Baltimore City is revisiting a plan to add a new cycling and pedestrian trail along North Baltimore’s arterial East 33rd Street in hopes of better connecting neighborhoods, colleges and Lake Montebello, and building a key spur of a larger envisioned citywide trail network.

Planners, advocates and city officials say options include building a new trail down the 40-foot-wide median, adding a cycle track on 33rd Street itself in place of existing street parking or a “hybrid approach” of the two that could involve expanding curbside parking lanes or the median itself. The community engagement process is paramount as the city revives a 2017 conversation that dissolved amid outcry from some neighbors who vigorously opposed the idea, particularly with worries about the mature trees lining the boulevard.

“Our options are open at this point,” said Matthew Hendrickson, a lead bike planner on the project for the Baltimore City Department of Transportation. “There are a lot of different types of concerns that we have to include in order to take this project forward.”

The city’s broader goals are to create a safe, well-used trail that makes the best use of the historic, picturesque median designed by the Olmsted Brothers (named a local landmark, along with the Gwynns Falls Parkway median, in 2015) and improves traffic and pedestrian safety at intersections. The public debate over a 33rd Street trail is resuming amid ongoing city efforts to create more complete streets and ameliorate the ills of generations of car-centric planning for pedestrians, cyclists and drivers alike.

“The former thinking about getting cars the fastest way from A to B is no longer where we are going, which I think is a good thing,” said Councilwoman Odette Ramos, whose district includes 33rd Street and adjacent neighborhoods like Abell, Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello and Waverly. “Some members of the public are not there, although most people that I talk to in my district are. We want to be able to do it right, where people feel like they have input.”

The push to make 33rd Street more accessible is one piece of a broader planning effort for a 35-mile trail network to serve as a greenway for Baltimore and link some 75 neighborhoods with parks and other green spaces. The Baltimore Greenway Trails Network, a $28 million vision designed by the Washington D.C.-based nonprofit Rails-To-Trails Conservancy, would connect various sections of Baltimore with new routes of multimodal paths. The 1.4-mile stretch of 33rd Street is part of the six-mile Northern Segment, which would also include routes connecting Druid Hill Park to Charles Street, and Leakin Park to Druid Hill Park along Gwynns Falls Parkway.

Five years after the public conversation fizzled, the city and the Greenway Trails Coalition are reviving it with three virtual community meetings this week (March 2 will focus on 33rd Street, specifically). There’s some urgency to decide on a design; the city has received a $360,000 Maryland Bikeways grant from the state to cover about a third of design costs for the northern segment — which can then leverage additional investment — and must spend the funds by the end of 2023.

Significant Economic Benefits

Ethan Abbott, Rails-to-Trails’ project manager of the Baltimore Greenway Trails Network, emphasized the “myriad of different ways” communities can benefit from a robust trail network. A 2020 economic analysis report, prepared by Ernst and Young, determined it could generate up to $48 million in gross economic output from construction alone, boost values of residential property within a quarter mile of the greenway by 4% to 7%, and lead to tens of millions more in retail spending at businesses nearby.

And then there are the social and environmental benefits: reduced car trips (and carbon emissions), increased biking and walking activity, and improved connectivity for city neighborhoods lacking in their own amenities and green space.

Public and elected officials, including Mayor Brandon Scott, U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin and Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson, have enthusiastically endorsed the greenway plan.

Not everyone is sold on this pitch, however. At the neighborhood level, the plan has inflamed tensions between some community members and cyclists in particular, part of a continuing series of battles over new cycling infrastructure — sometimes referred to as “bikelash” — in Baltimore.

Joe Stewart, who has lived in Waverly since 1979 and helped with the effort to secure historic landmark status for the median, chalked up the envisioned path as a “vanity trail” for cyclists: “It’s for people that ride bikes and want to put a notch on their belt that they’ve run around the city on a bike.”

Stewart said he was angry to learn of the proposal back in 2017, and he doesn’t understand why it’s resurfacing. Among his and others’ concerns are damage to the century-old trees, increased litter from an influx of trail users, interference with historic signage, particularly in Waverly, and reduced “passive green space” for neighbors.

“Green space does not have to be developed for active use,” he said. “It’s OK for a lot of people to just have green space you can look at, or that doesn’t get heavily used.”

And then there’s the matter of historic integrity; he’s among a camp who say installing a paved trail would permanently mar an iconic open space designed by the Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture firm in their transformative 1904 parks plan for Baltimore City.

But the greenway’s supporters — as well as some history authorities — have argued building it would actually fully realize the Olmsted Brothers’ vision. In its aforementioned 2015 landmark report, Baltimore’s Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation included a hand-drawn sketch from P.R. Jones, a landscape architect who worked for Olmsted Brothers at the turn of the century, with a design for a 12-foot-wide trail within a 40-foot median on 33rd.

“Today, roads are designed and used almost exclusively for vehicular traffic,” the historic commission report notes. “However, this was not the case when the Olmsted Plan was developed, and the Olmsteds designed these parkways to serve cars, bicycles, and pedestrians in a multi-modal scheme.”

The nonprofit Friends of Maryland’s Olmsted Parks & Landscapes, which advocates for creating accessible parks and sustainable landscapes in the Olmstedian tradition, in 2017 endorsed studying the potential for a bike path along 33rd, calling it “an opportunity to complete the recommendations made in the 1904 Plan to connect the various parks and communities throughout the City.”

Concerns about trees

Concerns about the trees — particularly their roots — figured heavily into public opposition in 2017, and Hendrick said planners “will certainly be mindful” of them as the conversation resumes. For each meeting this week, the city plans to bring in experts from the Department of Recreation and Parks’ Forestry Division and the nonprofit Baltimore Tree Trust.

Ramos said the trees’ health is “absolutely part of the conversation.” It’s even more important to her, however, that the conversation refocuses from being a battle between cyclists and neighbors to a collective effort to stem collisions and make 33rd Street safer for everyone.

She’s thinking of the City College and Mervo high school students who have to cross chaotic intersections and speeding traffic when they get out of school. A runner, Ramos said she herself opts for alternate routes for her own safety when she runs from Charles Village to Lake Montebello.

“Give me traffic calming,” she said. “I’m in favor of trying to do this in a way that we’re actually calming traffic, making sure that people aren’t speeding and that we’re making intersections safer for everyone.”

There’s room for the city to improve on its public feedback process from 2017. When officials shared the plan with community members, some neighbors felt like it was already considered a done deal. “They presented it like it was a fait accompli,” Stewart said.

Heading into this week’s public feedback sessions, Hendrickson and Abbott said the design remains “up for debate,” and they hope the process will feel more accessible and open than five years ago.

Abbott said the tension “really speaks to the need for, with any type of infrastructure like this, the most robust community engagement possible to make sure that all voices — or as many as possible — are actually aware of what’s going on.”

Over the summer at City Hall, Baltimore’s mayor gifted homegrown world champion boxer Gervonta “Tank” Davis his very own key to the city, just as he was preparing to defend that title.

Months after retaining that belt with a second-round knockout win, Davis will enjoy a parade in his honor through West Baltimore tomorrow.

The procession will kick off at 1:30 p.m. and run along Pennsylvania Avenue, from Preston Street up to Robert Street, culminating in a “fan festival” outside Davis’ original training grounds, the Upton Boxing Center.

State Sens. Antonio Hayes, Mary Washington and Shirley Nathan-Pulliam and Councilmembers Eric Costello, Robert Stokes and Leon Pinkett will be among the local elected officials joining Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young and Davis for the parade.

A press advisory says the celebration is “reflecting the Mayor’s priority to engage our young people and spotlight the positive contributions made by Baltimoreans.”

Davis famously defended his World Boxing Association featherweight world title against Ricardo Nunez in July in front of a sold-out crowd at Royal Farms Arena, taking down his Panamanian challenger with a minute and 33 seconds left in the second round.

A protege of Floyd “Money” Mayweather, Davis has risen to international stardom over the last several years, boasting a 22-0 record and having his past six fights–all KOs or TKOs–televised by Showtime.

His next bout, confirmed last week, will be against Cuban fighter Yuriorkis Gamboa on Dec. 28, the main event on a three-fight card reportedly airing on Showtime. It’ll mark Davis’ first fight in the 135-lb. weight class. He recently relinquished his super featherweight title to move up a higher weight class for the matchup.

Davis’ hometown parade will precede the premiere of a CharmTV-produced documentary, “My Name is Tank Davis,” airing Saturday night at 8 p.m.

Just in time for the season of remembering the dead, Baltimore Spirits Company is branching out with a new gin dubbed Skeleton Spirit.

This new animated promo video from Human Being Productions tells the origin story for the forthcoming spirit, a light-blue variation on the company’s flagship Shot Tower Gin that’s been around since 2015.

While the Baltimore Spirits Company has put out a few versions of its famously Baltimore-made Epoch Rye, Nov. 1 will mark the first time it’s released a new take on the botanical-infused booze that helped the firm launch four years ago.

“We wouldn’t want to compete with Shot Tower Gin, so it had to be something remarkable, and completely different on the gin spectrum,” Max Lents, the company’s CEO, said in a statement. “We think everyone will want both.”

Skeleton Spirit is 90 proof (45 percent ABV) and is made with juniper, eucalyptus, aloe vera and 11 other “secret ingredients,” per a release. The color, seen above, is meant to “evoke an ethereal, otherworldly vibe.”

Bottles will be available for $32.99 apiece at Maryland liquor stores starting next Friday. The company is planning to distribute Skeleton Spirit nationally sometime next year.

You can get first dibs on a taste at the Nov. 1 release party, which will double as the Baltimore Spirits Company’s fourth-anniversary bash. It’ll be at Union Collective and include cocktails and food from Phil Han’s Sugarvale and Dooby’s, respectively, plus live music from DJ Cian Noteman, a photo booth and a just-barely-post-Halloween costume contest. Details and tickets here.

Some injured Baltimore police officers become healthy as policy strips away their overtime — The Sun

HAPPENING TODAY: The first of three memorial services for Elijah Cummings — Fox 45

Southside Diner Team Opens ‘Southside Burger Bar’ at Cross Street Market — SouthBmore.com

Baltimore’s Board of Estimates considering $40,000 settlement for man shot by former officer — WMAR 2

There’s “a rising tide” of new restaurants, coffee shops and bars that’s happening in North Baltimore’s Old Goucher neighborhood, says Bryan Ranere.

There’s Lane Harlan and Matt Pierce’s Fadensonnen, a beer garden and natural wine and sake spot; Helena del Pesco’s Larder, which shares a courtyard with the business; Sophomore Coffee just next door; the forthcoming gin bar Dutch Courage; and the planned gaming spot-bar combo of No Land Beyond.

In a few months, Ranere plans to add his own nightspot to that mix.

His yet-unnamed bar–he’s “circling around a couple” final choices–at 17 W. 24th St. “will be like being in a chic, eclectic, mixed-century living room,” with a focus on spirits and cocktails and curated beer and wine selections, he says.

His wife, an interior designer, will design the space with modern and traditional touches, and his brother, Anthony, will handle sound design.

The bar doesn’t have enough space for its own kitchen, but Ranere says he hopes to serve food made off-site, including from chefs he’s befriended since relocating here from San Francisco two years ago, as well as food trucks and other local cooks.

Bryan and Anthony have applied for a new Class BD7 liquor license. They’re due to appear before the city’s liquor board this Thursday. At this point, they’re aiming to open by early next year.

Ranere came to Baltimore in 2017 after working in the San Francisco bar and restaurant scene for almost two decades. He helped open and served as bar program manager and culture director at Foreign Cinema, an eatery with a patio-theater space that just celebrated its 20th anniversary in the Mission District. He also helped open a connected bar, Laszlo.

“I always loved the Mission,” he says. “It’s just that now, the rent or cost to purchase property there is just absolutely insane–which you could never have imagined there 20 years ago.”

A Philadelphia native, he grew familiar with Baltimore over the years while visiting his brother, who moved here for college and stayed. More recently, he helped advise Harlan and and Pierce while the couple–friends of Anthony’s–opened up Fadensonnen.

After two decades of working in an increasingly gentrifying and inaccessible market for creatives and entrepreneurs–SF Weekly described his former Mission District environs as “ground zero for gentrification” earlier this year–he sees more opportunity in Baltimore.

“This is a city where you could develop projects and take risks, whether you’re a painter or a filmmaker or trying to do some new business or restaurant or bar or whatever. It’s a high-risk operation and it costs a lot of money, and you want to feel that you’re not going to be crushed under the weight of a sort of ridiculous economy, which is what San Francisco has.”

Ranere says he notices some parallels between Old Goucher and the Mission from when Foreign Cinema first “put a flag in the ground” there in 1999–including a lack of foot traffic. “It was fairly desolate on some blocks at night, and certainly where we were.”

He says his new home neighborhood in North Baltimore has “better bones” to work with than the Mission in terms of existing buildings, and has a central location and more diverse population than what he’s used to back in San Francisco. But it has a similar feeling when it comes to lacking activity at night, he says: “I am in awe of the beautiful buildings and I love these blocks, but there’s a certain eeriness that after 10 p.m., sometimes you’re walking around and it’s sort of desolate.”

Ranere says the influx of new spots to host customers into the night can “create an environment where not only the neighborhood is gonna start coming around… but people are gonna start coming from all parts of the city.”

Asked whether he worries such rapid changes could be part of a similar gentrifying wave, he says he hopes that wouldn’t be the case. “I think it’s important for business owners to reach out and welcome the community that exists there. I live in this neighborhood and it’s the only area I’ve lived in in Baltimore so far, and I really love it. I just really want to make the neighborhood the best it can be.”

“Gentrification is absolutely… a double-edged sword in many ways,” he adds. “You want to improve the quality of everyone’s lives, but you don’t want to distance or isolate people where this is their neighborhood, this is where their family has lived for decades. This is absolutely something that you kind of have to understand if you’re putting, like I said, a flag in the ground. You have to be part of the neighborhood, not claim a neighborhood.”

Ranere says he ultimately wants to introduce a spot that feels accessible, where someone “can feel comfortable in a T-shirt or a tuxedo.”

“I want people to come to my place and feel cool, feel like this is mine in some way. And I want someone who’s completely different from that person to also have that same feeling. If you can establish that, I think you’re onto something.”

A new poll makes a case for Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan to take on incumbent Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat, for his seat in 2022.

In a survey of registered Maryland voters by The Washington Post and the University of Maryland, published Thursday, 50 percent said they would pick Hogan, a Republican, for the Senate seat, compared to 42 percent who would choose Van Hollen, who’s currently midway through his first term.

Van Hollen served seven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives for the 8th District before being elected as the junior senator for Maryland in 2016 when Barbara Mikulski retired.

The same poll found two-thirds of Maryland voters approve of Hogan’s performance as governor, which is in line with his consistently strong approval ratings in deep-blue Maryland.

There’s been little public talk of Hogan running for U.S. Senate. He did briefly tease a rare presidential run challenging a sitting same-party president for 2020, but backed out early. Polls from New Hampshire found only 1 percent of voters said they would pick Hogan over Donald Trump.

The same WaPo-UMD poll found disapproval among Maryland voters for his use of “dark money” fundraising.

Hogan has launched a super PAC to raise money in support his agenda opposing an expensive education reform proposal from the state’s Kirwan Commission in Annapolis. While 81 percent of voters surveyed said they’ve heard or read “nothing at all” about Hogan setting up such an entity, which he has, 56 percent said they “disapprove of Hogan using political groups that can accept unlimited donations to further his agenda.”

Similar to a recent Goucher College poll, this survey found a large share (61 percent) of Marylanders have heard nothing about the Kirwan Commission’s work, but are supportive of a steep increase in state education spending over time.

Asked if they would support raising taxes to fund it, a plurality (49 percent) said they oppose a 0.5 percent hike for state income taxes, but more (55 percent) said they would support a quarter-point increase in the income tax rate.

On another timely issue, as Maryland’s General Assembly has formed a task force to explore potentially legalizing, taxing and regulating cannabis sales, two-thirds of voters said they support the idea.

The poll surveyed 819 registered Maryland voters from Oct. 9-14, with a 4.5 percent margin of error. The results are available in full here.

After over a year of renting out its electric two-wheelers here in Baltimore, Santa Monica-based Bird was not among the quartet of firms picked for operating permits back in August. Its exclusion spurred an exodus of the sleek, black devices while others remained or launched their fleets.

So, Mileah Kromer was a bit surprised when she saw four of them sitting lined up on the sidewalk outside Riverside Park this morning while she was out walking her dog.

It’s not unheard of to see straggler Birds being ridden in Baltimore neighborhoods–apparent remnants from Bird’s 2018-19 tenure here–but the devices at the corner of Johnson and E. Randall streets were placed in a row, looking “open for business,” she says.

“They were clearly set up by someone,” says the Federal Hill resident and full-time professor and pollster. “They were very neatly organized.”

She didn’t see anyone attempting to rent one this morning, though. And it turns out they didn’t remain outside the park for long.

German Vigil, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Transportation, says the city impounded all four scooters this morning “after receiving notification from the public.” (DOT was more boastful about its enforcement efforts on Twitter.)

“Our findings show that 4 vehicles were placed on the public right-of-way, but were not available for rent in the Bird app,” Vigil wrote in an email. “We will continue to investigate this matter to identify where the vehicles came from and if any further actions are needed.”

It would be odd to find one on the app anyway, since Bird is no longer allowed to operate here. Under city rules adopted this year, a company must receive a $70,000 operating permit to bring up to 1,000 scooters (plus 1,000 bicycles for companies Lime and Jump) to city streets. It’s unlawful for any firm to rent out scooters in Baltimore without a permit from DOT, under legislation enacted in May.

A Bird spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on whether someone affiliated with the company brought any scooters back.

But, judging by the duct tape visible on the front of each one in Kromer’s above photo, and a common-enough trend of people hacking the devices, local transit advocates speculate the devices Kromer found were leftovers that have been hacked and put out for rent by an “entrepreneur.”

Jed Weeks, policy director for Bikemore, says he’s seen schemes locally in which whoever is putting the hacked devices out “doesn’t let you use the scooter unless you pay them a buck or two.”

Kromer, who self-identifies as a “scooter enthusiast,” says she enjoys the number of the devices she sees around Federal Hill and Riverside. “Everybody looks so thrilled to be riding them, even in the morning on the way to work.”

She was just surprised to see these ones making a comeback after they’d all but disappeared. “Those are banned,” she thought to herself. “That’s like contraband now.”

As soon as the announcement went out that the Baltimore Teacher Supply Swap is closing, the responses–from families, teachers, others–began to pour in.

It was “overwhelming,” says board member Alessa Giampaolo Keener. “There were lots of encouraging words from the community.”

There are also some offers of potential financial support. While Tuesday’s announcement about the closure made no mention of plans to reopen, Keener says those offers–plus the outpouring of support from locals–have board members mulling a comeback.

“We’ve been getting emails, and we’re working to respond to the emails of very specific individuals and possible donors… It is humbling, and it’s encouraging.”

The nonprofit collects and distributes thousands of dollars worth of school supplies annually to Baltimore teachers who otherwise pay out-of-pocket for those goods. After giving out more than $700,000 in classroom supplies to over 2,000 educators over the last five years, operations are set to officially cease Nov. 30.

After Executive Director Melissa Badeker, a former Baltimore City Public Schools teacher who co-founded the organization with Kathleen Williams in 2014, announced her departure, the organization’s board decided it would be hard to find a replacement due to “funding issues,” the announcement said.

The organization has received more than $130,000 in financing since its inception, including from the Open Society Institute, the Abell Foundation, T. Rowe Price and others, plus a donated box truck from Len the Plumber to make mobile deliveries to schools.

But that hasn’t been enough to foster a sustainable path forward, particularly as Badeker is set to move on.

“It takes money to give away free stuff. That’s just what it is,” Keener says. “Paying for insurance, paying for rent–and if we have no funding source coming in, then we can’t stay open.”

Beyond the costs for its space–the Baltimore Teacher Supply Swap operates out of a warehouse at 1794 Union Ave. in Woodberry–the nonprofit has to pay salaries for a full-time executive director and a program director. It’s otherwise staffed by a grant-funded AmeriCorps fellow and volunteers.

Even relaunching for just three months in the near future, after a planned “inactive phase” beginning Nov. 30, would cost around $60,000, Keener says.

Now seeing a potential path to reopening, “the board has decided that we’d like to take a few months to see if these offers that have come forward in the past 24 hours, how genuine they are,” Keener says. The organization has since set up a GoFundMe page to raise that aforementioned total.

They’re also looking to bring on new board members who can help fundraise, and exploring additional grant sources and leads for personal funders who may want to step up.

Ideally, with better financial security and new leadership, the nonprofit can return in a “stronger, more efficient, more sustainable fashion.”

“I do feel like there is a little bit of hope,” Keener says, “and it’s going to be over the next couple of months that we see how the community can come together and help us determine what our next steps are going to be.”

As of this week, the swap is no longer accepting donations. Teachers are invited to continue stopping by to gather supplies on Thursdays (3-6 p.m.) and Saturdays (11 a.m.-2 p.m.) through the end of this month. If supplies are left after that, the nonprofit will allow the general public in on Saturday, Nov. 2, and a week later, on Nov. 9.

This story has been updated.

After nine years serving with Baltimore’s Department of Public Works, most of that time as its director, Rudy Chow is set to retire next February.

Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young’s office announced Chow’s planned February departure from his post this afternoon, with a release saying “Mayor Young thanks Director Chow for his leadership of the City’s Department of Public Works and his dedicated service to the citizens of Baltimore.”

It included no statements from the mayor or Chow, as such announcements often do, but did say Chow “will leave an agency dramatically changed from the one he took over as Director nearly six years ago.

“The strong, innovative financial management and capital investment plans he put in place ensure a less costly and more sustainable water and wastewater infrastructure for future generations, including his commitment to replacing at minimum 15 miles of water mains each year,” the announcement said.

It also noted DPW’s Bureau of Solid Waste was reconfigured during his tenure, as well as rat eradication efforts, the introduction of larger municipal trash cans for homes and solar-powered compacting trash cans in business districts, improvements to street sweeping and more.

The release quoted Chow’s own retirement notice to the mayor, including his points that that DPW has “achieved compliance across a range of the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act regulatory requirements” and “met or exceed regulatory mandates” from the EPA and State of Maryland.

Chow has recently sparred with water-rights advocates and council members over legislation that would calculate an income-based water and sewer bill credit for Baltimore’s lowest-earning households. Young introduced the legislation last December, months before he was elevated to the position of mayor after Catherine Pugh resigned.

Chow has opposed the bill, which was written with help from water-rights advocates hoping to offer more aid to Baltimoreans whose water bills have risen by 10 percent or more annually since 2016 (and will continue to do so until at least June of 2022). The legislation would also institutionalize an appeals process for customers to dispute errant water bills, a relatively common occurrence.

The income-based aid would reduce revenues for the city that are helping to pay for billions in sewer infrastructure upgrades requiring under a federal consent decree, Chow has argued. He sought to keep the appeals process in-house within DPW, instead of the independent appeals system outlined in the legislation. Chow’s office ended a process of holding hearings for water bill disputes in 2017.

As an alternative to the bill, he instead introduced a heightened aid program (compared to previously offered aid) this past July called Baltimore H20 Assists.

And, after delaying amendments for months after hearings began on the legislation, Chow submitted them to council members for their review on Sept. 26, the same day they were scheduled to take a vote. The changes would have codified DPW’s newer aid programs while eliminating the more sweeping proposed income-based assistance program.

One of Chow’s biggest task has been overseeing a department entrusted with replacing hundreds of miles of century-old sewer mains beneath city streets. “It’s like a time bomb,” he told NPR’s Marketplace in 2015. “This old infrastructure, we know it’s going to fail. The question is where and when.”

His department has successfully repaired major water main breaks and resulting sinkholes in recent years, including in Mount Vernon and downtown, albeit at times after delays. This past summer, Council President Brandon Scott called a hearing to bring attention to what he said was an “unacceptable” response to a main break that left Poe Homes residents without adequate water service for more than a week.

Former Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s administration hired Chow in 2011 to head DPW’s Bureau of Water, and he was elevated to the role of director in early 2014. Before coming to Baltimore, he served as chief of customer care for the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission.

Other projects completed under his watch have included the introduction of smart meters and monthly billing for city water customers, which were rolled out in 2016; the delivery of more than 172,000 wheel-equipped, rat-proof trash cans for households; real-time tracking of sewer overflows, which can be viewed on this map, and more.

The American Public Works Association this year recognized Chow as a Top 10 Public Works Leader of 2019, citing his move to apply for $200 million in assistance under EPA’s Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act to continue improving the city’s stormwater infrastructure.

Chow also made the top-12 among the highest-paid municipal employees in the most recent fiscal year, taking home $188,000 in salary, per city records.

Chow’s departure means he’ll be replaced as a member of Baltimore’s Board of Estimates, a powerful five-member panel that approves spending decisions every week.

Young’s announcement said the mayor plans to conduct a national search for a replacement.

With yet another push underway to bring Persistent Surveillance Systems’ plane back to Baltimore skies, the city’s police commissioner said today he remains skeptical of the technology originally piloted in 2016, unbeknownst to the people it was surveilling.

Police Commissioner Michael Harrison told reporters this morning at City Hall that because the spy plane lacks evidence that it can help reduce crime in cities, he’s not endorsing it.

“I was hired because I was an evidence-based police chief, and so I’m in favor of evidence-based solutions,” said Harrison, sworn in to lead the troubled Baltimore Police Department in March. “That has never been tried in an American city. It is an experiment.”

He stopped short of opposing the option outright, but in response to a question from The Sun’s Kevin Rector, he did say he’s “opposed to the way this came out and was presented to Baltimore.”

He said he isn’t stopping anyone from trying to test it on their own and sharing data with BPD: “I did not tell anybody that they could not fly their plane. They’re welcome to fly it. I just can’t endorse something that’s not evidence-based.”

Harrison’s remarks come as the Greater Baltimore Committee, a group of influential business, religious, nonprofit and community leaders, is offering its support for Ohio-based Persistent Surveillance Systems to fly planes over the city to capture photos of subjects and feed them to police.

The company has already worked here before in 2016, when BPD collaborated with McNutt’s company in secret. The Cessna plane logged some 300 hours of surveillance time, monitoring about 30 square miles of the city for extended periods. Bloomberg broke the story exposing the program, which prompted outrage from city residents and leaders.

Ross McNutt, founder and president of the firm, unsuccessfully pushed a grassroots campaign to bring it back in 2018. Council members were critical of his approach at a public hearing on the idea last year, with Zeke Cohen (District 1) saying it was “disturbing” to find out about the technology from the news two years earlier, and Ryan Dorsey (District 3) characterized it as “an absurd level of Big Brother-ism.”

A year later, McNutt has said two Texas philanthropists, Laura and John Arnold, are offering to fund the reprisal for $2.2 million annually for three years. The pair paid for the first test run in 2016.

Noting the Arnolds’ recent offer to again finance the plane, the GBC put out a 656-word “position statement,” dated Oct. 15, that said in part, “Given the current level of violent crime, it seems reasonable that a new technology that is being offered as an added public safety investigative tool at no cost to the city should be tried for the benefit of all citizens.”

The group touts Baltimore as a candidate site for a “proof of concept” stage for McNutt’s venture, which the GBC also pointed out has not been used for law enforcement in American cities.

“Baltimore has a history of innovation and can proudly lay claim as a ‘City of Firsts’–a proving ground for new innovation and technologies that have positively impacted America and its citizens,” the GBC’s statement said. “The application of aerial surveillance to support law enforcement needs to be tested somewhere—why not Baltimore?”

The organization said it does not believe Baltimore should wait until the “Eye in the Sky” has been tested elsewhere, nor does it believe the technology poses a privacy risk for individuals.

Harrison said he met with the Greater Baltimore Committee last Friday, but that it was a private meeting and therefore he would not share details about it.

Rev. Alvin Hathaway Sr., senior pastor of Union Baptist Church and a GBC board member, this week released results of a survey that found three in four Baltimoreans support–as the survey worded it–“a program to conduct aerial surveillance over the city of Baltimore to reduce serious crimes like murder.” 

That question was followed by a more detailed description: “A small aircraft flies over the city and provides images that track vehicles and people to and from reported crime scenes. The information is then provided to the Baltimore Police Department to help them solve crimes. An outside independent oversight group would ensure that the system is not being abused, and the program would be entirely paid for by a private donor.”

The poll found 72 percent of respondents still supported the idea. Hathaway Sr. funded the survey with a $40,000 grant from the Abell Foundation.

Goucher College pollster Mileah Kromer and Baltimore Sun reporter Luke Broadwater (the paper first reported the results) were among those who flagged the biased wording in the questions.

The q wording asks respondents to react to 2 items: aerial surveillance & reducing crimes/murder.

The results tell us only that people are supp of the aerial surveillance in the specific context of it reducing crime/murder. That’s something, but not the full range of attitudes. https://t.co/TNHnCLOkPt

— Mileah Kromer (@MileahKromer) October 14, 2019

Yeah, the poll question includes the assumption that the surveillance plane would reduce murders (which is an assertion that’s not necessarily backed up by data). It would have been more informative if the question had been asked in a neutral way.

— Luke Broadwater☀️ (@lukebroadwater) October 14, 2019

Mayoral candidate and former Deputy Attorney General of Maryland Thiru Vignarajah held a press conference with faith leaders to push for aerial surveillance shortly after the poll results were released.

A coalition of organizations that includes the ACLU of Maryland, the Maryland Office the Public Defenders, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle and others penned a letter in response, saying they were “deeply disappointed to learn of [his] readiness to disregard the privacy rights of Baltimoreans under the guise of crime fighting.”

The groups called the proposal “sinister,” citing privacy concerns.

“Your proposal demonstrates a distrust for all Baltimoreans, whose every move would be subject to the watchful eye of the government. Under your proposal, the City of Baltimore could and would retain information about the lifestyles and livelihoods of everyday Baltimoreans—which Church, Synagogue, or Mosque someone attends; whether an immigrant sends money home at a particular Western Union, and how often; whether a child spends weeks and weekends at different homes; who attended which protests against the City. The possibilities are endless.”

Weeks after about 50 AC-less city schools ended classes early on multiple hot days, and months before chilly weather sets in, Council President Brandon Scott has asked the mayor to commit a projected $34 million surplus to address inadequate cooling and heating in schools.

Scott said council members learned of the money, still a projection at this point, at a quarterly briefing for the Council’s Budget and Appropriations Committee on Sept. 26.

In a letter this morning, he urged Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young to allocate the funds, whatever the total ends up being, to Baltimore City Public Schools’ plan to address lacking AC and poor heating in facilities. The estimated cost for installing vertical package units in schools is somewhere between $54.1 million and $67.7 million, he wrote, meaning the city could potentially cover more than half with its surplus.

“There will always be urgent, competing fiscal constraints governing our budget, but it is imperative the City contribute to these much-needed infrastructure upgrades,” Scott concluded his letter. “This is a small, but necessary step towards more robust investments in our youth.”

Under Baltimore’s charter, the mayor has the power to allocate funds while the council can cut, but not add to the city budget.

Young said at his weekly presser Wednesday morning that he hadn’t yet read Scott’s memo, but noted the council president had called him about it. Young said he respond that Scott, who is running for mayor next year, should approach the issue cautiously “because we have the Kirwan Commission and we have to look for money for that.”

The city faces a steep financial burden under recommendations made by the state’s Kirwan Commission on Tuesday. The state education reform panel, headed by former University of Maryland president William “Brit” Kirwan, has proposed a $4 billion funding plan to broadly overhaul public schools in Maryland.

Baltimore would receive hundreds of millions more in state funding under the plan, but would also have to contribute $330 million in local funds to city schools by 2030, nearly double what it gives to the school system now, and the largest increase among any jurisdiction in the state.

Young said today that he’s focused on finding ways to raise that money, and the city’s Finance Department is already exploring it. “We are going to find the money that we have to find to put up the city’s match that the state wants us to do,” the mayor said. “The state said we have to do it, we have to find it.”

But on the HVAC issues highlighted by Scott’s letter, Young said, “the school system should be addressing that on their own, really, within their own budget.”

In response to Scott’s proposed allocation, Baltimore City Public Schools said in a statement that it welcomes “any support that City leadership wants to offer to make sure that our students have access to the facilities and programming they deserve.

“As we know, outside entities have consistently documented that City Schools is underfunded annually by hundreds of millions of dollars,” a school system spokesperson said in an email. “While we’ve made progress with our plan to install air conditioning in all our schools, funding limitations slow the pace of progress on ensuring all students have access to air conditioned buildings.”

Gov. Larry Hogan has criticized the school system repeatedly–as recently as last month–over slow progress to updating AC systems.

“I am appalled that this continues to detract from the education of thousands of young Marylanders who deserve a safe, healthy, and comfortable learning environment,” he wrote in a Facebook post after a third early dismissal for dozens of city schools in September.

As a member of the state’s spending board, he’s also voted to withhold construction funding from Baltimore City and County schools in the past, demanding they first outfit facilities with air conditioning.

Lacking and inadequate AC has proven disruptive for city schools, though “heating is a bigger concern than air-conditioning,” the school system said in a January update on planned HVAC upgrades, “with students losing more days of instruction due to lack of adequate, reliable heating than to lack of cooling.”

The school district had originally aimed to have dozens of non-updated schools outfitted with vertical units, which provide both heating and cooling, by the 2022-23 school year.

But in January, it said that with installation and required electrical upgrades and other work costing $40,000-50,000 per classroom, “completion by 2022-23 is no longer possible given available funds.”

This story has been updated.

UPDATED Wednesday at 10:45 a.m.: Nearly two months after punting on buying $20 million worth of cyber insurance for the city, officials approved the decision Wednesday morning.

The protection is actually two separate insurance policies from Chubb Insurance and AXA XL Insurance, each for $10 million in coverage. The former will cost $500,103 per year, the latter $335,000, for a total of $835,103 annually, according to the city council president’s office.

What’s covered under the policies, according to the Board of Estimates agenda: cyber incident response, “including an investigative team,”; losses from interruptions to business; digital data recovery; and third-party coverage for “cyber privacy and network security, payment card loss, regulatory proceedings and electronic social and printed media liability.”

The board agenda says 17 insurance carriers submitted bids. Coverage from Chubb and AXA XL took effect as soon as the board approved.

The vote came just over five months after hackers struck Baltimore City computers and networks with Robbinhood ransomware, demanding bitcoin payments in exchange for restored control of municipal computers. The attack brought government functions to a standstill, with city employees unable to use their email accounts or computers for weeks, and suspended water billing for city residents for most of the summer.

Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young declined to pay the ransom–and even sponsored a U.S. Conference of Mayors resolution for other cities’ top executives to do the same–saying that “[p]aying ransoms only gives incentive for more people to engage in this type of illegal behavior.”

Recovery from the attack cost the city $18 million in all, $10 million from direct costs and $8 million in projected revenue losses.

Frank Johnson, the city’s top-paid official at the time, was roundly criticized for his response to the crisis, and is no longer with the Mayor’s Office of Information Technology as of this month after going on indefinite leave. It was the second attack during his tenure, following a March 2018 attack on the city’s 911 dispatch system.

The spending board, made up of Young, Council President Brandon Scott, Comptroller Joan Pratt, City Solicitor Andre Davis and Public Works Director Rudy Chow, deferred action instead of voting to adopt these same cyber insurance policies in late August, the Baltimore Brew reported. 

“We just want to make sure the other members of the board know the terms and all that good stuff,” Young’s spokesman Lester Davis said at the time. He added, “This is an important expenditure, and we want to go above and beyond to make sure they know all the particulars about the insurance.”

Stefanie Mavronis, a spokesperson for Scott, said on Tuesday that the deferral was due to the council president and Pratt having not been briefed on the terms of the policies at the time. Both are more familiar with the plan this time around, she said.

Mavronis had said the council president’s office expected a full vote on adopting cyber insurance Wednesday, rather than another deferral. “Everyone’s shared interest is in not delaying it further.”

This story has been updated.

After distributing more than $700,000 worth of school supplies over the last five years, the Baltimore Teacher Supply Swap is shutting down next month.

The nonprofit, which collects gently used or new school supplies for local teachers, announced its pending closure this morning, citing “funding issues.”

Founder and executive director Melissa Badeker, who co-founded the supply swap with fellow former teacher Kathleen Williams in 2014, is planning to leave the organization. At this point, the nonprofit’s board members “recognize that budgetary concerns make it difficult to find a replacement that can lead The Swap into its next chapter of serving the Baltimore community,” a release says.

“Melissa created an amazing community asset for Baltimore educators,” said board president Mary Biscoe-Hall in a statement. The organization has helped more than 2,000 teachers since it opened, she said.

Briscoe-Hall said the nonprofit has applied for grants, held fundraisers and adjusted its budget, and “had serious interest from one particular non-profit,” but ultimately was ultimately unable to make the numbers work.

Badeker and Williams’ project helped meet a notorious, widespread need for teachers, who often spend hundreds each year on supplies for their classrooms. Badeker herself spent more than $1,000 during her time teaching in Baltimore City Public Schools, she told Baltimore Fishbowl at the Baltimore Teacher Supply Swap’s old South Baltimore warehouse in 2017. (The organization later moved to 1794 Union Ave. in Woodberry.) 

“When you see posters, pictures, pencils, and supplies in a classroom, more than likely, a teacher paid for that,” she said.

The Baltimore Teacher Supply Swap has operated in part by salvaging goods, from binders and notebooks to stationery and pencils, that offices and teachers would have otherwise tossed. Using a decorated box truck, donated by Len the Plumber in 2017, the organization brought nearly $80,000 worth of supplies directly to Baltimore’s neediest schools.

The nonprofit has stayed afloat thanks to more than $130,000 in total grants over the last few years. Badeker received a $60,000 Open Society Institute fellowship to expand her project in 2016, and additional funds and other support have come from T. Rowe Price, the Abell Foundation, the Johns Hopkins Innovation Lab and others.

The organization was featured on Mike Rowe’s “Returning the Favor” initiative in 2017, which also brought a full redesign of the organization’s old space, $20,000 in new classroom supplies and a year’s worth of rent.

Its closure will become official Nov. 30. As of today, the swap is no longer accepting donations.

Member teachers are invited to continue stopping by to gather supplies on Thursday (3-6 p.m.) and Saturday (11 a.m.-2 p.m.) through the end of this month. If there’s still stuff left, the organization will open its doors to the general public on Saturday, Nov. 2, and a week later, on Nov. 9.

Columbia’s planned Merriweather District is starting to grow its restaurant roster, with the Howard Hughes Corporation today announcing plans to bring in D.C.-born pizza chain Matchbox, a new Thai restaurant and an Indian-inspired eatery from a Hanover restaurateur.

The latest Matchbox location will be located on Mango Tree Road in a 5,000-square-foot space with 150 seats. A release from the developer, which is pursuing a massive $5 billion, 30-year redevelopment project in the Howard County suburb, said the restaurant will have “multiple operable glass doors creating indoor/outdoor seating and a lively sidewalk scene.”

This will be Matchbox’s fourth Maryland outpost and 13th in all.

Dok Khao Thai Eatery, from the owners of Ashburn, Virginia’s Sense of Thai St., will open across from Columbia’s new Color Burst Park in a 3,400-square-spot with space for more than 100 guests, including outdoor seating.

The third announced new arrival, Clove and Cardamom, is the second restaurant from Satish Gunisetty, who opened Rangoli near Arundel Mills in 2012. It will fill a 2,680-square-foot space and have a menu that will “feature fresh and flavorful ​global fusion ​fare​, infused with subtle Indian spices” plus “light options for the health conscious, vegan dishes and traditional Indian favorites,” per a release.

Matchbox and Clove and Cardamom are both due to open next summer; we’ve inquired about the timing for Dok Khao’s arrival.

“Today’s announcement is another significant milestone as we continue to transform the Merriweather District into a dynamic regional destination,” said Greg Fitchitt, president of the Howard Hughes Corporation’s Columbia office, in a statement.

The company last month announced it’s bringing in a new outpost for Busboys & Poets. The popular restaurant, bookstore and cafe is to be located in a 10,700-square-foot, two-floor building at Mango Tree Road and Valencia Lane. The space is being designed by JP2 Architects, with plans to open by next year.

The district, still in progress, already has a music venue from Clyde’s Restaurant Group called The Soundry. The Howard Hughes Corporation plans to add a new hotel, residences and plenty more retail space around the newly renovated Merriweather Post Pavilion, all part of a broader project covering 391 acres.

The man at the center of an infamous Ponzi scheme that drew more than half a billion dollars was sentenced Thursday to 22 years in prison.

The sentence for Kevin Merrill, handed down by U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett, was 10 years short of what federal prosecutors were reportedly seeking, but significantly harsher than most prison sentences for white-collar crimes. He was also ordered to pay nearly $190 million in restitution.

“As a result of this scheme, a number of victims were devastated, losing their life savings,” U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Robert K. Hur said in a statement. “This sentence sends a strong message that federal prosecutors, federal agents, and our SEC partners will continue to work together to investigate and prosecute those who perpetrate these kind[s] of fraud schemes for their personal gain—leaving a wave of victims in their wake.”

Merrill, 54, worked with counterparts in Nevada and Texas to defraud hundreds of investors of hundreds of millions between 2013 and 2018 that they then spent on themselves.

They tricked investors into paying them for what their victims thought was an investment in consumer debt portfolios, shrouding the operation in a web of more than 30 shell companies. In reality, Merrill and company were just paying back other “investors” with the new money they were receiving, and skimming millions off the top to buy cars, homes, boats, jewelry, luxury apparel and more.

The feds seized Merrill’s six homes last year, including one on Circle Road in Ruxton. He also had a Bugatti Beyron, a pair of Rolls Royces, a collection of Swiss watches, a yacht and more.

His wife, 30-year-old Amanda Merrill, pleaded guilty yesterday to a federal charge of conspiracy to remove property to prevent seizure, obstruct justice and disobey court orders. She admitted she helped hide cash for her husband by visiting one of his houses in Naples, Florida, and retrieving money from a safe and bringing it back to Towson.

Her sentencing is set for Jan. 22, 2020. Prosecutors plan to recommend a year of home monitoring with work release, plus restitution.

Cameron Jezierski, who was entrusted with luring more victims into the Ponzi scheme, and Jay Ledford, Kevin Merrill’s business partner, have already pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering.

Both are facing decades in prison. Jezierski is due for sentencing next month, while Ledford’s hearing is set for Oct. 29.