Everyone is encouraged to read through the city’s latest budget draft, which includes the highly readable “narrative” section, to get a sense for the city’s stated accomplishments in the past fiscal year and what’s on the horizon.

The city divides its goals for the coming year by the Principles listed in the city’s 2010 Strategic Plan.  Principle A, “Manage Growth, While Maintaining Character” includes to following “New Projects, Programs and Policies” for the coming fiscal year…

• Install a concrete chess table in the downtown district and in Harmony Park (Task 1D and 1E)

• Fund additional artistic bicycle racks in various commercial districts (Task 1D)

• Expand role of the PALS staff to become more active downtown ambassadors (Task 1E)

• Revise the calendar of City sponsored festivals and special events to replace some older events with new activities (like a Maker’s Faire) in partnership with local residents

• Complete the construction of the new Beacon Municipal Complex to anchor the western end of the Trinity Place corridor revitalization effort (Tasks 3B and 4E)

• Initiate the construction of Phase IV and Phase V of the downtown streetscapes program, intersection improvements at the North McDonough Street and Candler Street railroad crossings and the Oakhurst Business district streetscape program (Task 1A)

• Purchase additional umbrellas for tables around the Square (Task 1E)

• Work with private property owners to expand Decatur’s retail business offerings (Task 2A)

• Continue to expand programs like Sidewalk Saturdays, Small Business Week activities and implement a downtown sculpture gallery in partnership with local non profits to nurture a fun, festive, family-friendly atmosphere in our commercial districts (Task 2A)

• Extend the downtown storm drainage improvements to complete the replacement of the downtown storm drainage system (Task 1C)

If you didn’t have a chance to attend Decatur’s Strategic Plan “Open House” a couple Saturday’s back, you missed out on some excellent free food and refreshments.  You also missed the chance to get a sneak peak at the city’s 2010 Strategic Plan Goals, along with some very interesting development options for Decatur’s commercial districts.

Now if this were the 1998 Strategic Planning process and you missed the open house, you’d be SOL unless you wanted to make a trip downtown to City Hall.  However, this being the “age of accessibility”, you don’t even have to put any weight on your feet to go over the goals yourself.  You’ll find all four principles and goals after the jump; courtesy of the city and the good people at DecaturNext.  You may notice that many are quite similar to the 2000 goals, but there are a few new ones.  Applaud yourselves for being consistent!

As is mentioned on DecaturNext, the next step in the process will probably be the most interesting to you: coming up with specific projects to meet these goals.  DNext promises meetings in the new year to go over these.  To be sure, the city and consultants probably already have an extensive list of potential projects from the roundtables early this year, but take a look and feel free to reiterate what sort of projects you’d like to see under specific goals on the list.

For example, under Goal A2, I would probably suggest something like – provide a financial incentive to attract a grocery store/co-op to downtown Decatur.

Read the rest of this entry »