Last October, Baltimore City placed 50-ish permanently located speed cameras in and around the area within designated School Zones – essentially any area within a half-mile of a school, which as many have noted essentially covers a majority of Baltimore’s land mass, save some of its most industrial areas. As of May 24th it would seem that the safety of Baltimore’s children is still in a dire state of terror (even when school is not in session) necessitating the addition of four portable speed camera units, which will rotate periodically through 20 additional locations. These cameras will have the ability to maneuver into a more dangerous area – should the need arise – where children are dying at unbelievable rates as a result of rampant speeding. Unlike the last round of camera installations, these new cameras carry no warning or 30 day grace period and will immediately result in a $40 civil fine for exceeding the speed limit by 12 mph or more, you unbelievable monsters of speed.

At any rate, we’ve updated our Google Map which lists all of these locations so the concerned citizen can be more aware. Of the children. And the danger they are constantly in. Roughly $40 worth of danger.

View theBaltimore City Speed Cameras map.

Via Baltimore Slumlord Watch, Baltimore has a new law governing vacant city buildings.

For more on this legislation, or other budget matters, you can read this article from the Baltimore Sun.

A bit of time has passed since the whole “Walmart might be coming to Remington” debacle began; it would seem that every media outlet, blog, dog, dog blog and log log has covered it in some way, ranging from the usual copy/paste anti-or-pro statement seen thousands of places around the internet to the truly well thought out criticism.
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While noting Baltimore’s long history of environmental disasters, it’s good every once in a while to see a spot in the city that has actually seen vast improvements in quality – not by the direct result of luxury condos, mind you – and will actually turn out to be a huge benefit to the community in general. Swann Park, situated just past the Hanover St. exit of I-95, is one of those spots. Condemned some 4-5 years ago due to arsenic contamination as a result of an Allied Chemical facility (shocker) that once sat nearby, remediation of the site took several years and looks to finally be 99% complete. Back in March during the infamous Fort Avenue pub crawl stabbing community meeting, a representative from Honeywell (the company who did the heavy lifting) was present to give the details on the process, noting that the park would “be open in the spring.”

Well, spring is almost over and the park isn’t open yet, but that didn’t stop me from walking over the knocked over fence blocking the entrance to take a look – and it looks great. The entire field has been resurfaced and updated with several baseball fields, a football field, bathroom facilities and a walking path.

So with any luck, the kids and kids at heart of South Baltimore will be able to enjoy the updated and revamped facilities this summer, but unfortunately the trash problem along the shoreline of Middle Branch, a problem that is so pervasive essentially everywhere along Baltimore’s shorelines, is still very much an issue. Hopefully when the park reopens, some volunteer crews can be assembled to tackle the mountains of trash.

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Now that the complaints regarding Baltimore City’s budget horrors are behind us, I’d like to explore some of the very realistic, very awesome and totally doable strategies that can be implemented almost immediately (as immediately as government can function), and will serve to aid in the patching of our enormous deficit, while paving the way for a semblance of hope for growth in our city’s future.

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