The absurdity of this City Council seems to have reached new heights. A committee just voted down @odetteramos’s bill to produce a study and report on Tax Increment Financing. No agency opposed doing this. They literally voted against being provided useful information. What are we even doing here?

Today I'm introducing the Abundant Housing Act.

This bill proposes zoning reforms that are being brought forth throughout the United States, dismantling exclusionary policies that maintain segregation and create housing scarcity that drives up the cost of housing. The Abundant Housing Act will allow low-density multi-unit housing in all residential areas, up to four units, depending on available square footage, plus an additional unit in areas of high opportunity, such as proximity to grocery stores and transit.

.@MorganStateU made a huge announcement yesterday, that they would correct certain long-standing inequitable labor practices, and increase many workers’ wages.

It’s a great step forward, but they fought it tooth and nail for years.
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news.morgan.edu/employee-class… In 2018, after years of struggling to bargain with Morgan State to secure improvements for workers, @skatzenberg had a crazy idea to ask the newish loud-mouthed City Council rep for the area to join @AFSCMEMaryland’s bargaining team.

I said yes.
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In tonight’s budget hearing with @BmoreCityDOT I asked why we’re spending more money to make streets less safe. Literally every beg button is money that never needed to be spent.

Everything they do can be accomplished without them.

At tonight’s budget hearing with @BaltimoreDPW I asked the same question I asked a year ago.

When the forests that protect our reservoirs begin to die, how much will water rates go up because of how much more it will cost to treat poorer quality source water? A 2003 study of City reservoir forests shows they lack an understory, meaning they’re not healthy enough to sustain regeneration, and they don’t protect our water as well as they should.

This is due to many factors, none of which Baltimore is doing anything about.

During today’s budget hearing with the Finance Department I raised the issue of a licensing fee that not only hasn’t been increased in 19 years, but isn’t being administered according to the law, dramatically under-charging parking lot owners who profit from people’s use of cars. The annual parking facilities license fee is based on square footage. Last year’s revenue accounts for 11,200,000 sf, but a preliminary review estimates garages/lots totaling as much as 40,000,000 sf actually received licenses.

That’s a lot (you like puns?) left on the table.

Baltimore has an unhealthy relationship to parking, in many ways, including financially. And the legislative history, as it turns out, makes it pretty clear.

Got an interesting figure from the Finance Dept today. Here’s a little thread. In February of 2019 I traced the legislative record on commercial parking facilities back to when it was first created in 1941 and I sent this memo to @baltimorebudget. The whole effort took about three hours.

bit.ly/parkingfacilit…

Joel Fitzgerald is a corner-clearing, broken windows devotee. It’s what he knows and believes in. Joel Fitzgerald lacks adequate respect for the divide between the people and BPD, and the resistance to change within BPD. He also lacks experience leading in a place with these problems, or a department of this size.

Reflecting on this, it now seems clear to me that the County’s infrastructure charges are a much more equitable and pro-urbanism structure than the City’s.

Disregarding the actual numbers in this chart, compare the ideas of “infrastructure fee” to “front foot” assessment.

https://twitter.com/ElectRyanDorsey/status/1068257475047145472

Compare two city blocks of equal length, 525 feet.

One has 35 15-foot wide houses - rowhomes w no yards. Each has a 5/8” meter, fee $18.244/mo.

One has 6 detached homes with large yards - average lot width 87.5 feet. Each has a 3/4” meter, fee $32.837/mo.