Interested in digging deep into Decatur’s budgeting process?  Clear your calendar for tomorrow night…

Community Budget Gathering Tomorrow
DATE: Tuesday, May 20
TIME: 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
LOCATION: Decatur City Hall, 509 N. McDonough St.

The City of Decatur is hosting another Community Budget Gathering on Tuesday, May 20 from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at Decatur City Hall, 509 N. McDonough St. Join Budget Manager Meredith Roark, Assistant City Manager Andrea Arnold and others interested in learning about the City’s budget process.

This is your chance to find out how the budget process works and give your input. If you missed the first Community Budget Gathering back in April, don’t worry. Participation then is not required to attend tomorrow evening’s meeting. Sign up today with Meredith, Meredith.Roark@decaturga.com or call 404-370-4102, if you think you’ll be attending.

Graphic courtesy of the City of Decatur

On the agenda for tonight’s Decatur City Commission meeting, Asst. City Manager Andrea Arnold proposes significant changes to Decatur’s much discussed public wi-fi, which has been around since 2008.

In suggesting $165,000 worth of upgrades to the already obsolete network, Ms. Arnold suggests pulling out of residential neighborhoods, with upgrades limited to downtown Decatur, the Oakhurst business district, as well as Glenlake, McKoy and Oakhurst parks.  As we know, single-family residential area wi-fi has been a big challenge for the service providers due primarily to our annoying tree-infested neighborhoods.  (That’s my humorous description, not anyone else’s.)

Additionally, Ms. Arnold notes that Decatur has never provided free wi-fi access and suggests a one-year pilot program in the outdoor public spaces listed above.

Operational costs for the network will be around $24,000 – $5,000 of which would be provided by the Decatur Downtown Development Authority.

This is even better than the made up post I put up about the budget process a couple years back!  From the Decatur Minute…

The City of Decatur is hosting a Community Budget Gathering on Wednesday, March 14 from 2:30-4:30 p.m. at the Brick Store Pub, 125 E. Court Square. Join Assistant City Manager Andrea Arnold and others interested in learning about the city’s budget process.

This is your chance to find out how the budget process works and give your input. This is the first of three meetings using this new format. The next meeting will be held in April in Oakhurst and the third one will be at City Hall in May. Click here to find the current 2011-2012 budget.

Space is limited so sign up today with Andrea Arnold, andrea.arnold@decaturga.com or call 404-370-4102.

Tonight, Asst. City Manager Andrea Arnold presented the idea of having Decatur join the “Smart 911″ Emergency Health Data website.

The city commission approved the measure meaning that residents will soon be able to go to Smart911.com and enter health and strategic information about yourself, your family members, and your property that would be available to first responders if you ever called 911 inside the City of Decatur.

Above you’ll find a brief synopsis from a local newscast from elsewhere about the service.

For those interested, I’m sure the city will let us know when the service is open to Decatur residents.

You may recall that the city put out an RFP back in June for a new company to to upgrade, operate and maintain the city’s existing municipal WiFi network.

Welp, on the docket for tonight’s city commission meeting – partnering with Brightlan LLC to take over operation of the network from GTS, who has been operating the network since 2007.

According to a letter from Asst. City Manager Andrea Arnold to City Manager Peggy Merriss (page 55 of the meeting materials)…

“Brightlan is a Georgia owned and operated internet service provider”, who’s wireless networks “cover much of north Georgia.”

Brightlan installed municipal wireless networks in Hapeville and Dublin and serves as the ISP for the City of Hapeville’s wireless network.  Brightlan’s references were positive and emphasized their technical skills as well as their quality customer service.

(Here’s the Hapeville Wi-Fi webpage if you’re interested.)

According to Ms. Arnold’s note, Brightlan will take on marketing and customer acquisition, subscription services, equipment deployment and network modifications, network maintenance and a revenue share with the City.  Arnold states that Brightlan is “committed to strengthening the network and making improvements to its reliability and bandwidth.”

Back when it was originally deployed, many of the criticisms revolving around Decatur’s Wi-Fi investment were predicated on the fact that Wi-Fi would become an outdated model in just a few years.  Well, that hasn’t really happened as quickly as many of those criticisms assumed.  So, if Decatur can find a company that can provide reliable wireless internet access at a discounted rate to residents, it still has the potential to be successful.

However, there are still many hurdles to leap over – tree-interference and the general usability of the login pages being just two of ‘em.