North Charles Village PUD

One of the neighborhood champions has worked diligently to resolve issues that relate to the North Charles Village PUD, while not apparently getting any real satisfaction.  Let me attempt to fairly inform some of you who may not know what a "PUD" is.  This is an abbreviation for a "Planned Unit Development" project and in our case was the subject of vocal concern for this neighborhood during the planning issues of the creation of Village Lofts and other properties along north Charles Village.  There were several meetings held by the Developer, the City and the community, that ended in essence if you provide proper sanitation, keep building heights to a certain level, don't start destruction of property if you don't have financing in place, the community would welcome this development.  The most basic concern was to not have empty lots and to have in place a policy for handling sanitation issues in an area that was going to be impacted greatly by multi-height buildings with stores in an area that was initially a residential area.  Agreements were made by a local civic association who was on the Design and Review panel that simply have not been followed.  Houses were destroyed and the neighborhood was left with an empty lot that thanks to this neighborhood champion at least gets mowed.  Issues involving over flowing dumpsters, garbage placed out too early in inadequate cans and not abiding upon the basic agreements which were entered into by this community so that construction could move forward have not been followed.  We now learn that the PUD has no teeth and there is nothing really further than can be done.  Reports have been filed to the City constantly to have dumpster companies comply with the agreed time of pick up, but they still manage to break these rules.  Charles Village, like the City of Baltimore has a serious rat problem, but feeding the rats is not the way to get rid of them.   We need to get this issue resolved by either introducing legislation to establish some "teeth" to stop the polluters, those who discard their trash improperly, those who come out at night and throw mattresses away because they are too lazy to go to Sisson Street and get rid of them.  We need to have absentee landlords and "all" residents held accountable for the proper disposal of trash or very soon the rats will be running for election and they will throw us out.  We need, and need it now, a corrective means of enforcing the PUD, or absent that the City must stop using PUDS as a vehicle to entice neighborhoods to accept development.