Dog found on Sanford--reunited with his family

Opie's back with his people, yay!

Rain, rain

The Creek at Moody Bridge, Wood Trail Ln.

May rainfall to date, via the Weather Channel.

In case you are wondering, and confirmed by the extreme greenness of everything, yes, we are above average in rain for the month of May.

Scattered thunderstorms predicted for Monday... bring an umbrella!

via http://www.griffin.uga.edu/aemn/cgi-bin/
AEMN.pl?site=AAAA&report=SL

And the soil is finally warming up.

DeKalb Zoning Code Update

DeKalb County is updating its zoning code. Commissioner Rader's office asks that we

Please review prior to the meeting with Commissioners Rader and Gannon on May 20th at 7:00pm in Conference Room A of the Clark Harrison Building (330 W. Ponce de Leon, Decatur 30030).  Parking is available on the street or in the county lot next to the Maloof Building after 5pm.

The New Zoning Code public draft can be found at: http://planningdekalb.net/?page_id=756, and some of the listed documents are highlighted below. If you can't attend the meeting, you may send your comments online.

Schedule of Adoption: This plan has been in development for a while and many meetings have taken place already. The Board of Commissioners will vote on May 28, and the plan becomes effective on August 2013.

from http://planningdekalb.net/wp-content/
uploads/2013/04/TechnicalZoningMemo.pdf

The Proposed Districts and Conversions document "summarizes the proposed structure of the new zoning code. It also includes data regarding existing zoning districts providing the justification of the new structure. The updated DeKalb Zoning Ordinance will implement the policies of the DeKalb County 2025 Comprehensive Plan with fewer zoning  districts, balanced with greater design standards. ... The three primary residential districts (R-75, R-85, and R-100) will remain the same."

Meeting and Briefings includes a summary of the process leading to the code update, and shows an emphasis on mixed use and intent to "create new design standards and criteria for development" in the way of "Block and lot standards, street and yard standards, lasndscaping, streetscapes, open space, site improvements, building form and configuration and building materials." Article 2 emphasizes incentives for high density developments.

More realistic poultry coming
to unincorporated DeKalb County?

Under Article 4, Table 4.1 summarizes allowable uses depending on lot designation. The document notes that the zoning update "Adds new uses such as senior housing, farmers markets, and urban gardens." Keeping of poultry/pigeons is now listed as "permitted" for R75, R85 and R100 lots (typical Medlock homes) but "keeping of livestock" remains off-limits [N.B. Will seek additional information about the meaning of the yellow highlight. ---> yellow highlights do not mean anything, focus on the abbreviation inside the cell. If the cell is empty, that particular use is not allowed]. DeKalb County defines livestock as "domestic animals and fowl customarily kept on a farm including horses, mules, donkeys, cows, cattle, sheep, goats, ducks, geese and turkeys."

Cropped section of table 4.1, from http://planningdekalb.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Zoning-Code-Update_briefing.pdf [May 7]. 

from http://planningdekalb.net/wp-conten
t/uploads/2013/05/Zoning-Code-Update_briefing.pdf
Click to enlarge.

Article 5 focuses on standards for lot size, street design, sidewalks, streescapes, open space, and building materials. It also calls for "new developments like cottage homes and townhouse products." Both the townhouse and cottage concepts feature shared open areas accessible to all neighbors.

Those are just a couple highlights. For additional information of what is cover under each article, please review the above documents at http://planningdekalb.net/?page_id=756.

FOUND: Elderly white poodle safely home

Mildred is safely home, yay!

Join Medlock Park's Nextdoor community

Medlock neighbors: there's a new community-building tool available, and we hope you will check it out. Nextdoor is free, and differs from other neighborhood online groups (Yahoo group, Facebook) in that

Only people who actually live in a neighborhood are eligible to join the Nextdoor network for their area and everybody has to use their real identities on the site, which Nextdoor says is essential for keeping the quality of conversations on the site high.

A Nextdoor community called Medlock Park has been established by the MANA neighborhood watch coordinator. Since safety announcements are of interest to neighbors who live near MANA, at their request, our Nextdoor boundary has been extended to include additional streets as follows:

By request, "Medlock Park" Nextdoor boundaries extend slightly beyond MANA boundaries.
For MANA boundaries, see our About page.

To join the Medlock Park Nextdoor community, sign up via https://medlockparkga.nextdoor.com/login/. Nextdoor uses publicly available information to confirm that the person signing up resides at the stated location. If you are a resident and are not able to sign up, contact manawatch@gmail.com for assistance.

Birds-eye View of Nextdoor:

Nextdoor's default
appearance.

What's the point? Nextdoor offers an opportunity for discussions that only include residents of MANA and nearby streets. You can email neighbors who are members, invite neighbors who are not, see the neighborhood resident directory, and start discussions on topics relevant to our community.

I just want to get neighborhood watch alerts: Not interested in neighborhood discussions? No problem! Go to your Settings {under your name, via drop-down menu on the top right margin}, then click on Email, and you will be able to customize what types of alerts arrive to your email or to your text-enabled phone. For example, if you only wish to receive emergency alerts, you can set the "Urgent Alerts (SMS)" item to "immediate updates" and set all other potential notifications to "no email". Otherwise, you can follow discussions via Nextdoor on your web browser, or by enabling email alerts to new discussion items.

Who is reading this stuff? Information you add to Nextdoor is only visible to other Medlock Nextdoor members. You have the option of including additional information in your profile (e.g., pets, hobbies, etc) but this is not required.

Per Nextdoor's policy, neighbors should not share content posted on the Medlock Nextdoor site with non-members.  "Nextdoor's Privacy Policy forbids people from sharing content posted on a Nextdoor website with people who do not yet live in the neighborhood. However, an agent can describe generally how Nextdoor is used in the neighborhood and display the Nextdoor Demo site to illustrate how the website works."

 !  Please refer to Nextdoor's Guidelines and Member Agreement regarding appropriate use of the site and its content.

Organization: See screenshot above. By default, Nextdoor allows users to post comments or start discussions under the following categories: Classified, Crime and Safety, Documents, Free Items, General, Lost & Found, and Recommendations. These posts are visible to all Medlock Nextdoor members. 

Private Groups: Members also may create additional interest groups that can be public [Medlock users can join with a click] or private [must await moderator permission]. The creator of the group is the default moderator and can add additional users (but as noted, for a public group, members can add themselves). Posts to a group appear in the "news feeds" for the above categories (General, Classified, Crime, etc.). In the case of a public group, the comment is visible to everyone, but for a private group, the comment is visible to subscribers only.

Too much! If a neighbor becomes too much for you, you can find them through the neighborhood directory and mute them; their posts will disappear from all discussions you view.

Documents: We can upload documents to share with our neighbors. 

Events: Users can create events and descriptions thereof. Again, such information is only visible to Medlock Nextdoor users.

You may notice the Nearby Neighborhoods link in the above image. This feature is currently disabled as Nextdoor.com works out the details to allow communication between different Nextdoor neighborhoods.

Can I invite my neighbor to join? Yes. Just follow the instructions at https://medlockparkga.nextdoor.com/invitation_email/?is=schp

Cityhood meeting recap

Creative Loafing has a summary of the May 6 meeting on cityhood information meeting:

Close to 300 DeKalb County residents filed into the Clairmont Hills Baptist Church last night to hear lawmakers and community activists discuss the county's growing cityhood movement. 

Many citizens have remained up in arms over the past few months as community groups have introduced a flurry of new city plans. Cartographers have liberally carved out borders that, on occasion, clash with other proposals for potential cities such as Lakeside, Briarcliff, Druid Hills, and LaVista Hills, and Stonecrest.  Read the rest @ Creative Loafing

MANA board attendees report the meeting was very well run by Mary Margaret Oliver, and shared the following "take home" messages:

• "For a city to be viable, they need to get 40% of their revenue from commercial.  The City of Decatur is now at 80/20 which is why they “need” more commercial revenue.  Jason Carter bottom-lined the problem:  There just isn’t enough to go around so everyone is fighting over the same turf."

• "any new city needs to take over three services from the county at a minimum.  Everyone wants land use/zoning.  In fact the speaker form Druid Hills said that that is their only issue with De Kalb County and if that could be resolved they would be happy with the status quo."

• "The main reasons for seeking cityhood were:  Land use, permitting, zoning and parks with schools being a hope for the future."

• "The City of Decatur is moving forward with annexing the 2 commercial areas but was vague about it... The representative spoke about how low the commercial % was in COD, how their borders need to be 'straightened out'" but the comments were "vague".

Update: Another report of the meeting is available at Atlanta Progressive News.

This weather is crazy

Flood watch and weather advisory! But this squirrel knows better.

This rain's driving even the squirrels inside!

Photo and caption by Deb Elkin