Okay, I know it stings but it’s good medicine. So temper it with a little sugar and suck it up.

For those outside our city borders who still consider themselves a part of the Decatur community, this morning’s AJC features a fine instructive example of what should have happened prior to our latest Walmart dust-up at Suburban Plaza.

In short, circulating rumors of the big box giant’s arrival in Sandy Springs’ downtown mixed-use district — no development proposal, mind you, or even validated interest, just floating possibilities — got people questioning: “Hmmmmm. We have a vision for what we want that area to become. I wonder if our zoning regulations ensure that’s what we’ll get.”

Turns out they don’t, so the city proactively dropped a 90-day moratorium on land-use petitions to allow enough time to “put its ordinances in line with its land-use plan for downtown.”

Well, howzabout that. Seems so much simpler than what happened here, and that’s for some very specific reasons:

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Though no coyotes or coyotes experts are quoted in this article, many Decaturites are well aware that if you bring in experts, they will advise against capture and killing coyotes.  Not for any moral reason, but because the animals will just quickly repopulate your coyote-friendly areas.  Guess Sandy Springs has some money to burn.  From the AJC…

Confrontations between residents and coyotes in a Sandy Springs neighborhood have gotten so serious, a homeowners association board recently voted to hire trappers to capture and kill the animals – the latest to do so in the area, but creating a split in the community.

“It was a tough decision, but we’ve made it. I’m having about 12-to-1 calls and emails in favor of this process,” Dane Seibert, president of the Huntcliff Homeowners Association, told the AJC in a phone interview.

Ah well, ’tis better to have killed and lost, than never to have killed at all, I suppose.

The AJC’s Food and More blog reports that the Empire Diner in Sandy Springs has closed.

This normally wouldn’t be all that pertinent news to Decaturites, except that Empire was owned by the same folks who own the Decatur Diner, according to the AJC.  Here’s the blurb…

A reader has informed me that the Empire Diner in Sandy Springs has closed. According to them, “..went right after Christmas and found a “Temporarily closed” sign on the door, but all fixtures still in place. Went today and the exterior sign was removed and fixtures removed. This was operated by the same group that was to operate the long-delayed Decatur Diner.”

A call to the diner’s phone number reveals the number has been disconnected.

The Atlanta Business Chronicle reported on this latest Forbes ranking yesterday, but I didn’t bite because honestly I’m getting a little tired with these things.  But hey, when your city ranks as #1 most toxic in the country, I guess that’s worth mentioning, right?

However, Atlanta could have never achieved such an elevated position without the help of a few neighbors.  From the Forbes article…

Crowded urban areas are often thought of as the most polluted, but the latter isn’t always caused by the former. While the Atlanta metro area takes top honors for toxicity, don’t blame the city alone. The Atlanta metro includes the cities of Sandy Springs and Marietta, the sites of chemical plants, metal coaters and concrete factories. The cities have toxic-release levels equal at or higher than those Atlanta, in spite of populations that are 15% and 13% the size of Atlanta’s, respectively.

“Hey you kids!  Get off my lawn!   No, seriously get off the lawn…that soil will melt your sneakers!”

Thanks to Eric for bringing this back onto my radar.