You might want to bookmark this new City of Decatur site.

If you’ve been over to the city’s website in the past few days you may have noticed that they soft-launched a new “Online Communications Site“.   The site is designed to make it easier for residents to contact the proper city official on a wide-variety of issues and concerns.

After creating a Login for yourself, you can head over to the “Make a Request” tab, and find several different requests divided up by category (ex. Animal Control, City Gov’t, Code Enforcement).  Examples of requests range from requesting maintanance on any number of things to reporting graffiti and making construction project inquiries (I know I’ll be using that last one a lot!)

Another especially timely option for the holiday season is found under “Public Safety“.   Instead of calling the non-emergency number to let the police know you will be out of town over the holiday season, you can now just fill out the “Out of Town House Check” form.

How handy!

If successful, this should be another real step forward by the city to improve communication with residents.