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State of the City Draws Council Members Praise, Concern

Council members share concerns about employee benefits, trash collection fees and audits.

 
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Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young
File photo: Bernard C. "Jack" Young during the swearing in ceremony following the 2011 elections. Scroll through the photos to find out what some council members thought of the mayor's State of the City Address.
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File photo: Bernard C. "Jack" Young during the swearing in ceremony following the 2011 elections. Scroll through the photos to find out what some council members thought of the mayor's State of the City Address. Credit Adam Bednar
Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke, who represents Tuscany-Canterbury parts of Guilford and Charles Village, also praised Rawlings-Blake’s speech for being forward thinking. Clarke, who is chairwoman of the council’s education committee, said that she is involved and supportive of the mayor’s plan to develop a state partnership that allows the city to build new schools quickly. But Clarke expressed concerns about some of the proposals in the mayor’s speech such as shifting new employees from a pension system to a 401(k) retirement plan. “401(k)s, I don’t know much about them except that a lot of people had them and now they don’t [have retirement savings] anymore because of the recession,” Clarke said. Clarke also said she was not a fan of a user fee for trash and recycling collection in proposed in the mayor’s speech. “I’ll tell you how [the trash fee proposal] goes over with me—not well. So lets here what this is all about and figure out why we need to raise more money to collect the trash that we’re collecting now. No good reason that I can think of,” Clarke said. Credit Adam Bednar
Councilman Carl Stokes, who represents Remington and parts of Charles Village, has been one of the mayor’s most vocal critics, but praised Monday’s speech. “But I think the mayor has seen, and her administration has seen, that we must make strong adjustments. I actually think today was a good day. I think we’re looking at an opportunity for great collaboration between the administration, the council and others,” Stokes said. “I actually think today’s speech was a good speech frankly, very much so.” But Stokes, who sponsored a bill requiring more stringent city audits, only to see the bill watered down before being passed last year, was dubious of some of the information from the mayor’s 10-year financial plan influencing many of her proposals. “Do we know how much business we are wasting or losing or don’t have? We don’t…how did a financial organization look at our finances without opening the books, and decide how bad things are?” Stokes said. “They needed to go through the books and find out where there’s mismanagement; where there’s waste; where there fraud; where there’s abuse. Credit Adam Bednar
Councilman Bill Henry, who represents from Charles Street through the York Road corridor, said this state of the city address had more specifics about initiatives then in years past. He said that some of these proposals were “pretty good ideas” that the city should if not pursue, at least discuss. He said he was relieved the mayor said that any change in benefit structure for new city employees would also involve a salary increase, because he wants the city to be able to attract good workers. “It’s no secret to anyone that for years, maybe even a generation or more, one of the defining aspects of working for the city was the salaries weren’t great, but the benefits were pretty good. And that was the trade-off, and that’s why we were able to attract some of the employees we were able to attract. A lot of talk is made of public service. It’s one thing to say that a council person, or the mayor, or an agency head is here doing what were doing for public service. A guy lifting trash cans and dumping them in the back of a truck, or picking trash up off the street, or somebody sitting in an office answering irate phone calls all day long—they’re not doing it for public service. They’re doing it because it’s a job. And if we’re in a situation where we had salaries that aren’t that great, and benefits aren’t that great, it’s going to be hard to imagine we’re going to be able to attract good people to do those jobs. And when we don’t have good people doing those jobs, you know, we get scandals on Fox 45 about water meter readers messing up and not bothering to even check the meters they’re supposed to be reading.” Credit Adam Bednar
City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young praised the speech but said he was withholding judgment on the mayor’s proposals until he knows more about them. Young refused to take a position publicly on many of the mayor’s proposals saying only that he would look at them. “Honestly we have to come up with some other strategies to reduce our rising healthcare costs, pension costs and we have to think outside the box on how we can, you know, bring our structural deficit down and lower our property tax.” Young said. “I mean its something that our citizens are asking for and we’re going to have to do some of those things.” Credit Adam Bednar
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Some members of the Baltimore City Council, who represent North Baltimore, liked parts of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s State of the City Address, but had some concerns about the initiatives she proposed.

Scroll through the photos to find out what council members had to say about the speech.

Related Topics: Baltimore, City Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young, Councilman Bill Henry, Councilman Carl Stokes, Councilman Nick Mosby, Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, and State Of The City

Baltimore Matt

10:19 pm on Monday, February 11, 2013

Let Baltimore go bankrupt. It will give our city a chance to restructure it's obligations and get it's house in order...I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing...

Reply

IamGayle

9:49 am on Tuesday, February 12, 2013

AMOUNT OF MONEY AND SOURCE:
Annual Rent Monthly Installments
$7,806.40 $650.53
Account: 1001-000000-1000-106600-603016
BACKGROUND/EXPLANATION:
Mr. Henry will use the leased premises as office space for the operation of the 4
th Councilmanic District.
The landlord will maintain the interior common areas and exterior of the building, provide janitorial and pest control services, and provide for all utilities.
The tenant will be responsible for the cost of improvements, providing equipment for tenant operation, telephone and computer services, and providing security for the leased premises.
The interdepartmental lease agreement is late because of delays in the Departments’ reviews and administrative processes.
The Space Utilization Committee approved this lease agreement on January 15, 2013.

Reply

Sean Tully

4:09 pm on Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Earth to Baltimore City elected officials - the trash tax is a very bad idea.

Reply

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