Technical Problem

A few days ago, we posted an article that talked about the urgent need to study, right now, the economics of the 150,000+ complaints that are filed with “Rent Court” every year – and that result in 7000 evictions annually. It’s a really important study that addresses a very, very significant problem in our city, the resolution of which is essential to the accomplishment of the economic recovery which is our mission. (Not so subtle note to contributors… It’s a study Baltimore Rising would gladly do for the city if you’d like to fund it.)

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Priming The Pump

Almost everybody is in agreement that Baltimore needs to lower its property tax rate which, at 2.248%, is almost twice that of the next highest county rate in the state. The rate is so high that it’s discouraging people and employers from moving here – and encouraging people and businesses to leave. We have a consensus. The question isn’t whether or not we lower the rate, but by what means and how quickly.

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Public Education, The 9 Year Solution

In order to rebuild the Baltimore economy, we need to repopulate the city. To do that, we need to give people and businesses a safer environment, obviously, but also a superior public school system that young families with children can respect, that’s competitive with what the suburbs have to offer. That’s why Baltimore Rising is interested in effecting a dramatic, relatively short-term improvement in the quality of public education everywhere in the city. Everywhere. This isn’t about opening a special charter school here and there.

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How do we reduce the property tax rate?

Cutting property taxes is something we really, really need to do. Our rate, which is 2.248%, is almost twice that of the next highest county rate in the state. The rate in Charles County is 1.205%. If you were thinking maybe it was Howard County, the rate there is only 1.014%. Howard County doesn’t need a high property tax rate because its median household income is over $100,000, housing is much more expensive and the county isn’t spending $750 million a year on public safety.

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Baseline

Yesterday, The Sun published the results of a poll it ran asking the usual question, the one that begins with, “If the election were held today…”

At best, these are baseline results, meaning that they are before any of the candidates is really campaigning, certainly not full-on they way they’ll be running around beginning in January and increasingly so the closer we get to April.

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