East Baltimore Community

As Baltimore began taking steps yesterday to turn its empowerment zone from a book-length proposal to real programs, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke pledged a "very public process" in deciding how tens of millions of dollars in public funds would be spent.He said Michael V. Seipp, the author of the city's empowerment zone proposal, would lead the effort until a permanent staff is selected. Appointments to the quasi-public board overseeing the zone could be made next week, the mayor said.The method of awarding contracts for health services, job training and other programs under the $100 million federal program have yet to be worked out, Mr. Schmoke said.

Police charged a man yesterday in a fatal shooting that occurred late Monday night in East Baltimore -- just blocks from the drug-ridden area where police staged a major raid last week. And in the wake of the slaying, some community activists wondered whether the raid had any lasting impact.The victim, whom police would not identify, was shot several times in the head and back about 11:45 p.m. as he stood on a sidewalk in the 700 block of N. Rose St., just two blocks from houses officers raided Thursday night in Operation Mid-East.

Baltimore, the state and the Johns Hopkins medical institutions are joining together to revitalize a huge tract of about 180 square blocks in East Baltimore, hoping to attract "tens of millions" in development money over the next few years.The Historic East Baltimore Community Action Coalition was created Friday to improve housing, to foster business development and jobs and to improve social services in the decayed neighborhoods around Hopkins Hospital.The area -- which also includes the Somerset and Douglass Homes housing projects and Dunbar High School -- is more than twice the size and has four times as many residents as West Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester, which is in the midst of its own heralded revitalization effort.

Services for Evelyn Louise Campbell, director of community affairs for Baltimore's Health Department, will be held at 11:30 a.m. today at Enon Baptist Church, Edmondson Avenue and Schroeder Street.Ms. Campbell, who was 62 and lived on Winston Avenue, died Tuesday at Mercy Medical Center after a heart attack.For nearly 10 years before joining the staff of the city's Health Department in 1983, she was director of public relations for the East Baltimore Community Corp.Born in Baltimore, the former Evelyn Louise Lee was reared here and in Richmond, Va. She was a graduate of Virginia State College.