City Officials

Since November, taxpayers have been footing the tab to police club-goers and college students in the downtown Market Place area, an unintended consequence of a plan to stop officers from moonlighting as security outside city businesses. Bars and clubs that once hired uniformed city officers to work secondary employment outside the establishments have not been paying into a pool intended to fund an extra shift of patrol officers downtown, a plan meant to give police authorities more control over how officers are deployed.

Baltimore officials seek transportation project funds A panel of Baltimore officials told Maryland Transportation Secretary John D. Porcari yesterday that the city needs $3 billion over the next decade to catch up with deferred transportation projects, including road resurfacing and bridge rehabilitation. City officials said 17 bridges in the city are eligible for complete replacement and that 118 should be rehabilitated, but they said the city does not have the money to complete those and other projects.

Forget the controversial Male/Female (It?) sculpture looming over Penn Station. Think of more embraceable creations: The stainless steel tubes jutting into the sky in front of the Maryland Science Center. The buoyant red sculpture gracing Pratt Street in the Inner Harbor. Or how about those concrete arcs fronting the Baltimore Visitor Center, meant to convey the "cyclical nature of human interaction"? Public art - where profundity and vagueness seemingly co-exist - sprouts in forms vast and varied in pockets across the city.

The city can afford after-school efforts The Sun's editorial "A promise is a promise" (May 16) states that "ideally" there would be enough money for the city to support school construction and renovation plans and fund after-school programs for young people who need them. In fact, city officials can do both now. Baltimore has a surplus and a rainy day fund that holds $83 million ("With levies, trims, city finances are on more stable footing," Oct. 13, 2006). This provides Mayor Sheila Dixon with enough funds to cover the essentials of city operations and at the same time invest in providing opportunities for all city children to grow up healthy and well-educated.

Mayor Sheila Dixon announced yesterday that the city will investigate why high arsenic levels in a South Baltimore park were kept quiet for more than 30 years. "Testing in 1976 showed high levels of arsenic in the soil," Dixon said. "I want to understand why we are only learning about this problem now." Heading the inquiry will be the city's health commissioner, Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, who ordered the closure of Swann Park on Thursday after tests showed arsenic at levels more than 100 times higher than generally considered safe.

The Baltimore institution of vendors hawking produce from colorful horse-drawn wagons is about to receive a major makeover, but some involved with the city's 19th-century tradition are unhappy with the proposed changes. In August, officials condemned a West Baltimore stable housing 51 horses and ponies but pledged to help the quaint practice endure. A team of city officials began working with the street peddlers, known as arabbers, to find a suitable place to board their animals. Now officials are overhauling the loosely regulated practice of arabbing, enforcing permit requirements for vendors and their animals, and replacing the ramshackle stable with a new facility to be built near the B&O Railroad Museum in Southwest Baltimore.

A dispute between Annapolis officials and a contractor renovating and expanding the Police Department could be heading for legal action. A week after officials halted work on the $8.8 million project, consultants hired by the city are ripping out portions of the ceiling and walls in search of incomplete or faulty construction, while the contractor insists that the city is nitpicking and behind on payments. Jim Chase, project manager for J.G. Garcete Co. Inc. of Hyattsville, predicted that the two sides will end up in court.

Baltimore is planning to hand over delinquent parking tickets to a Texas-based collections firm in an effort to recapture more than $100 million the city is owed in back fines and late penalties, city officials said yesterday. More than 107,000 vehicle owners with tickets that are at least six months overdue received notice from the city last week that they need to pay up or their cases will be turned over to the agency, Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson, for collection. For the first time, however, violators will be given the option of paying parking tickets on an installment plan and, as long as they continue to make those payments on time, will not incur additional late-payment penalties, city officials said.

Annapolis officials will delay until January a plan to temporarily close the Market House to install a new air-conditioning unit, postponing the work until the busy tourist season is over, officials said yesterday. Market House was originally scheduled to close this spring. "This is the time of year that they make the most money so I don't want to shut them down now," said Rob Schuetz, acting director of central services. "It would be like having Macy's shut down from Thanksgiving to Christmas.

Dorothy Johns winced as she watched her elderly horse, Foreo, squirm away from handlers leading her into a makeshift stable at Pimlico Race Course. "Poor thing, she's all worked up from the ride up here," said Johns, watching along with a handful of Baltimore arabbers who gathered beside the temporary stable to welcome their horses and ponies back to the city. Last week, city officials condemned the arabbers' decaying stable in the 1900 block of Retreat St., noting structural problems, filth and trash that blocked exits.

The Baltimore Board of Ethics should review whether city employees have violated ethics statutes by soliciting money for a nonprofit group without receiving approval, a city councilman said Monday. In a letter to the board's chairman, Councilman William H. Cole IV asked the ethics board to examine the activities of the Baltimore City Foundation, an organization created primarily to help finance city projects for the needy. The request followed the publication Sunday of a Baltimore Sun investigation that detailed questionable transactions by city employees using foundation money.

A few times a week, Lenwood M. Ivey leaves his small office on the ninth floor of the Equitable Building and strolls the two blocks to the city Finance Department to sign checks drawn up by a city clerk. As president of the Baltimore City Foundation, he puts his name behind several million dollars each year for programs that the city identifies as worthy. The foundation - a private nonprofit formed in 1981 to raise money, primarily to benefit city programs for the underprivileged - helps pay for projects such as a summer jobs program for youths, funeral expenses for homicide victims and home smoke alarms for the needy.

In the tangled and insular world of Little Italy, where trivial spats can erupt into bitter battles that require the police and courts to resolve, it should come as no surprise that a meeting about crime can lead to fears about hidden agendas and misplaced loyalties. Giovanna Blatterman, a community leader, political gadfly and longtime rabble-rouser, organized Tuesday night's Community Crime Summit that attracted a standing-room-only crowd to the basement hall of St. Leo's Church and a bevy of city officials, including a councilman, the health commissioner, a zoning supervisor, the liquor board chairman and a police commander.

The long-delayed Charm City Circulator Bus made a cameo appearance Friday in Harbor East, as city and business leaders kicked off a campaign aimed at encouraging workers and residents to ease the bustling neighborhood's traffic by taking transit or a water taxi, biking or walking. People who turned out for the event at the Katyn Memorial got a chance to hop aboard the new hybrid bus, but they still can't ride it anywhere. Production problems and a slumping economy continue to hold up delivery of the 21 buses it is acquiring, city officials said.

City officials are moving ahead with plans to sell or lease the historic Senator Theatre to an operator who would keep it running as a movie theater or convert the 70-year-old landmark to a performing arts venue. In a request for proposals issued Monday, the Baltimore Development Corp. said it is seeking plans that would keep the 900-seat theater active, allow it to serve as an anchor for nearby communities and maintain the building's art deco exterior and interior features. The city purchased the financially troubled theater's mortgage in May after the owner, Thomas Kiefaber, was unable to make payments on a $1.2 million loan that the city had partially guaranteed.

Baltimore city government would be closed for five days between October and June as most workers participate in a new furlough plan that the city's spending board will be asked to approve this week to help plug a $60.2 million gap in the city's $2.3 billion budget. Firefighters and police also would have to accept furloughs or equivalent reductions to make the cost-saving program work, city officials said, but union leaders are resisting any plan that takes their members off the streets, arguing that further cuts to their agencies would endanger the public.

Baltimore's Board of Estimates approved Wednesday spending $17,828.50 in federal stimulus money toward food and party rentals at a rally promoting prenatal health, according to city officials. Mayor Sheila Dixon is to speak at the event, scheduled for Sept. 26 at Clifton Park, according to the Board of Estimates agenda. It is being organized by the city's health department to "raise awareness" about infant mortality in the city and will include "villages" where attendees can receive information about staying healthy while pregnant, financial planning, mental health, nutrition and how to care for an infant, according to the agenda.

Mayor Sheila Dixon plans to dip into the city's $13.5 million "undesignated surplus" funds, lay off about 100 city workers and implement across-the-board furloughs to close a $60.2 million budget shortfall caused by state cuts and declining city revenue estimates, according to union leaders who met with city officials this week and a budget document obtained by The Baltimore Sun. The plan also includes using $11 million to $12 million of excess funds...

The long-planned revitalization of the area surrounding Oldtown Mall in East Baltimore inched forward Wednesday, as city officials approved funds to help relocate merchants and make way for mixed-use development. The Board of Estimates, the city's spending panel, approved more than $256,000 in moving expenses for seven small shops or businesses, among them a hair salon, a car wash and a tailor's shop, that occupy buildings the city has acquired. The city has been buying up property around the mall south of Monument Street at Orleans and Ensor streets as part of a deal to turn over a 5-acre parcel to a development group led by Continental Realty Corp.

Baltimore's city-owned convention hotel opened to much fanfare and high expectations last August, with white-gloved waiters serving champagne in the blue-and-rust lobby, a jazz ensemble playing and the first guests marveling at the ballpark views. Tourism and government leaders praised the $301 million, publicly financed project as the much-needed ingredient to bolster convention business and elevate the city as a destination. But within months, the bottom fell out of the economy, weakening demand in the lodging and convention industries.