A conscientious reader of our website has sent us the following article from the Wednesday, February 13, 2019 edition of the Baltimore Sun. It’s by Daniel Parsons, an English teacher at Frederick Douglass High School and it is essential reading for anyone who cares about the City and its people. If you have trouble reading the version that you can see below, even after clicking on it to make it larger, you’ll need to find the article on the Sun’s website. …As for the uneven edges around the image of the paper version, it was cut out by a younger member of my family who is still perfecting his skills with a scissors. Until then, “Good work!”
Category Archives: Baltimore
No-brainer.
Some choices are difficult for our legislature to make. This one is a no-brainer.
On one hand we have two counties ¬– Prince George’s and Baltimore City – that are desperately short of the funding they need to give their children even a minimum quality education. Of the 24 counties in the state, including Baltimore City, their public education systems are ranked 23rd and 24th respectively.
Creating Jobs In the Heart of the Food Deserts of Baltimore
Future home of Baltimore’s next urban farm?
The other day, someone asked us how we would bring employers to Baltimore. It’s a good question that we’ve decided to answer in print.
Here, in no particular order, are some simple strategies that we think the state and/or city should be supporting. If you’re interested, you can buy us lunch at a cheap diner and we can talk about it in detail over some home-made cherry pie for dessert. (Can you tell that our principal writer is dieting and can’t stop thinking about food?)
Resisting Temptation
Our belated congratulations to Catherine Pugh for having been elected Mayor of Baltimore. Well done.
Mayor-elect Pugh is, hands down, the most capable person to be elected by the city in decades. The only problem is, she may be too capable and may, soon enough, find herself mired in the quicksand that is the city government she’s taking over. It’s an ineffective, albeit usually well-meaning, but often dysfunctional mess.
A Suggestion For Soon-To-Be Mayor-Elect Pugh
Baltimore has thousands of unemployed and under-employed, unskilled and low-skilled workers. These people need jobs, the sooner the better. It’s an urgent problem of the highest order.
As it turns out, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that there are 48,000 openings for truck drivers across the country. Quite probably, many hundreds of these jobs are in the greater Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. The pay is good, at a median hourly rate of $20/hour plus benefits, and many employers will pay for training.
Vacant Buildings in Baltimore’s District 1
As part of our limited series of posts to help residents of Baltimore’s Council District 1 choose between Democrat Zeke Cohen and Republican Matt McDaniel in the forthcoming general election, both candidates and voters might want to consider the enclosed map of vacant buildings.
District 1 Crime Maps
Left to right… City Council Candidates Zeke Cohen (D) and Matt McDaniel (R)
For those of our followers who are paying special attention to the District 1 general election contest between Democrat Zeke Cohen and Republican Matt McDaniel, we’ve created crime maps that show the District’s boundaries overlaid onto the crime maps we developed for the entire city. (Citywide crime maps are available elsewhere on our website, through the menu bars above and below the header and in various posts.)
The truth about raising the minimum wage.
So why is an organization like Baltimore Rising whose primary objective is reducing unemployment and poverty in the City adamantly opposed to raising the minimum wage to $15?
City-Owned Vacant Homes & Lots For Sale, Cheap!
Updated Vacants-To-Value Program Inventory
As Of July 16, 2016
As you can see from the flier at the bottom of this post, the City’s Housing Department is having what it calls the “Baltimore Builds Expo” on August 13. It’s a series of classes that will help you buy a house or vacant lot on which you can build one – for your family or for sale or rent. The Expo is a great idea and well worth your time if you’re even the least bit interested in taking advantage of the city’s inventory of over 1800 vacant houses and lots.
Why you should vote against yet another increase in the minimum wage.
You would think that, given Baltimore Rising’s focus on jobs creation through all-inclusive economic growth that eliminates poverty, we would be huge fans of an increase in the minimum wage. Well, you’d be wrong.
By state law, the minimum wage in Maryland is $8.25 per hour. On July 1, it’s rising to $8.75, then to $9.25 on July 1, 2017 and to $10.10 on July 1, 2018.