Meet David Warnock. That’s him on the left, the Black and White candidate for Mayor, figuratively speaking of course, whose commercials are everywhere.
Each of the 6 leading candidates for Mayor has her or his own strategy. These are serious people who sincerely believe they have a shot at winning.
In case you’re having problems understanding what this or that candidate for Mayor is all about and picking one that you’ll support, you’re not alone.
Sometime in the next 2 or 3 weeks, all but 1 or 2 of the 15 Democratic candidates for Mayor running against Sheila Dixon need to drop out. If they don’t, the ones who don’t drop out – and who have no real chance of winning – are seriously and selfishly jeopardizing the future of the city they are running to protect.
Free land. No property taxes. Abundant, affordable labor. Customers who spend just about every dollar they make. Financing, if you need it. In the perfect location to do business across the country and around the world. Baltimore’s disadvantaged neighborhoods are every entrepreneur’s teenage dream.
Hey. Roughly a quarter of the city’s population – round numbers, more than 150,000 parents and their children and a good number of older folks too – are in families making less than the official poverty level. If that isn’t the city’s highest priority, we don’t know what is.
On behalf of these families, we have a suggestion that will help the new Mayor and City Council provide much more effective city government in Baltimore. If we were charging for it, it would come with a money back guaranty. We’re that sure of ourselves. Here’s what we recommend…
As you may have heard, the state and city will be spending substantial millions of dollars over the next few years to demolish vacant houses in the sections of the city that suffer from urban blight.
A hundred thousand dollars here, a hundred thousand dollars there. Pretty soon, you’re talking serious money.
Speaking of serious things, this is one of our more technical pieces. It has to be given the subject matter. If numbers give you a headache or put you to sleep, feel free to skip ahead to the last 2 paragraphs.
Ask yourself… Are you willing to bet the future of your family and your city on a candidate who is a convicted criminal, who pled guilty to perjury, who betrayed the trust of her constituents and was then forced out of the Mayor’s office? Is that really your image of a Mayor who can reach out around the country to attract employers to Baltimore?
Jobs.
Our city’s disadvantaged neighborhoods need thousands of jobs for the unemployed. And thousands more higher-paying jobs for people who are working, but not earning enough.
As if you needed hard evidence of the failure of Baltimore’s public schools, here it is.
Take a look at the map that we’ve built for you. There’s one blue dot on the map for each of the 186 public schools listed by the city for SY 2015-2016. (“SY” stands for “School Year.”) The map fully interactive. You can blow it up, move it around within its frame. And you can mouse-over or click on any of the dots to see the name of the school, its street address, the grades taught and percentages for selected grades.
As part of our ongoing review of candidates for Mayor – and City Council too – we noticed some issues with the campaign finance reports filed by Friends of Sheila Dixon. At it turns out, in February and March of 2015, Ms. Dixon’s committee revised 17 of these reports covering the period January 14, 2015 going all the way back to November 22, 2006. That’s just before Sheila Dixon became Mayor when her predecessor, Martin O’Malley, left to start his first term as Governor.
It’s a simple question: You make $58,000 a year. Would you be willing to move your family from the suburbs to the city for $69 per month?
According to a January 29, 2016 article in the Sun, legislators in Annapolis will be approving Mayor Rawlings-Blake’s request to use property tax credits to convince the majority of the city’s police officers and firefighters who don’t live in the city to move here. Currently, 72% of the city’s police and 64% of firefighters live in the suburbs.