Pitch It In!

The Calvert Street Communist Party Newsletter is reporting that Mayor Sheila Pratt Dixon -- who will oversee the first 300-count murder year in Baltimore since Kurt Schmoke was mayor -- is launching a new $2 million anti-littering campaign.

So, on a day where Baltimore recorded its 192nd murder of the year, the city wants to spend $2 million on litter?  Is Sheila Pratt Dixon crazy, dumb, or stupid?

The biggest littering problem in the city is really illegal dumping, and it is a problem caused by a lack of zero-tolerance, quality-of-life law enforcement.  This arises from too many officers doing administrative work and not enough officers walking foot patrols in the cities various combat zones.

If you want to fight littering, get cops out of cars and out from behind desks, and walking foot patrols in these neighborhoods.  Use this money to start demolishing the entire blocks of abandoned rowhomes (which border abandoned allies, which are the prime target of dumpers).

Or, use the $2 million to bring back the successful "$1 home program", which was ended foolishly by the "brilliant" Rhodes Scholar Kurt Schmoke. This program was --surprisingly for Baltimore-- innovative, valuable, and successful.  Basically, you could buy an abandoned rowhome for $1 if you a) made it your primary residence, b) paid to renovate it, and c) agreed to live in it for at least 7 years.  The back taxes were also waived, and any liens were removed as well.

Have you ever wondered why Otterbein, Federal Hill, Pigtown, and Fells Point remained high-demand neighborhoods even through the decline that was the DuBurns and Schmoke years?  Because of the $1 rowhome program.  Today, those rowhomes command prices in the range of $200,000-$400,000.  Those communities-- plus Canton -- are today the center of the "renaissance" in Baltimore.

But no.  In typical left-wing fashion, this Mayor is going to harken back to the failed "Pitch It In!" campaign to make the city look pretty.  Wow.  What incredible leadership.  What's next?  Will she attack the literacy problem in Baltimore City by painting all the benches "Baltimore... The City That Reads"?

Baltimore City has MAJOR problems.  MAJOR.  Citizens that live and work in the city ARE NOT SAFE.  North Avenue is called "Indian Country", not because there is a high number of Native Americans or Asian Subcontinent Indians, but because driving down it or across it is like trying to cross the Great Plains at the height of the Indian Wars.

Baltimore needs MAJOR innovation, and a MAJOR overhaul in leadership. New ideas, new approaches, and fresh thinking.  Some of those may offend the entrenched leadership, but since they couldn't manage to break wind after lunch at Taco Bell, their opinion shouldn't really matter.

The City would do better to spend $2 million to clean out city government.