Both InDecatur and city commission candidate James Radford have posted extensive articles about last week’s meeting at Decatur Heights Baptist Church, regarding the “Peer Support and Wellness Center” at 444 Sycamore Drive in Decatur Heights.

At issue is whether the facility  – which aids people with mental health problems – classifies as a “licensed personal care home”.  If so, it can operate within a residential neighborhood (i.e. R60) without variance.  When I first contacted the city’s planning director Amanda Thompson about this issue way back in May (after receiving a note from a resident in the district) she said that the city was still determining whether this was indeed the case.

However, in late June/early July, Thompson visited the facility and determined it did qualify as a “personal care home” for the following reasons…

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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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