Area around Hanlon Park ain't good. Go running in better neighborhoods.

Yes. And while I wish the development was more urban, it's a vast improvement over what is what it was, which was a toxic wasteland. By all economic measures, it's been a massive success.

The little known secret about Baltimore City finances is that property tax revenue has been and will be exploding in the next few years. Median home sale price in Baltimore shot up by a crazy percentage, and that trend actually started before the pandemic, then accelerated during the pandemic.

Remember that ballot question about cutting the property tax rate? Well, we could really cut the rate by a significant percentage once these new assessments take effect. The reason the rate is so high now is because real estate in Baltimore has traditionally been assessed so low.

The rules of the game are unfair.

Let's say "House A" and "House B" are identical and located adjacent to each other. In 2010, both houses sold for $200k. In 2015, House A sold for $250k, and in 2020 House B sold for $400k.

Should both houses be assessed for the same value in 2022 since their market value is the same ($400k or so)? Most of us would say "yes", but you'll find that is almost never the case. Identical or very similar houses oftentimes have wildly different assessments.

I challenged about 8 years ago and won. It took about a year. I was dealing with SDAT assessors who seemed clueless. Eventually, I got a hearing and won. I had stacks of evidence, including data on many comps.

It's a frustrating process. Be diligent.

The assessors are completely overwhelmed. They have too many houses to assess, and their evaluations make little sense. After studying this for a while, I concluded that a major problem is the number of homes that are assessed for way under market value. (Sounds like OP is seeing this with their neighbors, which is what I saw too). I think assessors under assess because they know the city's tax rate is so high. Some of us are unlucky, like me and OP. But most homeowners are actually pretty lucky in this regard, i.e. their assessments don't increase to current market values, especially if the sales occurred years before.

If the assessments were accurate and matched current market values, our property tax rate could be slashed with no reduction in total tax revenue.

Try Pizza di Joey, Pasta Mista, Remo's of NY, and Paulie Gee's....and Vinny's Cafe for a mega slice.

I wasn't talking about crime. Comment was re: beauty and growth of Pittsburgh.

This business is leaving. There are other stories recently about businesses moving to Baltimore. Harbor Point, Canton Crossing, and Port Covington are all doing pretty well. Downtown needs to do better. However, it's challenging for downtowns all over the country right now.

Pittsburgh's population is dropping faster than Baltimore's. Also has more poverty. However, I do really like Pittsburgh. I say these things only to show that Baltimore isn't as bad as you might think.

So is he implying that it would be just if future elected council members changed the law since they would be subject to the 8-year term limit?

Verde. Easily the best.

Yes, but even the areas north of the park are better than they were. Gentrification has pushed north.

Yes. My point is that despite the increase in murders between then and now, the area around the park is markedly better now.

Not naive. Have lived in southeast Baltimore since 2000. It's a night and day difference in and around the park.

This is obviously a horrible story and I feel awful for the victim and family. However, this story should not be filed under the "Baltimore is getting so much worse" BS. Patterson Park, and the area surrounding PP, is immensely safer now than it was 5 years ago, and especially 10-15 years ago. There was a time in the recent past that people would avoid the Park because of muggings, gang activity, and prostitution. It's not perfect now, but man, it's a lot better than it was. Even during the Shelia Dixon reign, when Baltimore had a hundred less murders than now, Patterson Park was a lot more dicey. Yes, random violence can and obviously does happen, but to anyone paying attention, PP is great and getting greater.

I guess I'm the "cryptoconservative"? Nice word you made up there.

I don't consider myself a conservative. I'm more of a pragmatist. I see what has worked in other cities and think that's what needs to happen here because no one has done it any other way. Sure, it would be great if people could make any neighborhood safe and prosperous without population turnover, but that hasn't been the reality in America, and I doubt Baltimore is going to be the first city to figure it out.

A lot of people living in the city would have a much better quality of life living somewhere else. Hence the decline in population in poor neighborhoods. It's unfortunate, but part of the cycle many cities experience.

Yes. I think Baltimore faired better than most cities during to the pandemic. People who wanted city living, but at less cost, moved to Baltimore.

I think Baltimore's leaders would be thrilled to hire more police. The problem is finding enough people who want to do that job.

Population is increasing in gentrified areas and falling rapidly in crimeridden poor areas. The best hope for Baltimore is to keep gentrifying and pushing the boundaries of redevelopment into poorer areas while the 100% gentrified areas become pricier. That's how other US cities have cut crime. That's really the only formula that has shown to be effective. This is of course politically unpopular, though it is happening.

In any case, median income in the city has increased much more than the national median since 2000. This is a major sign of gentrification - weathier, more educated people are moving to Baltimore.

Also, even though overall population has fallen, the number of households has increased a lot in recent years. We still have a relatively high persons per household number. It will likely continue to fall until we are on par with wealthier cities.

I read about this a few weeks ago. My recollection is that the While L (except for neighborhoods with covenants) is already zoned for multifamily, while the Black Butterfly is not. I think this validates Dorsey's position even more.

In a weird way, the increase of violence in cities across America has helped Baltimore. We no longer seem to be an outlier. There is horrible shit happening everyday all over the country. Cities that had stellar reputations -like San Fran and Portland -get drug through the mud on a daily basis. Even NYC which has statistically much lower crime than the vast majority of cities has a horrible perception problem right now. The NYC suburbs are almost entirely responsible for flipping the House to the GOP. And crime is the reason why.

>We’ve had so many high profile attacks and random violence, plus everyday obvious nuisances like the squeegee folks, that it really drives home the “war zone” image

Re: random violence, though I have no way to prove this, my perception is that we do not have more random violence on a per capita basis than other cities. My hypothesis is that our bloated crime statistics are due to Baltimore having a high percentage of people who are simply up to no good or who live in a world where violence in a reasonable problem solving strategy. I know all cities have such people...I just think Baltimore has relatively more.

To illustrate what I mean re: random violence - NYC has had 22 instances of people being pushed onto subway tracks this year alone. These are about as random as it gets. Imagine that happening even once in Baltimore in a five year span. We'd never be able to live that down.

I do agree that the squeegee boys have a HUGE HUGE HUGE effect on public perception. When people I know tell me they won't go into the city, it is more likely they will mention squeegee boys than murder.

I have a lot of family and friends who live in and around Philadelphia, and they visit me regularly in Baltimore. This generates an interesting dynamic that is very telling about how people perceive places, namely cities.

For one, they almost all have negative, hopeless feelings about Philadelphia. BUT they all have positive, almost dreamy feelings about Baltimore. The reasons for this are simple - they are inundated with constant negativity about Philly (especially from the local Philly media) and because they live there, they see all of Philly's warts.

When they visit Baltimore, they are only doing fun things and seeing our best neighborhoods. They don't have access to our local media, social media, etc. and the people they know aren't shit talking Baltimore on a daily basis. In their day to day lives all of that negativity is reserved for Philly. Meanwhile, their feelings about Baltimore are based solely on positive, curated experiences. This leads to an intense "the grass is greener" kind of feeling that isn't 100% "valid", but their feelings aren't necessarily wrong either.

Baltimore is great. Philly has it's challenges. But Philly is also great...and Baltimore also has its challenges. Perspective matters a lot.

Either you support term limits or you don't, but term limits are obviously not some radical idea.