A better way to run a Community Benefits District

This is my final entry on "What if there was no Charles Village Community Benefits District (CVCBD)?  And, what is it anyway? by Pamela Wilson

Part V - "A better way to run a Community Benefits District – By, of and for the People".

When we moved into Charles Village 13 years ago, long-time residents began telling us about the Charles Village Community Benefits District and their confusion about what it is, what it does, and who runs it.  The answer to who runs it is certainly not the community of Greater Charles Village since a community individual who is not affiliated with a legislatively-named organization can only run for and only vote for one voting seat on the CVCBD Board which consists of 18 voting seats from named associations and quad representatives.

As I've said in my earlier blogs on this subject, I and others in the community spent a long time trying to unravel the threads of this governmental entity.  What has become apparent to many of us now is that Greater Homewood Community Corporation (GHCC) may well be the force behind the CVCBD and we wonder if its involvement has a lot to do with JHU.  Once, GHCC was a true community-run group and one of its first presidents, upon receipt of a check to GHCC from Johns Hopkins University (JHU) to support one of JHU's initiatives, returned it back to the JHU president because the initiative was not of benefit to the community.  Somewhere down the line something changed and we now hear GHCC called a "development corporation".  Since inception GHCC has grown to cover a huge area that GHCC claims encompasses 45 neighborhoods and almost 13% of Baltimore City's population.  This makes GHCC another layer of non-elected control over communities, beyond that of our elected City officials, special benefits districts, other committees and initiatives, and local community and business associations.  We wonder if GHCC any longer serves only community interests as it once did or if it now serves some larger power as it spreads throughout North Central Baltimore?  Contrary to how GHCC began in 1969, GHCC's Board of Directors now includes at least two members from Hopkins, Inc..  Does GHCC's heavy influence over the community organizations which agree to "partner" or connect to GHCC point to the day when GHCC will be the sole voice of the residential and commercial neighborhoods impacted by JHU's present and future plans?  And how does this relate to the CVCBD and its lack of democratically elected Board members?

Here are the facts regarding GHCC and JHU in our community:

            GHCC was behind the creation of the CVCBD.  GHCC was the vehicle used to advocate and promote a "benefits district" for Charles Village. 

            The first president of GHCC, referenced above, and an opponent of the establishment of a Charles Village benefits district, collected extensive documentation and filed a formal complaint with the IRS based on concerns about whether GHCC was engaging in "electioneering" in violation of its non-profit status.

            The City's legislation set up GHCC to be the first administrator of the CVCBD. 

            When the 2007 Baseline Service Agreement between the City and the CVCBD was being reviewed the CVCBD sent it to GHCC for approval.  We now wonder if to this day whether any and all important decisions of the CVCBD must be first approved by GHCC? Why would GHCC have to be involved when it isn't on the CVCBD's Board of Directors?  Or so it seems. 

            When the legislatively-named community associations fill seats on the CVCBD Board and are "partnered with" GHCC, GHCC wields great influence over those associations by way of a Memorandums of Understanding with GHCC that cement GHCC's entanglement with those associations and therefore with the CVCBD.

            GHCC's involvement with the

Waverly Main St.

program gives it influence over another seat on the CVCBD Board as

Waverly Main St.

recently was granted two voting seats on the CVCBD Board.

            The CVCBD is involved in "The Central Baltimore Partnership" (CBP) and the CVCBD Administrator, Mr. Hill, sits on that Board as Treasurer of its appointed Executive Committee.  The Executive Director of GHCC is the appointed Vice Chair of CBP.  JHU's Senior VP of Finance/Administration is a Steering Committee Member of the CBP.  CBP "Partners" are listed as GHCC, JHU, the CVCBDMA, and the Charles Village Community Benefits Social Service Providers (for which an internet search turns up on an old CVCBD newsletter and a Charles Villagers from several years ago which refer to a 2005 CVCBD program), among others.  CBP's "Task Forces" lists GHCC as Code Enforcement, CVCBD as Sanitation (along with Midtown's Benefits District), and JHU (as well as Jubilee Baltimore) for Housing.

            Mr. Hill also is the Executive Director of the Charles Village Community Foundation (CVCF).   Since we have found it difficult to get up-to-date information on the CVCF we cannot comment on the members of that Board which may or may not include GHCC-related individuals.  CVCF's attorney who defended them in a law suit several years ago told the court at the hearing that the CVCF could spend its money in Timbuktu if it so decided.  Does it then pay Mr. Hill for his time sitting on the CVCF Board?  Or do surtax payers pay for Mr. Hill's seats on the CVCF and CBP?

            With regard to JHU you may ask, if JHU merely fills a non-voting seat on the CVCBD Board, how can it exert any control?  JHU can control the CVCBD through its association with GHCC, which in turn, as I posed above, may be the power behind the CVCBD.  Additionally, even with a non-voting seat JHU can voice influence as can any member of the CVCBD's Board.   JHU was a member of the CVCBD's Housing and Economic Revitalization Committee and the Personnel Committee.  Don't forget that the latter Committee has an important power in choosing the CVCBD's Administrator.  We currently do not know what committees JHU sits on as the CVCBD website does not list members of its committees.  And while the seat JHU occupies is not specifically designated by law as JHU's but as a seat for "a non-profit", JHU has filled it most years during the life of the CVCBD.  Surely there are many, many non-profits in the Charles Village area which could fill this seat besides JHU.  Finally, JHU's annual contributions to the CVCBD would certainly lend it considerable influence over the CVCBD. 

            Within the past year JHU put together the "Homewood Community Partnerships Initiative (HCPI) ostensibly to hear from community representatives about what they see as the future of their neighborhoods and how JHU can help them achieve these goals.  The HCPI soon became the "JHU Homewood Community Partnerships Initiative" which formed a smaller "advisory committee" consisting of GHCC, the CVCBD (with its GHCC connection/oversight?), the GHCC-aligned "Village Parents", community associations that have signed on as partners with GHCC, and the area's large institutions, squeezing out other community spokespeople from input on important issues.

How then do the people in Charles Village ensure their control over the actions of a "community benefits district" which is given so much credibility and power by the City when the real community is not leading it?  From the facts listed above, it is my opinion that JHU, itself and through GHCC's involvement, has too much power over a "Community Benefits District" to which it neither pays the surtax nor faces the  consequences of losing its property for non-payment of said surtax.  So how do people rather than organizations/corporations determine the future of our neighborhood?  How do "We the people Occupy the CVCBD"?

The only way to make the CVCBD better serve the community is to break the strangle hold the present "powers that be" have over it and return that power to the people of our community.  The only way to truly accomplish this is through a direct and democratic election of Board members by property owners subject to the surtax and registered voters within the district.  This can easily be accomplished by way of revamping the City's legislation. 

We should not need to join, to become "members" of a particular association in order to have a chance to vote to fill a seat on the CVCBD's Board.  We are "citizen members" of our City and our community and we should have the same rights to run for a seat on the CVCBD Board as we do to run for any of the City's elected positions.* 

We need our own Arab Spring to free us from the tyranny of a politically-connected few who know all the tricks and slight of hand that enable politicians in many races in our country to ruin elections and run amok of the spirit of laws.  Democracy is our only hope, our only chance for "community" to be respected.  We need to have our public officials amend the enabling legislation that set up the CVCBD by eliminating the placement of voting seats in the hands of the specified 'community' and 'business' associations and to put in place a mechanism for elections for all voting seats on the CVCBD Board.  These elections must be fully and honestly monitored and open to all individuals who qualify to vote under the rules of the first referendum that established the CVCBD.  Only then can the Board be truly run by community people who do not necessarily report to "others" but to the people who elected them and who can replace them if their representation on the Board is not in the best interests of their constituents.  Right now those who hold the reigns of the CVCBD can eject any Board member without reason.  Let us all have a vote and whomever we elect will only be removed in another election year by a majority of the voting Charles Village public.

*At the recent Board of Estimates (BOE) hearing on the new CVCBD budget, the City Solicitor said that the CVCBD's Board need not be democratically elected because the Board of Estimates is not elected.  Unfortunately, he is not correct as the majority of the Board is elected by Baltimore citizens as the Mayor, the President of the City Council and the Comptroller, sitting on the BOE by way of their elected positions.