Spring, dogs and City Council

by Jacqueline Watts
editor@baltimoreguide.com
Now that it’s warming up a little bit and the sun is shining occasionally, we humans (homo sapiens Highlandtownidae) are poking our heads out of our buff brick rowhouses and noticing that annual sign of spring—it really reeks around here.

The manure smell from the pelletizer at Back River Waste Water Treatment Plant that graced us over the holidays is gone, but the deposits our dogs have been leaving all winter in parks and on sidewalks, running off leash while we huddle together for warmth or go for coffee, are ripening to their full pungence in the warm sun.

It makes a stroll through the neighborhood, or around Patterson Park, rather unpleasant, and frankly April 21 and the Mayor’s Spring Sweep Thing can’t come soon enough, and at this point rain makes it reek worse.

So how about some dog owners, who can organize faster than hungry greyhounds when someone mentions pulling dog park privileges or raising the license fee, get together and do a citywide Poop Scoop? Just a suggestion.

The Baltimore City Council has figured out a way to get its raises without public outcry: Do nothing.

In the past, raises for elected officials, which generally are in the 10-15 percent range, have attracted quite a bit of comment, not to mention derision, mockery and ridicule. The officials counter that they only receive a raise every four years—a weak argument in a city where so many receive the minimum wage, which has not been raised for over a decade.

Starting in January 2008 City Council members will make $57,000 for their part time jobs. That’s up from $48,000. The Mayor will make $148,000, up from $125,000, for her full time job. The Comptroller and City Council President will each make $98,000, up from $80,000.

Plus—for the first time, there is a cost of living adjustment of 2.5 percent a year built in to the pay scale.

We really shouldn’t complain, I suppose. Most of us voted for this travesty.

Thanks to Question I, which was overwhelmingly voted in by the citizens of Baltimore in last year’s gubernatorial election, the City Council need only say nothing about the recommendations of the Compensation Commission for Elected Officials, which suggests amounts forraises, and those raises take effect. We really gotta start reading those danged referendum descriptions instead of just voting them in willy-nilly. And send a salute and thank-you card to Mary Pat Clarke of the 14th District, who is the only member of City Council to vote against this larceny from taxpayer when the question came up before Council last year.

Jerry Makowiecki of the Eastwood Community Civic Association is looking for flags to fly over the I-95 walk bridge near the Eastern Avenue exit. He’s been putting them up there for years and they get ragged fast. He needs three-foot bt five-foot stitched nylon flags. In the past he’s gotten them from Congress and scout troops and wherever he could cadge them. The last two came from City Councilman Nicholas C. D’Adamo Jr. of the Second District. Give Jerry a call at 410-633-5671 if you can contribute a flag.