Voters in Bolton Hill and three other neighborhoods making up Midtown, the special tax district, have voted by more than a two-to-one margin to keep the community service district operating. While the final vote is expected to be released and certified by the city comptroller’s office on April 18, Midtown officials shared unofficial results.
For nearly 30 years, Midtown Community Benefits District has kept Bolton Hill and three other nearby neighborhoods cleaner, greener, and safer, supplementing city government services. But unless property owners in those locales vote Yes before March 27 to re-certify Midtown, those services will disappear.
After decades of mostly ignoring federal law requiring curbs and sidewalks to meet the needs of disabled pedestrians, the city has entered into yet another consent decree with the federal government. It is an outgrowth of a class action legal confrontation with a Maryland disability rights coalition.
Residents of Bolton Hill and three nearby neighborhoods can expect a special election this spring to re-affirm support for the Midtown Benefits District, the advocacy and improvement group created by a voter referendum in the mid-1990s to strengthen public services for the neighborhoods.
Many of us in Bolton Hill live in large, often drafty homes or apartments, and so we’re accustomed to, if not happy about, exorbitant utility bills in addition to high city and state taxes. But the double-whammy of a big bump in city water and sewer bill rates, paired with BGE’s surprisingly high winter gas and electric charges, has lots of neighborhood ratepayers groaning. What’s it all about and what, if anything, can be done?
When new 11th District city council member Zac Blanchard took his oath of office on Dec. 5, he quickly discovered that his assigned office in the main city hall building would not house his authorized staff. Then he learned that his offer to a man whom he wanted as his legislative director had been screwed up by the city’s personnel office.
Eric Costello is out of office now – looking back mostly fondly on a decade as the city council member representing Bolton Hill. He’s looking to start a new phase of professional development that doesn’t involve city government.
Our Bolton Hill neighborhood is unique in that it is adjacent to two important railroad tunnels, both built in the mid-to-late 1800’s, that have now become major bottlenecks in our national rail network. Both tunnels are the subjects of major modernization programs that will transform and improve rail service in the Northeast and Midwestern United States.
The city’s Planning Department has released a draft comprehensive plan for the city. It is 349 pages long and well-designed in a graphic sense, and it deals with many of the things that Baltimore City does. (You can read it all, or a summary, at https://www.planourbaltimore.com/ .)
The city planning department’s late February open house for nearby residents to provide input on what to do with the soon-to-be-abandoned 18-acre State Center on Bolton Hill’s south border was, some would say, a nothing-burger.
