The Northeast Baltimore Communities Of BelAir Edison Community Association (BECCA )and Frankford Improvement Association, Inc. (FIA) and others within the NE Baltimore region ask high concered questions of all Mayor candidates as well as other city candidates.
 
Cindy Walsh for Mayor of Baltimore ---- Response to our NE community Associations.
 
There are two central aspects to my platform that will address the major concerns listed in your letter. 


1       I will be rebuilding all communities as they exist for the citizens living in these communities today.


2       I will remove all corporate control from all Baltimore City agencies and rebuild all our agencies out to every community where citizens will have an agency branch available with staff to serve, process, and resolve community issues on site.



The pressures on our NE and NW communities come from the same decades-old development policies of focusing all development on clearing city center and downtown of poor and working class citizens.  Gentrification occurs over history so realigning communities with new needs is not bad-----it must be done with justice.  Justice means we acknowledge percentages of populations will move out but make sure surrounding communities are being rebuilt as well and can accommodate this movement of citizens needing affordable housing, public services, and growing infrastructure.  As well, the idea of completely removing all poor, working class citizens with complete corporate and affluent development was not ever permitted especially with contracts like Enterprise Zones and Baltimore HUD providing funding.  I will assure there is mixed-income housing and small business included in city center and downtown development with real structures to keep these housing venues affordable----not only fixed to market value.  This will stabilize the movement of citizens out of these areas and give NE communities time to respond to growing populations.
As well, I will not be marketing and advertising Baltimore as an immigrant destination until we can address the needs of citizens, communities, and those immigrants already here.  We have no real structures in place to help with integration and an imbalance with unemployment high for our Baltimore citizens needing to be addressed.  We will protect and support the immigrants already settled in Baltimore and promote settlement in all communities and not creating pockets of density along any racial lines.  When I say I will grow city agencies out to all communities----when I say we will rebuild all communities that comes with hundreds of thousands of new jobs and lots of small businesses and small business manufacturing.  This will spark business and employment opportunities aimed at our citizens first.  Along with that will come creation of cultural venues, recreation venues, small media businesses in TV, radio, and print that will allow our immigrant families to join in building small businesses in these community economies.  When you are allowing cultural expression, voice, and public recreational and parks you will see the inter-connectivity between families living in each community as well as between communities. Again, we do not want to build high-density racial or cultural areas in Baltimore.  We want all communities to share in the benefits of having new immigrant families coming to Baltimore.
 
Our NE and NW communities have the greatest of environmental and green spaces we want to conserve and do not want global corporate campuses and global factories filling our surrounding communities with all the environmental damage that comes with that.  This is why small business manufacturing of products needed by Baltimore citizens and region is the way to go. 

The issues of crime and violence are addressed in part by building the stability in all communities and the cultural connectivity.  I will reform Baltimore Police Department structure to eliminate the militarized and unconstitutional policing and with that the dependence on so many weapons like pepper spray and tasers.  We have police officers for centuries able to apprehend criminals without such aggressive tactics and we can return to this training.  That said, these are the costs of policing that makes Baltimore one of the highest in the nation and very little of this policing addresses real crime and violence.  I will create more categories of community policing having more avenues for police involved in community functions acting as citizens including in our immigrant communities.  Hiring in Baltimore and from communities when possible and maintaining the push to remove those violent criminals and drug dealers.
 
WE MUST PRESERVE OUR GREEN SPACE IN OUR OUTER COMMUNITIES!