Ok, Not So Typical Government

A day after I left a message with DeKalb's 311 system, Elaine Turman, from the traffic department actually called back first thing in the morning! Wow!

It gets better. Seriously, it does. She was very helpful and even nice! And she let me request surveys for all the streets in the neighborhood. And her patience was admirable, as she waited for me to try and recall from memory all the street names (would have helped if I'd had a map, but I just wasn't prepared for all this so soon).

Then she put me in touch with Allan North (the sidewalk guy) and he was nice and helpful, too! He was even optimistic that we would be on the top of the 2009 priority list for sidewalks on Longview! Huh? It's not that easy, is it? I thought maybe I was still dreaming. I needed coffee.

So, what’s next? I’m expecting the petitions to come at the end of next week. I’ll divide them up and we’ll start going door to door for signatures (we only need 20% this round).

And for the sidewalks on Longview... we still have some more research to do about that. I'm optimistic but not naive...

Typical Government

We are ready to get started! The first step is to call the county and request petitions for each street. So I call DeKalb County's 311 number (at least they don't have us calling 911 for non-emergencies anymore). Well, I can't talk to anyone in the roads/traffic division (of course not), the person answering the phone knows nothing (surprise) and I have to leave a message (oh, joy). It gets better. I am told to call back if I don’t hear from anyone within 3 business days.

Now we see why others say that the only possible way to get anything done ever with the County is to master the art of following up.