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...