Round Table discussions involving some 700 Decaturites, meeting three times between April and June, helped us identify key topics to address for our update of the city’s 10-year Strategic Plan. Starting on Tuesday, Aug. 24, when we welcome participants back for a Round Table Wrap-Up Celebration (6:30 p.m. at the Decatur High School Auditorium), we’ll use that consensus-based to-do list as a foundation for drafting development and redevelopment strategies for the next decade… [cont.]

Missed the Decatur Round Tables? Only have 15 minutes, but still want to contribute to the City’s plans for the next ten years? If your schedule is as packed as the list of ideas we’ve been collecting during the Decatur Next process, here’s your quick and easy opportunity to still get your two cents in… [cont.]

Now that we’ve completed our second of three community Round Table discussions, we can flesh out categories that have come up over and over. In our last post, we invited comments about integrating the needs of pedestrians, bicyclists, and car drivers (and parkers). Now let’s explore the implications of a word we’re saying and hearing a lot: “sustainability…” [cont.]

In the post preceding this one, we summarized broader topics that bubbled to the surface during the initial Round Tables. At or near the top of just about everybody’s list was mobility. How can we make it easier to get around Decatur whether we’re in a car, on a bicycle, riding transit, or walking?… [cont.]

Other communities should be so lucky to have this problem: Teasing gripes out of mostly satisfied citizens.

That was part of the task of citizen facilitators at our first week of Round Table meetings to set the stage for the update of Decatur’s 10-year Strategic Plan… [cont.]

The packed-house gathering on April 15 was in the ballroom of the Holiday Inn. But you could probably hear the Sehwe Village Percussion group’s African drums a mile away. It was the perfect celebratory launch for the 2010 community Round Tables that will set the stage for the City’s strategic planning for the next decade.

What’s the big deal? An enduring legacy… [cont.]

We’re now just a few days from the Decatur Next April 15th Kick Off Meeting. Our count to-date is 475 registrants from across the Decatur community, putting us just short of the five hundred who participated in 1998. Those already involved reflect a diverse mix of voices across multiple lines — race, income, interests, household type and political inclinations, to name but a few. In short, they look a whole lot like our city overall.

If you’ve already registered to participate, thank you. But if you haven’t, consider these Top Five Reasons why you might want to reconsider… [cont.]

Here’s what we like to hear from Decatur residents: In the latest citizens’ survey, taken in 2008, 97 percent of respondents checked the “excellent” or “good” categories when rating Decatur as a place to live, and 93 percent said their town was an “excellent” or “good” place to raise children… [cont.]

Listen to these words from Decatur residents who were involved the last time the community set priorities for its 10-year Strategic Plan:

“The precedent has been set.” “We are breaking down the walls.” “There’s no ‘they’ anymore. The ‘they’ is me.”

Better yet, take a look at this video produced a little over ten years ago, when Decatur used a series of round table meetings to gather information, then put together a new decade’s to-do list with the community’s help… [cont.]