Pathetic Vision and Rampant Stupidity in Baltimore City

Baltimore's FOX 45 is reporting on their website that the city is slowing down-- maybe even stopping their efforts to sell the large number of residential and commercial properties currently on city books.

If true, this represents a poor, pathetic vision on the part of City leadership and a continuation of the rampant stupidity that has plagued the City since the administration of Kurt Schmoke.

One has to remember that when property is on the City books, it is not generating tax revenue.  It is not even accruing tax debt on a lien.  It is nothing more than a drain on city accounts. And Baltimore -- a black hole in the Maryland universe if there ever was one -- does not need anymore drains on its accounts.  (By the way-- whatever happened to that $53 million that missing from City Schools books.  Did they ever find out where that went?)

So news that City government is slowing down this program to clear the city of unneeded properties deserves a level of criticism I would label as "justifiably harsh".  We hear regularly from the Leftist/Socialists in the Democrat Party that places like Baltimore lack affordable housing.  It seems to me that a backlog of city-owned properties would be the building blocks of an ideal solution to that problem.  But not to Mayor Sheila Pratt Dixon.  As the article notes:

But some are questioning whether Mayor Sheila Dixon is committed to developing the properties.

One real-estate agent says it looks like a program that's used to sell individual properties in relatively strong neighborhoods is being phased out.

That would be stupid. And short sighted.  It is as dumb as when then-Mayor Kurt Schmoke phased out the "$1 dollar for a house" program.  Under that program-- put together by William Donald Schaefer and the Baltimore Development Corporation -- you could buy an abandoned rowhouse for a $1, if you committed to live in it as your primary residence for a minimum of seven years AND you renovated it to modern building code standards.  The program was WILDLY successful, and was the genesis for the neighborhood re-births we have seen in Fells Point, Canton, Sandtown-Winchester, and Federal Hill.

But Kurt Schmoke ended it, like a dumbass.  Why?  Because under the program, any property tax liens were forgiven. After all, who in their right mind would buy properties with a decade of unpaid taxes against them (especially at Baltimore City's tax rates-- currently around $6.00 per hundred).

The result was that Baltimore City spent most of the nineties in an accelerating decline, and acres of rowhomes continued to crumble and fall beyond repair.  And, the lack of property taxes got worse.  Budget deficits soared.  School maintenance went -- well, away.  And now Baltimore City is in a position where it hasn't built a new school facility in almost 40 years.

And so how will all the mayoral candidates approach this?  That remains to be seen.  But Sheila Dixon isn't looking good so far.