The General Election in and for the City of Monroe is scheduled to be held on Tuesday, November 8, 2011.

The qualifying fees in the upcoming General Election shall be set at $180.00 for the offices of Council Members in Districts 1, 2, 4, 5 and 7.

Qualifying shall begin in the Office of the Walton County Board of Elections on Monday, August 29, 2011, at 8:30 a.m. and shall end on Friday, September 2, 2011 at 4:30 p.m.

The office of the Walton County Board of Elections is located at 303 South Hammond Dr, Suite 111 in Monroe.

The movie American Reunion is filming scenes in downtown Monroe; it will be the fourth film in the American Pie franchise (IMDB link).

The following streets will be closed and traffic detours in place for filming:

* Broad Street between Highland Avenue and Washington Street *

*Spring Street between Wayne Street and Lumpkin Street *

Effective dates and times are:

- Thursday, July 7 between 6am and 10pm

- Friday, July 8 between noon and 5am the next morning

- Friday, July 22 between 6am and 10pm

City Police and Public Works personnel will be manning these closures and detour routes are in effect.  There are also private security personnel on the movie set.

Pedestrian traffic is allowed within the road closure areas and downtown businesses will remain open! 

The Northeast Georgia Regional Comission recently awarded Monroe City Administrator Dr. Julian Jackson the Local Governemnt Administrator of the Year award.

Dr. Jackson has served in that position since March 2000 and is responsible for coordinating the day-to-day operating activities of seven departments with over 225 employees. The annual operating and capital budgets he prepares and administers total over $46 million dollars.

He served multiple terms as Walton County's Municipal Representative to the NEGRDC Board of Directors, and is currently an associate member of the NEGRC Council.

www.negrc.org

The City of Monroe communications system became one of a handful of Southeastern cities to connect to a massive data center, the Atlanta Internet Exchange at 56 Marietta St., N.W. in Atlanta. The address is home to the largest Internet hub in the Southeast.

In doing so, the city’s Internet speeds jumped from 150 megabytes per second to 1 gigabyte per second or about 10 times as fast.

Now the Monroe Utilities Department, which runs its own cable and Internet company, is able to offer faster Web service to customers. The city can now sell higher capacity bandwidth. Currently, the fastest speed the city provides to its customers is 6 megabytes per second. In the future that speed can be increased to 20 megabytes or faster, according to city officials.

And not just residential customers who benefit from the faster Internet speed, according to Electric and Telecommunications Director Brian Thompson. He said high-tech businesses need the supped-up bandwidth Monroe can now offer. More bandwidth leads to more businesses locating here, he said.

“It gives us the ability to be peered with all the big players,” Thompson said. “The biggest employers need this type of Internet connectivity — high-speed data. It helps the bottom line for them. If you don’t have this type of connectivity, (potential businesses are) not even going to talk to you.

City officials said the connection to 56 Marietta St. cost less than $5,000.