State of the City Address

January 31, 2005

Thank you.

I would like to thank you, Council President Sheila Dixon – not just for inviting me today, but for allowing me to be your colleague and partner in progress. You have been a tireless advocate for our children – in our after school programs, in our schools and in our neighborhoods.

Every year, I come before you and reflect how far we have come, and discuss where we can go next if we are willing to come together to do the people’s business.

In the brief time afforded to us, today, let us honestly assess our progress, our setbacks and the challenges that remain, so that we might recommit ourselves to the unfinished work of making our city a better place for the next generation.

To our newest Council Members: You are joining, or rejoining, a group of hardworking men and women at a time of great challenge and of great opportunity for our city.

To all the Members of the City Council, thank you for always putting the interests of Baltimore’s citizens first. No public servant can promise perfection. But each of us shares an obligation to continue the progress we’ve certainly made.

From time to time we’ve disagreed. But we’ve never lost sight of the need for compromise, to advance our city. We’ve never let hard feelings get in the way of hard work.

This is the last speech I will have the pleasure of giving, knowing that our brilliant Finance Director Peggy Watson is watching the books. She understood that it wasn’t good enough for Baltimore to manage decline – we needed a growth strategy. And she’s found a way to make that possible while increasing our rainy day fund and improving our bond rating. Peggy, thank you so much.

Finally, I would like to thank my wife Katie and my children Grace, Tara, William and Jack. They make my service in this job possible, at great personal sacrifice to themselves. They make it all worthwhile.

Justice Agenda
Since the day we took office, we have been focused on restoring justice to neighborhoods where it has been absent for far too long. Our goals remain the same. Make Baltimore:

A safer, cleaner, healthier city; A city that is a better place for children to grow up.

This modern day Battle of Baltimore will not only determine our city’s future, it will help determine America’s future. For many years, Baltimore had come to symbolize the stubbornness of America’s urban ills. Now, Baltimore represents what Americans can achieve, in the words of Dr. King: “through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of men [and women] willing to be co-workers with God.”

In Baltimore – in America – we believe that security and opportunity are the products of responsibility – responsibility for ourselves – responsibility for our families – responsibility for our neighbors. We believe we must risk action on the faith that one person can make a difference, and each of us must try. In our city, there is not such thing as a spare American.

As a result, the state of our city is stronger than it was five years ago. By almost every measure it is stronger than it was last year. But it is not as strong as the future of our children demands that it be.

Change & Reform
Five years ago, we were the most violent city in America. Now, we have led America’s big cities in reducing violence, through a three-pronged approach: more and better drug treatment, youth intervention, and more effective policing. Overall violent crime is down 40% – to its lowest level since the 1960s.

From 1994 to 1999, we were the most addicted city in America. Now, we’ve achieved America’s 2nd largest reduction in drug-related emergency room visits. We’ve more than doubled the number of people able to receive drug treatment from 11,000 to 25,000, helping our neighbors heal themselves – in what health professionals call the best drug treatment system in the nation.

As a result of these efforts, 24,000 fewer of our neighbors have become victims of violence than if we continued on our 1999 path. That number of people would fill Baltimore Arena twice over. And as stubborn as our homicide rate has been, we have saved more than 250 lives compared to our city’s average murder rate during the 1990s. They would fill 5 MTA buses.

Five years ago, Baltimore’s health problems were the butt of jokes on the Tonight Show. Now, we’ve dramatically reduced teen pregnancy, STDs, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS deaths and lead paint poisoning.

Our accomplishment on lead paint was so impressive that the Governor decided to claim it as his own, this year.

Five years ago, our schools were mired in mediocrity, with no hope for improvement. Now, our first and second graders are scoring above the national average in reading and math for the first time in 30 years. All grades are improving faster than the state average on the Maryland School Assessments. And Baltimore ranks ahead of cities like New York, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia on state assessment tests.

Five years ago, “homeland security.” would have been a plan for citizens’ patrols near Loyola College. Now – even with little help from the federal government – Baltimore is on the leading edge of hardening the homeland security of our city against the real threat of terrorism:

Creating a regional intelligence network and a bio-surveillance system; Completing a vulnerability assessment; Implementing and drilling to improve our preparedness plan; and Unlike the vast majority of metropolitan areas in our nation, making our communications systems interoperable – just last month.

By never giving up, we have traveled a long way from the late ‘90s. The most violent city. The most addicted city. The greatest population and job loss of any city.

Facing those odds, it would have been easy to give up.

But each year, we’ve moved forward. And now, Baltimore stands as an example of how much a free and diverse people can accomplish if they take responsibility for improving their circumstances.

We have come farther, faster than many thought possible. And by pursuing justice – by facing up to our weaknesses and by building from strengths – by caring for our neighbors – by making government more open and transparent – and by rewarding responsibility with opportunity – we are seeing Baltimore grow.

Baltimore is Growing
From the first days of this administration, we have made it a priority to ensure equal opportunity in doing business with the city. And we’ve just about doubled minority participation in city contracts. We are just as committed that, as Baltimore finally begins to rise, all communities will be lifted.

Community leaders like Betty Bland-Thomas, who never gave up on our city, are seeing their neighborhoods improve. Her years of hard work in Sharp-Leadenhall are paying off. And just last week, we passed a master plan, guaranteeing that the neighbors who helped turn Sharp-Leadenhall around will not be priced out of their neighborhood.

We are restoring market value to neighborhoods with Project 5000, taking ownership of our city. We’ve taken title to more than 5,000 properties to get them back on the tax rolls. Nearly 1,300 formerly vacant properties are now back in hands of developers and homeowners. No other city is doing this as aggressively as Baltimore.

We have more than $6 billion in new development. We all see the cranes in the sky. We all see Brownfields becoming construction sites. Talk about “open for business:” Three years ago, we issued $23 million in commercial building permits. Last year, we issued $488 million.

The number of people living downtown will double from 5,000 currently to 10,000 by the end of the year. But what’s even more impressive – and lasting – are the signs of rebirth in neighborhoods like Patterson Park, Poppleton, Reservoir Hill and Sharp-Leadenhall.

Home sale values have doubled since 1999.

The rising tide of investment is also putting our people back to work. We have almost 8,000 more jobs in our city today than we did at the same time last year – with our job growth outpacing the suburban counties, and outpacing national job growth.

The monolithic high-rises of poverty that once ringed our economic core are gone. This opens the possibility of investments by our large institutions – like Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland -laying the groundwork for our future, with 2 biotech parks forming the wishbone offense on the eastside and westside.

Baltimore-based financial services companies – like Legg Mason, T. Rowe Price, First Mariner and the Mercantile – are strong and growing. New companies like Morgan Stanley and M&T Bank are contributing to our local economy.

Creative entrepreneurs like Denise Washington – who is the owner of the Thirtea-First Tea Room and President of our Waverly Main Streets Initiative – are creating jobs in neighborhoods throughout the city. Just think about how much Waverly has changed in five years.

With all this progress, the biggest, most undeniable sign of Baltimore’s comeback is that 50 years of population loss appears to be coming to an end, according to the Census Bureau. We’ve gone from losing about 1,000 people per month during the late ‘90s to a trickle of 33 per month.

It’s happening thanks to people like Sabine Pauyo, who are investing in Baltimore. She and her husband Erroll Tucker are new residents. But she’s already jumped into neighborhood life with both feet – starting what she calls Project 500, planting 500 trees in her neighborhood. Sabine, you’ve picked a great time to join us in Baltimore.

New jobs. New homes. New residents. Baltimore is poised to grow for the first time since Eisenhower was in the White House.

Now, we all have a responsibility to ensure that our growth is just and inclusive – with opportunity for all.

No City Is An Island
But even with our growth and progress, we continue to struggle against some of our old and stubborn ills. We continue to save about fifty lives a year by keeping homicides under three hundred; but 2004 saw a 2 percent increase, rather than a decrease, when compared to 2003.

Although we’ve greatly reduced juvenile shootings, our State, and its Department of Juvenile Services, still has one of the highest juvenile homicide rates in the country. And most of the children we bury are from families who live in Baltimore.

Just this month we experienced a tragic spike in homicides, which we are working to get under control. And, this month, we have seen the specter of witness intimidation again in our City.

These remain Baltimore’s problems. They remain Maryland’s problems. They remain America’s problems. For no city is an island. Just like every person, so too does every city rest on a web of mutuality.

In Baltimore, two of our most stubborn challenges – two of the areas of our civic life that we must continue to improve if we are to grow – must be addressed by shared responsibility: public safety and our public schools.

In our city, we share these important responsibilities with the State, with other elected office holders and with an independent judiciary.

And I stand with the Governor and State’s Attorney Pat Jessamy in calling for stiffer measures to help prevent witness intimidation. A new law will be helpful. And at the same time, violent offenders should not make bail as easily as they do now. And repeat violent offenders should be sent to jail for a very, very long time.

Let us be clear. We will not shift blame or shirk our responsibility. But we will ask for help, knowing that our State and federal government share that responsibility. We will ask for openness. We will ask for accountability.

In these five years, we have learned that open and transparent government is the quickest and surest way to bring about reform in the departments and agencies that the Mayor and City Council directly control – on behalf of the people of our city.

Five years ago, we didn’t even have an IT Department. Now, we’ve become the first government entity to ever win the Gartner award for customer relationship management – on the strength of our 311 and CitiTrack system designed and run by our IT office.

Five years ago, we didn’t even know how many cars we had. Now, we’ve won Harvard’s Innovation in Government award for CitiStat – our management system that helps get every dime’s worth from the taxpayers’ money, and improves government service. Cities across the country, and around the world, are copying Baltimore’s model.

So why is openness and accountability important? And what can we learn from our experience?

With our Housing Department, any citizen can call in a code violation about a property, and then track the progress of their complaint through the court system on our website.

However, our criminal justice system, which deals with much more serious cases, does not effectively share information – between agencies or with the public.

In Maryland, our Police Department doesn’t even have a direct datafeed from the Judicial Information System – which could help prevent witness intimidation, solve crimes and improve the quality of officers’ cases.

Yet in St. Louis, ordinary citizens have access. They can go online to search case information by neighborhood, judge, charge, prosecutor, defense attorney and, potentially, arresting officer.

Right now, you can go to www.baltimorecity.gov and find out if a crime has been committed on your block. Shouldn’t you also be able to find out if the criminal who committed that crime is in jail, made bail or is still on the street – and when he’ll face justice – There’s no reason it can’t happen. It’s just a matter of will.

And speaking of openness and sharing information, many of you are aware of the “War Room” effort to create an information clearinghouse, upfront, to target the worst offenders. This is a great effort led by our State’s Attorney.

One problem: The information sharing needed to make it work does not exist with some of our partner agencies.

For example, the Parole and Probation information needed to target repeat offenders is kept in notebooks and non-networked computers. So this high-tech War Room, relies on a system of paging parole and probation agents and hoping that A) they are available; and B) they are in possession of the right information about right offender.

So State’s Attorneys can’t find out, in many cases, whether the offender they’re trying to lock up is in compliance with their parole. Probation agents don’t necessarily know, Monday morning, that an offender was arrested Saturday night – because they’re not networked. And because only the Judge who puts an offender on probation can hear a violation case, it can take weeks to address a violation – which should be an easy way to get violent criminals off our streets.

The War Room should provide a one-stop, one-screen snapshot of everything the justice system, collectively, knows about an offender. It doesn’t. But that could easily be fixed if everyone was willing to be more transparent and more accountable.

We should bring that same level of transparency and accountability, not just to our courts and Parole and Probation, but also to Juvenile Services and Social Services. We are simply asking for our partners in fighting and preventing crime to provide the same transparency that we share with them – and with the public. It is the surest way to improve public institutions.

The horse is desperately thirsty, but only others have the power to lead it to water.

Our school system is another area where increased transparency and accountability is critical to continuing reform – and still in great need.

We’ve seen the ill effects of not sharing information with partners in government and the public. Last year’s deficit crisis was, first and foremost, a crisis caused by the absence of management systems.

Our Department of Public Works, our Department of Recreation and Parks, our Health Department, our Housing Department, our Fire Department, our Police Department and our Transportation Department all are quickly building better management systems with:

Accurate and timely intelligence, shared by all; Effective tactics and strategies; Rapid deployment of resources; and Relentless follow-up and assessment.

However, our Public School system had none of those things. Under Dr. Copeland’s leadership, there has been considerable improvement:

We’ve cut central administration staff in half. Baltimore’s schools ended last year with a balanced budget, and we’re on track to eliminate 60% of the deficit this school year and the remaining 40% next year. And the bond rating agency, Standard and Poor’s, noted our progress in school reform, stating: Baltimore’s Fiscal Situation Is Healthy Following Repayment of School Loan.

Yet, we still have a long way to go before effective management systems and transparency are institutionalized in our school system. Our schools must provide city government, State government and the public – especially parents – with a level of openness that inspires confidence.

Again, the horse is desperately thirsty, but only the School Board and CEO can lead it to water.

We will continue to work with the leadership of our school system to implement a more earnest SchoolStat effort, which still has the potential to greatly increase the pace of needed reform.

Taking Responsibility For Our Schools
Openness. Transparency. Accountability. Why is this so important? It’s not about having nice charts and graphs. It about more than balancing budgets – although that important.

It’s important because as we make our public institutions more open and transparent, we afford our citizens the opportunity to take more responsibility.

This year, student leaders are taking responsibility for our schools – as we form student governments in every high school. We are joined by a group of student leaders I’ve come to know and admire:

Sidney Snow and Arianne Stokes from Walbrook High School – and they are much more representative of the kids you’ll meet at Walbrook than what you saw on TV, month ago. Brandy Tabeling and Davera Palmer from Samuel Banks High School. And Devon Brown and Dietrich Williams from our new Academy for College and Career Exploration – opened by our great Office of Employment Development and Johns Hopkins University.

Too often, the news tells us about a small number of students intent on disrupting our schools. Well, these kids show us what is right – as do the vast majority of Baltimore’s children.

This year, the citizens of our city stepped up through the Believe in Schools Campaign to take responsibility for our schools:

We completed $5 million of work, improving 148 schools.

5,700 volunteers worked more than 40,000 hours. More than 120 corporations, small businesses and community groups have pitched in. We painted 2 million square feet of classrooms, hallways & bathrooms.

To put that $5 million dollar in perspective – it represents such a great effort that it surpasses the $4.7 million that the State, so far, has approved this year for our schools’ capital needs.

This year, our city government has increased our investment on school construction and improvement needs by 42%, from $12 million to $17 million this year – as the State’s contribution has declined from more than $40 million to $11 million, since 2002.

This year, we all have a responsibility to encourage our elected leaders in Annapolis to implement the recommendation of the Kopp Commission report on school construction: $250 million per year for eight years. This year, we’re only investing $100 million – down from $286 million. We need to deliver our kids from trailers and crumbling classrooms.

This year, neighborhood leaders like Constance Maddox and Ida Hopkins are working with their city government and their school system to open schools to their community. Just as we know strong schools help build better communities, strong neighbors make better schools – if only the schools open their doors to their neighbors.

And this year, our city government wants to take more responsibility by giving our school system more help.

Already, we are helping the school system get its water fountains up and working – so far we’ve completed 75 schools, and we intend to get them all fixed by the end of the year. The school system will soon put out a request for proposals to run its vehicle fleet, and we will be bidding – because we know we can save money that can be put to better use in classrooms.

Educators should educate. Educators should have responsibility for academics. But educators are not necessarily well trained to manage boilers and roofs and buses.

As elected officials, we all visit schools. And if your visits are like mine, you get two complaints from principals over and over:

1. They have maintenance problems that they can’t get resolved in a timely manner – roof leaks, boilers, holes in walls, dirty hallways and rooms. And 2., they have computers in their classrooms, but they don’t work, or they aren’t wired.

Now, we are offering to help the school system by taking responsibility for maintaining and improving facilities, and for managing information technology in the schools.

Our Bureau of General Services, led by Keith Scroggins, effectively manages more than 100 buildings. We do it in a much more cost-effective manner than was done five years ago – in large part because of the discipline brought by CitiStat.

Our Office of Information Technology, led by Elliott Schlanger, effectively manages thousands of computers, the 311 system, closed circuit cameras and many other initiatives.

We are confident we can do a good job for our kids. We’re confident we can save and reinvest money – and bring additional resources and expertise.

We hope the School Board and Administration will quickly accept our offer, so we can get to work.

The challenges we face as a big American city are certainly not unique to Baltimore. Ask the mayors and City Councils of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago what their greatest challenges are, and they will tell you public safety and public schools.

Clearly, these are Baltimore’s greatest challenges. It should be just as clear that these are Maryland’s greatest challenges – and America’s greatest challenges.

Making continued progress on these issues is both our responsibility and our opportunity…as a city…as a state…and as a nation.

This is the important work that our children’s future demands. And I am honored to be able to serve the people of our city, along with each of you, in this noble cause.

Thank you. And God bless Baltimore – The greatest city in America.

Printer Friendly