(part 1)
More community gardens absolutely everywhere
Remember those 30,000 vacant properties I mentioned earlier? Yeah they aren’t really helping the economy in Baltimore. But you know what would, while simultaneously raising morale/property values/a sense of community in the immediate area? Raze a few of them and convert the plots into community gardens. Obviously this strategy doesn’t apply to areas that are completely abandoned, but for those areas that are struggling to rebuild and/or feature a few certain properties that cannot be salvaged and have been remained idle for years, just do it. Flatten the property, put in some dirt and grass and charge people a tiny fee to grow whatever they want on 3×3′ plots. The fees would pay for maintenance, while boosting the immediate area’s worth on all fronts. Hell, any stretch of a few blocks featuring a community garden and a charter school? Golden.
“Green” Jobs
I wince at the title and its ridiculous media-buzz nature, but environmentally conscious service, infrastructure, and manufacturing jobs are going to be a huge part of this city’s future. Smilin’ Martin has been jawing about it for a good long while now with regard to the state, and with the industrial infrastructure already featured within city limits it wouldn’t be terribly difficult to retrofit some existing manufacturing installations that aren’t in use with proper “green” measures in an effort to bring back working class employment to the city without further destroying what’s left of the inner/outer harbor. It’s just a matter of attracting the right businesses to the area. God knows, I certainly wouldn’t be adverse to paying 2-3 dollars more for a t-shirt manufactured in Baltimore if it supports the local economy, as opposed to China’s. The ball appears to have started rolling on this one, let’s keep it that way – and with the rather limitless infrastructure fixes that can be made toward getting Baltimore off the BGE coal tit, let’s speed it up actually.
BRING FIOS TO THE CITY OF BALTIMORE, MD
This one is a completely selfish pet issue but I am certainly not alone when I say: I am sick to death of the monopoly that Comcast Cable Corporation has with regard to the media choices that our residents have in the city of Baltimore. There are literally no other options for terrestrial cable services within city limits and the company knows it. Consumers deserve a choice, and there currently are very few to none aside from the overcharging, customer-supportless behemoth entity known affectionately as Comcrap. I don’t care what needs to be done, I don’t care who needs to be called or how many HJ’s need to be serviced, please for the love of Mike do something to entice Verizon Wireless to bring their illustrious FIOS service to our fair city. Please. Anything.
…it’ll totally boost the economy or something.
SRB and company, please take these humble suggestions and know that every one of them has been thought about by at least a thousand other people. Get to work.
THANK YOU FOR THE FIOS BRO
Love the idea of community gardens — lately we’ve been toying with the fact that Baltimore should literally be Smalltimore. Make the city smaller, save on infrastructure costs, and give residents more green space. It’s a win win!
Yeah seldom-poster muke mused on the “Smalltimore” topic a while back – here – and in certain areas it’s definitely not a bad idea.
Thanks for the feedback everyone!!
Comcast is the second-coming of Satan. We had a Comcast installer here once, who told us the company gives Baltimore City techs the crappiest equipment and saves the best stuff for the ‘burbs. He said of the 10 cable boxes in his car, 8 of the ones he’d been given that day were broken. I laughed because I couldn’t let him see me cry.
OddlyAppropriately enough, the DVR box in our living came broken – it doesn’t service On Demand.Comcast came to my house to install a cablecard in my sweet new TiVo box (since i was done with their crap equipment). Somehow failing to set that up broke my Comcast DVR. I have since switched to DirecTv and Verizon DSL.
I heard something about an electric engine plant to be in service in 2013. I’m pretty sure that was in BMore but i forget.
Good for you! I’ve been debating the whole list of options/alternatives to ComPoop in the face of the fact that we hardly use the digital cable service or on demand anymore, it really would just be easier just to watch stuff online or via Netlix (as we do generally anyway). Hell I’ve even been considering scrapping literally everything except netflix and broadband.
As for the electric engine plant, I’m fairly sure that’s in White Marsh and it’s a GM plant and it’ll provide roughly 200 jobs according to most local media sources. Still not in the city though.
With the green jobs and city gardens idea why not take it a step further? Gardens and/or solar panels on the roofs of all of these buildings downtown would help the pollution in the city as well as helping it get freed from BGE.
Were the money available immediately, I’d say absolutely. But it’s tough to convince downtown businesses and public buildings to invest in that kind of infrastructure when they’re already hurting. Someday though I’m sure it’ll happen!
Or why don’t we kill all the rats and use their fur to make coats for the poor?
Yeaaaaaah we’re already in enough hot water with those PETA people and our penchant for dog fighting. Rat coats for the poor ….WOULD TOTALLY REDEEM US!!!
Or why don’t we kill all the poor and use their fur to make coats for the rats?
1. So are Baltimore’s perennial problems always: schools, crime, and employment? Since there are no easy fixes, I suppose we might as well joke about it.
2. Regarding the democratic deficit in Baltimore, I know Dixon was re-elected, but was originally appointed after O’Malley became governor. Stephanie Rawlings Blake assumed the mayoralty in a similar way. First, how many years has the mayor been appointed, rather than elected (even if they’d been elected previously to the city council). Secondly, are city council seats by district, meaning the “City Council President” was elected by a single district’s voters? Lastly, what are the participation and demographics of the city council elections? Local elections tend to have very poor voter turnout; the city council is surely far lower than a mayoral election.
We tend to think of our political leaders as representing their constituents — usually voters, but sometimes much broader. In Baltimore, assuming my suspicions are correct, we have our leader elected by a small percentage of voters in a single neighborhood. This is a pretty substantial democratic deficit.
3. @slumlord watch: GREEN ZONES! I heard they have ’em in Australia and in the Northwest to force urban density.
1. Not so much “perennial” as “perpetual” – nope, no easy fixes but I’d say the ideas from parts 1&2 are fairly straightforward and easy enough to tackle.
2. The last time a mayor was elected “normally” was O’Malley in 99-00. I believe council seats are elected by district’s constituents and the president is elected at large. Though I think since SRB is vacating her seat to become mayor the President will be decided via council vote. Turnouts for elections are generally anemic across the board for pretty much any election except presidential.
Don’t hold your breath for the city to get FiOS anytime in the next decade or so. Last I talked to Verizon, they said the city wanted to charge them an exorbitant $ per foot charge to lay run the fiber in the city. I’m sure the city was equally quick to charge Comcast (or whoever the company was at that time) that ran the coax through the city.
Comcast has the city government in its clutches and isn’t about to do anything that would require them to actually put forth some effort to improve their service and/or reduce prices.
@evan To satisfy my curiosity as a political scientist / democratic theorist, does it bother anyone that the mayor is appointed in the kind of mockery of electoral democracy that would make a third-world dictator blanch? I’m flogging this point because in America we have a firmly entrenched (mis?) understanding that a democracy entails voting. If we don’t vote for our leaders, or those votes are not representative of the political community, why should respect the authority of those leaders?
Yeah it bothers me, but the cause / explanation as to why goes far beyond the scope of the comments section of a local blog.