Welcome to Decatur Metro’s Live Online City Commission Debate! The debate begins promptly at 8pm and is scheduled until 9:30p. If you have a comment or a follow-up question to ask the candidates during the debate, enter it below for consideration. A few more details below this window.

Candidates will take turns answering questions first, second, third, fourth. The order will be announced at the outset of the debate. Candidates will be asked to wait at least 30 seconds between replies to avoid any sort of “pig-pile” effect.

Not that you need any reminders, but tonight is the night!

Tune in at 8pm to Decatur Metro and watch the four city commission candidates duke it out, debating the city’s most pressing issues!

Oh, and ya know how all debates wrap-up with a semi-lame, light-hearted question that tries to reminds us of our shared humanity?  I’m still in need one of those, so feel free to suggest some below.

Allison Adams sends in this press release announcing three new endorsements for Patti Garrett’s District 2 city commission campaign.

October 20, 2009 – Decatur, GA – As Decatur’s election season heats up, increasing numbers of residents are gaining opportunity to meet, consider and choose their candidates. As they do, city commissioner candidate Patti Garrett is proud to confirm endorsements from three former Oakhurst Neighborhood Association (ONA) officers, including two presidents.

Speaking of her many hours spent working on ONA activities, former president Patrick Putnam summarized, “When I served as the President of the Oakhurst Neighborhood Association, Patti Garrett was one of our most active and involved volunteers. She regularly attended and contributed ideas during the ONA Meetings and volunteered to assist with virtually every event that the ONA sponsored. As I am certain that her proven dedication will continue on the City Commission, I am pleased to support Patti Garrett for City Commissioner.”

Brian McGonegal, who has also led the ONA, agrees. “I had the privilege to work with Patti on numerous events,” he said. “I have never seen anyone so committed to the community in which she lives. She and her husband Gary have an unbridled appreciation and enthusiasm for the Oakhurst/City of Decatur community. Patti is a role model for any community and would be an ideal candidate for City Commissioner.”

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In a press release sent yesterday, District 2 candidate Kyle Williams announced that he has received the endorsement of former Oakhurst Neighborhood Association President Michael Gaertner.

From the release…

Gaernter served as Oakhurst Neighborhood Association President in 2007 and 2008 and was recognized as a 2007 Decatur Hometown Hero award winner for his work with the Oakhurst Neighborhood Association, Martin Luther King, Jr. Service Project, and the OWLS (Oakhurst Watch Local Safety) committee. Gaernter helped form OWLS, which has been instrumental in decreasing the crime rate in the Oakhurst neighborhood by increasing community awareness and promoting cooperation between citizens and the police.

“Kyle Williams will use his experience as a member of the Decatur Zoning Board of Appeals and his training as an attorney to fight for us on the City Commission. Kyle has built strong relationships on the county and state level that will serve Decatur well. We need Kyle as our City Commissioner,” Gaertner said.

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On October 13th, District 2 candidate Patti Garrett asserted that the city needed a more immediate solution to the “crushing burden” that city taxes can place on “some, especially our seniors on fixed incomes.”

Garrett writes that she applauds the city commission’s recent resolution to up the low-income senior homestead exemption from $30,000 to $50,000, but adds “that’s not good enough” and details the legal reasons why the earliest the city could provide any additional tax relief to Decatur residents would be in April 2011.

Garrett’s solution?

I propose something altogether different from the exemption approach. I call it the Assessment Ombudsman.

It works like this: The city would create a volunteer, appointed board, not unlike our other citizen boards, whose job would be to help applicable Decatur residents navigate the sometimes complex bureaucracy of the DeKalb County assessor’s office. These folks would provide expertise, advocacy and support, making it easier for seniors and others to appeal their assessments and, in turn, reduce their tax burden if warranted.

In effect, we’d be leveling the playing field for those unable or ill equipped to do so themselves. And we’d be doing it at no cost to our residents.

On October 12th, District 1 incumbent and city commission candidate Fred Boykin reflected on the original Town Center Plan (and its 1989 update) and wondered out-loud to city residents, “Are we there yet?”.

Addressing “downtowners”, long-time residents and new, Boykin states…

I think it’s time for a community conversation on where Decatur started from and where we’re headed. It’s an opportunity to look at our city development “road map” and see if we’re still heading in the “right” direction. Though it took a long time to happen, the early part of this journey was somewhat easy and straightforward – find someone to build mixed-use residential on vacant lots and bring residents to downtown. The next leg of our trip isn’t so obvious; we’ve done the easier stuff, what do we do next?

Decatur’s Strategic Plan is due for an update. I think that creates a perfect opportunity for a community conversation on these questions; it is a chance to evaluate past efforts and think about the future as we decide where we’re going next. I look forward to getting that conversation started.

While we’ve been spending much of our time in recent days participating in 6-word play, many of the Decatur City Commission candidates have been laying out platforms, asking questions and proposing solutions on their own candidacy blogs. With the election fast approaching, and a much-anticipated online debate just a week away, I think it’s high time we took a closer look at some of the issues being addressed by the candidates, don’t you?  Thus begins the series…

On October 3rd, First District candidate James Radford addressed the recent large-scale annexation attempt by the city on his blog and stated…

There were problems with the way the commission dealt with the annexation issue this past term. Namely, the failure to adequately evaluate the impact that annexation will have on our school system.

Radford goes on to detail the issues discovered within the financial impact calculations of the city’s annexation report and the subsequent report by CSD in response to these exposed issues.  Out of this series of events, he concluded…

It is critical that the school board be deeply involved in any large-scale annexation decision. They must be given a BINDING VOTE on any large-scale annexations. That is the only way to ensure that the impact on the schools is the number one priority. As Commissioner, I will recognize that the City’s business and CSD’s business are, in many regards, one and the same. Especially on the issue of annexation, there must be very close communication, and nothing should be done that will weaken our schools.

This time next week, city of Decatur residents will be rushing from work to the grocery stores, filling their buggies with bottles of Honest Tea and fresh veggies (a Decatur version of soda and popcorn), in preparation for what has been called (by me, right now) the most anticipated hour-and-a-half ever hosted on the internet!

That’s right, we’re just one week away from Decatur Metro’s online live city commission debate, piped directly into your homes via the internets at 8pm (7pm Central) right here at www.DecaturMetro.com!

As detailed previously, we’ve got all four comissioners in the same space at the same time!  Boykin, Garrett, Radford and Williams!  District 1or District 2, we’ve got’em all!

So keep sending in your debate questions via decaturite[at]gmail.com. Questions can be addressed to individual candidates, district candidates, or the whole lot.  Please also provide your first and last name along with your street address so I can confirm residency.  All resident questions will be posed as “Joe on Clairemont Road asks…”

See you there!

(Phew! Huckstering is exhausting work!)

Back in August, Creative Loafing’s Scott Henry almost peed his pants when the city of Atlanta put its mayoral candidate disclosures online.  It was an understandable reaction, since the old way of obtaining campaign disclosures sounded like a Baggins-esque journey.

Before now, if you wanted to see who gave money to a mayoral candidate, you had to schlep down to City Hall, find your way to the municipal clerk’s office, park yourself in front of a computer — there’s only the one — that looks like it still runs Windows 95 and click on a PDF file. If you wanted the information printed out, it cost 25 cents a page, as I recall. If you wanted it put on a disc so you could view it using an operating system from this century, it cost $30 a pop.

That originally got me thinking about the Decatur City Commission candidates’ campaign filings and their comparable accessibility.  After failing to find them online, I finally got around to requesting them from the city.  And being the ultra-responsive bunch they are, I received campaign disclosure pdfs from the city clerk the very next day!  (And I’d just like to reiterate that anyone can request this stuff, not just me and my big, fat online reputation.)

So following in the footsteps of the AJC’s Jim Galloway – who announced Atlanta mayoral September campaign disclosures this morning – and in an effort to provide similar ease of access for Decatur residents, here are your city commission candidate’s full campaign disclosure forms in pdf format for September (in alphabetical order)…

• Fred Boykin
• Patti Garrett
• James Radford
• Kyle Williams

In what is surely a first in Decatur, if not metro Atlanta, Decatur Metro will host an online debate/forum on this site between the four city commission candidates on Wednesday, October 21st from 8p-9:30p.

DM will use the same live-blog “Cover it Live” program that was employed during the Decatur Book Festival to host an interactive live debate between candidates Fred Boykin, Patti Garrett, James Radford, Kyle Williams and the community.

Here’s how it will work.

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