BALTIMORE — Today city leaders announced new efforts being enforced to keep the city clean.
Illegal dumping, graffiti and potholes, those are the areas where city leaders like Mayor Brandon Scott said services will be intensified over the next few months in an effort to build a better Baltimore.
“Graffiti, when done respectfully, is art in its purest form. However, unwanted graffiti markings and postings on city-owned buildings and private-owned properties is a problem,” Scott said.
Over the next 90 days city leaders have created an initiative they’re calling 'Building a Better Baltimore Blitz', which prioritizes things like removing graffiti, cleaning up trash from illegal dumping, and resurfacing potholes.
“Starting this work is a daunting task and to do it in 90 days presents challenges, but here in Baltimore we are no stranger to getting our hands dirty, “ Scott said.
City Administrator Faith Leach talked about the progress they’re hoping to complete during that time frame.
“Over the next 90 days we will repair 9000 potholes, remove 900 graffiti markings, surface 9 miles of roads, and we will ramp up enforcement's of illegal dumping,” Leach said.
City leaders said 3-1-1 data shows on average they issue over 1000 dumping citations along with filing criminal charges. With this new initiative it will better identify the people who are causing the problems.
“We want to intensify our use of data analysis to identify target areas and increase use, we're feasible of a variety of technologies like our motion-activated cameras and license plate reader technology,” Scott said.
This is to catch the people doing the illegal dumping, and Jason Hessler with the Baltimore City’s Housing Community Development said their department has a special investigations division to crack down on it.
“We monitor over 70 hot spots in the city where we know people are going to dump. When we catch these individuals who are caught dumping and we have evidence we criminally prosecute them. We go after them with criminal penalties we look to get them to clean up the mess that they made to reimburse the city for the cost ,” Hessler said.
Over the next 90 days while they’re intensifying their efforts doing this work city leaders will continue to analyze calls for service to find out what are the next three areas of city services they will intensify following this initiative.
