How will Decatur, a city of just 18,000, make itself more appealing to Google’s “Fiber” project, which is looking for communities from 50,000 to 500,000 to shower with insanely fast broadband speeds?

Create a partnership!

At tonight’s city commission meeting, Lena Stevens, the city’s Resource Conservation Coordinator, announced a partnership that the city has created with four other DeKalb cities – Avondale Estates, Chamblee, Doraville and Dunwoody – to make up the “Atlanta Urban Area Partnership”, to boost the population count on the application and hopefully get Google’s attention.  Stevens says that the city is also currently talking with Emory to also get them on-board.

A Facebook page supporting the partnership will launch this evening – I’ll update this post once I have the address.  The city has also hired Decatur eLife’s Andrea Berry to produce a video to promote the effort.

Andrea Berry’s Decatur eLife Holiday Video Card is ready for viewing!

Come for the holiday wishes, stay for the dog eating his holiday costume!

In so many ways, Decatur’s got it buttoned up.

Our budget is top-notch; just ask our creditors.  The city lives and dies by the 10-year strategic development plan.  It’s in love with many of the ideas in it’s newish Community Transportation Plan.  It has an Athletic Facility Master Plan, AND Greenway Plan. And it often pays solemn homage to the grand-daddy plan of them all, The Town Center Plan.  (It’s kind of like our own Federalist Papers of the 1980s)

But in a town of self-proclaimed creative types and smarty-pantses, our arts scene doesn’t have a cohesive purpose down on paper…what you might call an um, plan!  That’s why the city is currently in the process of developing a Cultural Arts Master Plan.

But of course you already know that because you attended Decatur’s Cultural Arts Master Plan meeting a couple weeks back, right?

No?

Well, you might just want to watch this Decatur eLife video on the meeting and listen to what Linda Harris has to tell you…

…and then head on over to the city’s Open City Hall program and give your “official” feedback to the city on the following questions…

What cultural offerings in Decatur are you most proud of? Which offerings have you participated in? What would you like to see in the future? Did you attend a public input session?

Andrea Berry at Decatur eLife is coordinating a Decatur holiday video card…

We want YOU to be part of our first city-wide holiday video card. Here’s how to participate:

It’s simple! Just decide what you want to include: a photo, a note, a drawing or a short video of no more than 45-seconds.

The only rules are that your submission has to be holiday-related and it must be emailed to us by December 7, 2009.

Email your submission to [email protected] It can be just from you or from your whole family! We’ll put it with the other submissions and post it online with our Decatur Blog partners, during the week of December 7th.

Be as creative as you want to be! We look forward to receiving your greeting!

Which neighboring towns, cities and unincorporated areas will you be sending it to?

“Happy Holidays Scottdale! Love, Decatur.”

Decatur eLife has now posted some of the question & answer session from last week’s School Board Candidate Forum.

There are two videos of questions posed to the District 1 candidates and three videos of questions posed to the At-Large candidates.

Long-time Decatur resident Jim Warren has written his first book “Cowlicked Rants, Remembrances & Ruminations”, which he will be signing and discussing at Wordsmiths this Sunday at 2pm.

You can also purchase the book online here.  A portion of book sales will go to the Decatur Education Fund.

You can read an excerpt of the book here or watch this video of Jim from Decatur eLife…

Though there were reports of “record turnouts” at the Holiday Inn Conference Center, I’m sure there are a few of you out there – in addition to me – that have yet to see Mayor Floyd’s State of the City Address.

Well thanks to Andrea Berry and her crew, you can now watch a 12 minute video of the address over on Decatur eLife!

The mayor goes through a lot of topics we’ve discussed here over the months, but here’s one I got some clarification on.

Regarding his opposition to Georgia’s proposed HR 1, which would cap property assessments to 3%, Floyd doesn’t really have a huge problem with a residential cap, it’s the commercial cap that he opposes.  If I may paraphrase his statement, 75% of the time when you cap commercial real estate assessments, you end up putting an even greater burden on residential owners. Savannah’s mayor argued the same point before the House last week.

Though our mayor doesn’t elaborate on the details in his speech, I have to assume that this scenario occurs in communities where commercial real estate is increasing in value at a faster rate than residential.  A cap would level the playing field, shifting an additional burden onto residential.

UPDATE: Instead of voting on HR 1 last Friday, the House sent it back to the Rules Committee today.  Rumor is that Republicans currently don’t have the votes to pass it to the Senate.