities also on the list, which includes Atlanta and Avondale Estates.  In fact, the opposite is true.  As Ms. Merriss stated, “They won’t start a build in Decatur, until all the metro Atlanta partners are ready to go.”  Google has said they will make determinations on whether to move forward with Fiber in various selected cities by year-end, but according to city staff, if Google feels like a metropolitan area is “ready to go”, they won’t wait to start.

There was then some discussion positing that if Atlanta and some of the smaller cities were ready, whether Google would give the go-ahead to start anyway.  But the answer was unclear and the Mayor made mention of a meeting he will be involved in during the coming days to express the city’s desire to bring Google Fiber to Decatur.  All the commissioners expressed support of the effort.

Other Google Fiber related items of interest included…

• Decatur will be working with Google over the next two months.
• Google has a checklist to streamline the process.
• Google isn’t looking for financial incentives or for the city to waive any fees.  Google will take the most cost-effective route to bring Fiber into the community.  “So if aerial works for them, go across poles, that’s exactly what they want to do.”, according to Ms. Stevens.  However there might be areas of the city where Google would need to consider alternative delivery methods, so Google wants to have conversations with the city over the next couple of months of how to best to do that.
• Decatur is organizing a grassroots campaign for residents to “do more” to help bring Google Fiber to Decatur/Atlanta.  Look for that in the coming weeks.

Decatur are some neighboring cities produced the video above back when Google Fiber was first announced in 2010 to attempt to attract them to the area.

During a work session at Decatur City Hall last night, the Decatur City Commission publicly discussed some proposed changes to the proposed tree ordinance.  You can watch the work session HERE, but here’s one stab at a summary of items that were discussed.

• No net loss of tree canopy – Previously, the draft ordinance looked to increase tree canopy coverage to 50%, but now the commission is looking at a goal to maintain the current city’s 45% coverage.
• Every tree removed would require a no-cost, “informational” permit, but residents would be able to remove up to 3 healthy trees in an 18 month period without activating the ordinance.  Also, any tree deemed to be diseased or dying could be taken down at any point without activating the ordinance. The ordinance would only be triggered when a property owner decided to take down a 4th tree in an 18 month period.  The commission discussed that this would allow residents to remove any trees they thought were a potential danger, while also preventing clear-cutting.
• Increasing impervious coverage – if you increased the impervious coverage by 15% or more (the size of a very large shed) and you were below the 45% canopy, you would be subject to the ordinance.
• Regarding boundary trees – there was general consensus about keeping the elements in the current draft that wouldn’t prevent a neighboring property from building on a site that would impact a neighbor’s tree, but instead would require the developing property to pay for the loss of the neighboring tree.

According to Decaturish, the commission is planning to have a draft of the ordinance by April and vote on the final ordinance in May.