In threshing through a 591-page proposed budget for 2013, Atlanta's City Council is borrowing a tactic from presidential debates: allowing residents to ask questions via email, Twitter and phone calls during a public hearing.
The new, tech-heavy approach will appear during a meeting starting at 6 p.m. on Thursday, May 10 at City Hall, 55 Trinity Ave. The minutiae of the roughly $540 million proposed budget is on display to Atlanta's wired masses at http://www.atlantaga.gov/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=3771
The budget, covering the fiscal year beginning July 1, does not call for a property tax rate increase. The city envisions a $25 million cut in revenue, largely because of shrinking property tax rolls. The document must be approved by the City Council before it takes effect.
Statistics in the thick book show several city services -- including water and sewer billing, 911 emergency call answer times and the awarding of building permits -- have become more efficient. But the city failed to hit its targets on several key metrics, including swift repairs of potholes and water meter leaks.
The budget proposal has already provided ample fodder for debate and provoked tussles over scarce resources.
Among the key performance metrics (generally measuring the period July 2010-June 2011) in the budget proposal:
Parks: Atlanta's parks department met the 10-day schedule for mowing the grass at parks 92 percent of the time, below the performance goal of 95 percent. But the parks department removed litter and limbs on time 97 percent of the time, above its target of 95 percent.
Streets: At the close of Fiscal year 2011, Atlanta's Department of Public Works was completing 76 percent of all pothole repairs within 72 hours. That was an improvement over the previous year's completion rate of 65 percent, but fell short of the goal of 90 percent.
Public Works completed 98 percent of all emergency traffic signal repairs within 12 hours of reporting, above its target of 90 percent.
A spokeswoman for the department said it is on target for pothole repairs this year, having completed 3,069 repairs between July 2011 and April 2012.
Water bills: City officials say they want to cut down on the number of water bills that are estimated rather than based on actual water meter readings. Bills are sometimes estimated when defective antennae or broken meters prevent a true reading, but such estimates raised the ire of many residents.
In the 2011 fiscal year, only 1 percent of Atlanta's water and sewer bills were estimated, down from 5 percent the year before.
Not everything was cause for celebration at the Department of Watershed Management. Only 71 percent of meter leaks were repaired within seven days of the work order being created. That fell short of the target of 80 percent.
Public safety: The 911 Call Center met the 90 percent answer rate for calls answered in 10 seconds, an improvement from 82 percent.
Construction: The median time to issue new residential building permits was 32 days in fiscal year 2011, a seven-day improvement over the 2010 median time of 39 days. But the time to get a commercial building permit was still six days longer than the 100-day goal.
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Questions from participants will be answered during the live broadcast of the meeting on City Channel 26. The meeting will also be streamed online at www.atlantaga.gov.
Residents may click on the ATL City Channel icon in the middle of the webpage and click on the words "Watch Channel 26 Live" on the left of the screen.
Participants in the virtual town hall meeting will be asked to give their name and area of the city in which they live, along with their question about the city’s 2013 budget. City Council staff will field the questions, which can be submitted in three ways before and during the public hearing:
1. By emailing atlantacouncil@atlantaga.gov.
2. Through twitter to @ATLCouncil, using the hashtag #atlbudget.
3. By calling 404-330-6309.
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