How do I, a voter, ask something of my elected officials and actually be heard?

How does an individual go about lobbying?

I don't see a problem. We lowered term limits so it only makes sense to lower the vesting years.

Plenty of jobs give pensions after five years. Police, military, and all federal positions. It might not be a full pension but you get a percentage times years of service.

Hopefully we will see the term limits over turned by the next election and then we can talk about returning the old pension requirements. Term limits empower lobbyists and weaken local oversight.

How does one go about doing this?

Counter argument: surrounding counties with part time council members ALL have better constituent services than any Balt City district. (Balt Co isnt great, but I mean AA, Howard, Carroll, and Harford.)

Bad county council people in surrounding counties also are challenged and lose primary elections, unlike in the city. Harford District E is an example from this past cycle.

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Make it an indoor prayer garden and spare the houses. They're pretty nice, and Baltimore absolutely does not need decent buildings to disappear. There's way too much crap in the city, yet the good things make the city intriguing enough to stick with it.

It's just more lackluster civic pride by Baltimore's movers and shakers. OTOH, there's always lack of resources as well, as those houses cost $$$ to maintain. This is why I get so exercised over the massive diversion of resources to DC. If some of that stream came to Baltimore, there would be enough money to save those houses and keep them in top condition.

Dang. So if we wanted to go tonight(Sunday) there wouldn’t be any pizza?

Okay, you’re officially being a bully/jerk at this point, regardless of the original point.

I don’t understand what you’re confused about?

Paulie Gee’s in Hampden. They only do wood fired on Wednesdays and you have to eat in (no takeout), but pizzas are two for one.

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Well Crafted RIP

And from my understanding some city positions no longer have a pension option at all anymore for new hires.

In other counties, council, council president, etc are part time jobs paying like 40k. There is a separate full time county exec who often has a staff of civil service people with relevant experience who administer the county business. A lot of the the council people are long time workers and business people who have "skin in the game" and are not living off the people.

Furthermore, in the city, all these full time council people have staffs of handpicked people who eventually get on the city dole in permanent positions. There are still a LOT of remnants of failed past city administrations (e.g. SRB and Young, who were both council pres before becoming mayor and utterly failing at it) In the surrounding counties, the jobs these people do, like constituent services, are handled by full time (career) county employees.

In the city, it takes interventions from council members to fix embarassingly basic issues like street lights, trash pick up, trucks on residential street,etc precisely bc it's a political patronage system rather than a well functioning govt. When a problem is finally addressed, residents clap like well trained aquarium seals instead of realizing the problem would've been dealt with immediately if the city was run properly.

Hey, apologies — I read into your comment too much. Edited my comment partially to reflect that. Thanks.

Verde and Paulie

You have a lot of good responses. You have suggested that city residents can create legislation to try and overturn the pension ruling or lobby for workers rights, but haven’t said how. How, do I, a single person, go about lobbying? How do I start legislation? I’m not being sarcastic. I’m honestly asking to be educated. What is my starting point to act rather than just talk? For example, the person who responded to email the mayor and provided a link. That is actionable. That is an example of what I’m hoping to learn.

You’re conflating redeveloping property into a profit-making building versus a garden. Not the same

I already couched the explanation within the Christian tradition and the examples I mention speak to the dual religious-ethnic focus of similar communities.

And while I think you already mean this, I think it’s more apt to say that they have a “religious” or “ethics-religious” obligation, not a generally ethical obligation, but I’m starting to split hairs ;-)

Just to be clear, your theory is that the church actually has been spending money to properly maintain these buildings over the past few decades and that they’re in perfectly adequate condition, but that the church decided it needed a garden so badly that it’s decided to fabricate this whole story of the buildings being dilapidated? Yeah ok.

Don’t forget the Fire Department (firefighters and paramedics) is roped in the Police pension as well and also got fucked with the 25years. And it wasn’t for “All new hires”. There were guys months away from their 20 year pension that got told “Doesn’t matter 25years now”. Didn’t matter what contract they signed, it got changed, 10 year court battle for nothing.

The big problem is, for most (if not all) of these city council people, the city council salary is better than they've ever made, or basically the best they could do. Some (again, nearly all) have only worked for the govt and have zero experience outside gov jobs. This includes the mayor. Also, Dorsey, Cohen, Torrance, Costello, and a whole bunch of others.

The effects are obvious with the way the mayor and council operate. A lot of grandstanding and meaningless sound bites with rather little substance.

Hersh’s Hersh’s Hersh’s we eat pizza there and order some to freeze for later!!! Also, extra bonus pts for amazing appetizers!

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