From the Decatur Next site…

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12 | 7-9PM | DECATUR CITY HALL

On March 3, the city commission approved Phase Two of the Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) process, clearing the way for our next steps: drilling down on currently unresolved issues; and preparing a comprehensive draft for community review.

As you’ll recall, Phase One involved two goals: establishing how our various regulations could be consolidated into one unified, easy-to-use document; and determining if any particular areas of those regulations required further discussion and consideration by the community.

Four subjects emerged and were affirmed by the community January 8: community character; stormwater; sustainability; and the prospect of new zoning district options to allow for additional housing types.

Now, we drill down. To better discuss the complexity of these subjects, and their potential impacts on competing community goals, we’ll be holding a series of subject-specific, interactive meetings during March and April. The complete schedule of those meetings can be found here.

First up: Community Character. Join us Wednesday, March 12, from 7-9pm, as we explore the look and feel of Decatur’s neighborhoods, and consider what, if anything, we should do to better protect or enhance it.

Participants can expect to:

1. Discuss how neighborhood character is perceived and how, to them, it’s being impacted by development, renovation, new construction or other related efforts;
2. Learn how particular issues of concern can be regulated; and
3. Make recommendations on what issues should be regulated, and how.

If you’ve got ideas or concerns about how our neighborhoods are or should be evolving over time, this is your opportunity to make your own impact. Please make time to join us.

UPDATE: The Decatur City Commission is scheduled to take up this ordinance at tonight’s meeting.  See agenda HERE (pdf).

Over on its Open City Hall online feedback forum, the City of Decatur is asking residents how they feel about a new ordinance that explicitly prohibits skateboard and “similar devices” in public areas downtown and “on private property without consent of the property owner.”

The synopsis on Open City Hall explains that the proposed ordinance (pdf) is a result of resident complaints the city continues to receive “about skateboarders who disregard pedestrians and cause unsafe conditions on crowded sidewalks and in crowded public areas”, along with recent damage done to the Celebration Statue on the MARTA plaza.  The post includes multiple pics of damage done to the statue by skateboarders.  (One example above)

In terms of private property damage, the Open City Hall post notes damage done to the marble planter out in front of Leon’s Full Service at the corner of Ponce and Church Street.

In explaining what prompted this new ordinance, City Manager Peggy Merriss reiterates the above points to DM and adds that the Decatur Police Department has asked the city to adopt a more specific ordinance relating to these activities.

Yesterday afternoon, Creative Loafing’s Chief Marketing Officer, Henry Scott, used DM to fire the first verbal shot across Decatur’s bow, in what is already being called “The Great Newspaper Box War” by those with nothing else to do.

The City of Decatur has violated the First Amendment by removing news boxes from public rights of way before offering an alternative (the proposed group boxes). It amazes me, a long time journalist, that any city government could be as oblivious (or is it hostile?) to the rights of its citizens to have access to newspapers.

But that was just a quick taste of the wrath to come.

Then came the storm in the form of a slobbering tirade of sanity by the most unhinged and reasonable of CL staff members, Thomas “Crazy-Eyes” Wheatley.

In a blog post from late yesterday, Wheatley details how CL just became aware of the missing newspaper boxes from Decatur’s streets (read Decatur Metro, yo!), and how the city apparently sent notices of the new newspaper box ordinance – in both electronic and paper form – to old CL addresses.

Henry Scott is still pissed.

While the city has every right to regulate the placement of newsracks, Scott says, it hasn’t provided an alternative to distribute publications in the interim [between old boxes being picked up and new ones being installed]. By doing so, the city has caused the paper economic damage, violated our constitutional rights, and deprived Decatur’s residents and visitors of a valuable resource that will tell them their horoscope.

Serious claims, in a light-hearted post.  CL wants its boxes back working street-corners by Monday.  No word yet on how Decatur will respond.

Let’s hope these two bashions of liberal thought can soon reconcile and return to congratulating each other on their respective progressiveness.

Call up the Hardy Boys!  Nancy Drew!  Encyclopedia Brown!  There’s a mystery afoot!

OK, so it’s only really a “mystery” because I’ve yet to ask anyone who might know.  But hey, it’s the weekend, and city employees won’t be back in the saddle until tomorrow.  So I thought this might be a quicker way of getting an answer.

A very observant Steve writes in…

The least few days I’ve noticed all the newspaper, real estate, automobile, etc. vending racks have disappeared from downtown. For at least the past month, they all had notices on them that their permits were due for renewal, Maybe they’re been removed per City Code Sec 86-23?

Or MAYBE it’s all part of Decatur Metro’s sinister plot to rid the city of all other sources of information!  Bruuhahah!