These posts are from another voice from Charles Village - by Pamela Wilson
What if there was no Charles Village Community Benefits District (CVCBD)? And, what is it anyway?
As was discovered in a University of Maryland
Certainly there is much misinformation out there not only for the people who live within the "District" but also people who are not in the District, including academia and the government. I recently discovered two papers on urban issues which used the CVCBD as their subjects, one entitled "The Sub-Districting of Cities", was written by two professors, one from the University of Maryland College Park and one from Indiana University and the other, entitled "Private Governments In Urban Areas Political Contracting and Collective Action", written by professors Susan E. Baer of San Diego State University and Richard C. Feiock of Florida State University. I found some of the information used in these papers was not entirely correct or was missing important aspects affecting the outcomes described. In both cases neither paper correctly states the Maryland State ' s percentage of required referendum support for passage of the CVCBD' s enabling legislation. Instead the papers give credit to much greater community support for establishing the CVCBD than the actual numbers from the referendum show. This affects the research and continues the spread of the misinformation about the CVCBD possibly resulting in governmental decisions not beneficial to communities.
Even among long-time residents and property owners in the area who voted in the sole referendum establishing the CVCBD few know much about it. So, I will try, as briefly as possible, to explain a few important facts so that people reading our blog can better determine for themselves what this CVCBD really is and how it affects their lives, more than they may suspect. The information provided here comes from more than a decade of work by community activists, including me and my husband, to research every source of information we could find. These sources include the enabling State and City laws (before and after amendments to the original bills), early promotional pamphlets, grass-roots efforts to defeat passage of the law, and recounting of meetings and experiences by residents present at that time. We obtained board meeting minutes and as many notes as possible from the inception of the CVCBD and onward. Besides our research, we participated in the CVCBD, we worked to make the CVCBD better and we even worked to eliminate it, through legal means via law suits as well as governmental means through our City representatives. In an effort to more closely understand on a personal level how the CVCBD worked and what it was doing, I and others of our group even became members of the CVCBD' s Board of Directors as well as participated in many of their committees. Here is some of what we discovered from all our work.
Because there is some complicated information to pass along I originally divided my blog into several smaller ones which were posted over several weeks and which covered the following questions:
I. What is the Charles Village Community Benefits (CVDBD) and where did the CVCBD come from?
II. How the CVCBD is run?
III. What does the CVCBD do?
IV. What would happen if it were to cease operations, if there was no CVCBD?
And an additional chapter –
V - "A better way to run a Community Benefits District – By, of and for the People".
Here is the first chapter on this subject -
Part I. What is the Charles Village
"Benefits Districts" or "Special Taxing Districts" have been in existence for many years, established for many reasons such as to temporarily fund, via a special tax on property owners, a particular project in a community, and once that has been accomplished the special taxing district "sunsets" or ends. These "BDs" have also been established in business areas to fund extra clean-up and safety programs beyond that provided by their municipality in order to address the increased litter and petty crimes to which business areas are often exposed. In commercial areas these are not only funded by the businesses that benefit from these programs but are also run by those same business owners.
When an effort was made in the early 1990' s to put in such a program in the Baltimore City neighborhood now called "Old Goucher" (previously "South Charles Village"), few businesses wanted to support it. A professional political campaign company was employed to assist in promoting support for the new law to establish a "community benefits district". Funding came from a City grant, from Greater Homewood Community Corporation, a 501(c)(3) foundation, via a grant from The United Way and, we are told, from a donation by the engineering firm of Whitman, Requardt. Community meetings were scheduled and focused on the community' s fears of escalating crime based on a murder which took place in the parking lot of a commercial building in the area (2). The campaign was to convince the community to support the establishment of a "Community Benefits District" in an extended area of Charles Village, to be funded by property owners both residential and commercial. This somewhat new type of Benefits District incorporates both business and residential properties. This concept involved taxation so in order to accomplish this end a State law needed to be passed to create the "District". The law would give Baltimore City
However, for the State law to be adopted, with its requirement of an additional taxation, it had to be put to a referendum by the affected property owners. The State' s Attorney General also determined that renters in the area could be affected by the additional taxation since landlords could pass along the tax by rent increases. Because of that both "affected property owners" and "registered voters within the area" had voting rights in the referendum.
In addition to those eligible to vote in the referendum, the law set the requirements for passage of the law "only if approved by 58% of the aggregate votes cast in a special election by the affected voters"(3).
The State' s law enshrined in the City Charter enabled the City to establish the CVCBD and its own legislation in the City Code expanded on details as to how this District was to be run. However, the City' s enabling legislation was mandated not to conflict in any way with the original State legislation. As officially described in the City Code, the CVCBD was established as "a governmental entity". It is supported by an additional real estate tax ("surtax") on properties within the general but irregular boundaries of 20th to 33rd Sts. , Howard St. Greenmount Ave.
Non-payment of this surtax results in the property being placed on the City' s tax sale list. The CVCBD is run by an almost entirely unelected Board of Directors which is designated the Management Authority or "MA" in the acronym "CVCBDMA" which appears in the State and City laws that enacted it in 1994.
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(1)"Evaluation Report: Charles Village Community Benefits District", Dr. Cheryl Hyde, University ofMaryland, School of Social Work
(2)Note that there have been a number of murders in the area since the establishment of the CVCBD
(3) Note that sometime during the legislative process [we hope this was not done retroactively] an amendment to the bill reduced the percentage of supporting referendum votes needed to pass the legislation. Perhaps community support was not being seen as sufficient to pass the legislation so reducing the numbers required made passage of the legislation easier. This is very important to note since the misinformation spread about the community support for the CVCBD ignores the fact that the passage of the law was based on the total votes cast, not the total percentage of support from the entire community. The concept that the CVCBD was approved by "an overwhelming majority of the community" is false. In truth, the State required passage "only if approved by 58% of the aggregate votes cast in a special election by the affected voters". It was neither 67% nor 58% of "the community" as often reported. At that time the community had a population of approximately 10,000; 7,000 ballots were mailed out, approximately 3,500 of which returned and approximately another 1,000 were discarded as ineligible or duplicate. The final tally of supporting votes was either 1,500 or 1,740, with 500 votes against the establishment of the CVCBD. The varying count of numbers comes from CVCBD data put out at different times and to different publications.
So, while 58% of those voting passed the legislation, this is not an "overwhelming majority" of the votes and certainly not an "overwhelming or super majority" of community support as has been claimed. It is more like support by only 17.4% of the community itself. Neither must it be forgotten that many who voted to support it did so on the promise of being able to close it down in a referendum to follow. Of course, there never was any second referendum legislated.
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Part II. How the CVCBD is run?"
Confusion about the CVCBD was rampant when my husband and I moved into Charles Village
To recap from the first chapter of my blog post, since the power to tax its citizens lies within the powers of the State of Maryland Baltimore
The State law, enshrined in the City Charter, Chapter 63 "Community Benefit District (CBD) Authorities"(1), not only gave the City the power to create CBDs but also instructed the City to provide legislation further detailing the composition and operation of the Management Authority to run the Charles Village Community Benefits District, the CVCBDMA. It also required that the City' s legislation was to be passed based the results of a referendum of the "affected owners" [property owners subject to the tax] and "registered voters within the area". You can read the full text relating to the CVCBD' s enabling State and City legislation on the City' s website www.baltimorecitygov . The City' s Charter will be found on https://www.baltimorecity.gov/Portals/0/Charter%20and%20Codes/ChrtrPLL/01%20-%20Charter.pdf . - on the left side go to Article II "General Powers" and then scroll down to pages Sec. 63, pages 71-75 "Community Benefits Districts. The City' s Code will be found onhttps://www.baltimorecity.gov/Government/CityCharterCodes.aspx - go down to "Master Table of Contents", on left side of screen press "Code" then press Article 14 Special Taxing Districts, and on the left side of the screen press "Charles Village" which will bring you to Subtitle 6 on pages 23 - 38.
Both the State' s and the City' s laws outlined the boundaries for the Charles Village Community Benefits District. The reason for the oddly shaped area was to address the concerns that areas to be served would cater to a more affluent district as might be expected in a Special Taxing District but these boundaries would instead encompass a diverse socio-economic mix of businesses and residents (2).
As required, the City then proposed its own bill following the State' s outlines for the establishment of the CVCVD and MA. The City deemed it to be "a special taxing district, and therefore a governmental body, both politic and corporate, exercising only such powers as are provided for in this subtitle". Therefore, it is neither an "association" nor a "quasi-governmental entity" as it has often been portrayed. The bill fleshed out those areas needing further direction such as the actual running of the CVCBDMA, its powers and its limitations. The City directed this MA to be a Board of Directors with a minimum (14) and maximum (27) members of the Board. The City then specified from where these members should come:
1 voting member to be appointed by the Mayor;
2 members of the City Council;
8 from constituent organizations within the District, 2 each from four named community associations (Abell Improvement Assn; Charles Village Civic Assn.(3); Old Goucher Community Assn.; Harwood Community Assn.);
2 each from three business associations (Waverly Main Street
The Board was also allowed to have 4 "at-large" voting seats [Quad Reps].
An additional 6 non-voting seats are allowed, 4 from neighborhood associations bordering the District and 2 from non-profits. The law states, "A voting member of the Board must be eligible to vote in the election under Sec. 6-15 of this subtitle" and the eligibility criteria in Sec. 6-15 are: "(1) owners of property within the District which is subject to the tax and (2) voters registered to vote within the District."(4)
The bill gave the Board the power to create its own bylaws, subject to the approval of the Board of Estimates and with the proviso that these and any future amendments to the bylaws not conflict with the State' s and City' s enabling legislation. It allowed the Board to hire an "Administrator" to handle specific jobs, among which were, preparation of the annual Financial [Budget] Plan, responsibility for the day-to-day operations of the Board and its employees and contractors, hiring of employees and contractors, but retaining for the Board the final "discretion and power with regard to all substantive agreements, contractors and other arrangements binding on the Authority".
The City specified the requirements of how the Supplemental Tax would be determined, and that the Management Authority would have to enter into the annual Baseline services agreement with the City before imposing and collecting the Surtax. This was to ensure that the surtax payers would not have their City services reduced by duplicate services being provided by the Charles Village Community Benefits District. This agreement was to commit the City to the maintenance of the existing levels of service so that the same services provided by the City to all other areas in Baltimore ' supplemental' services. Without the Baseline agreement listing those promised City services, the CVCBD cannot know whether the services it provides are duplicating or assuming City services and thereby putting a double taxation on a CBD area for the same services paid for by property owners via their regular real estate taxes.(5)
Regarding "Collection and disbursement" of surtax monies, Sec. 6-15 of the City' s Code covers the penalties and interest applied to non-payment of the property surtax supporting the CVCBD and imposes a lien on property for any outstanding assessment and accrued interest and other charges. Therefore non-payment of the surtax results in the listing of that property on the City' s tax sale list.
The Board meets monthly (with the exception of a possible summer month) and the meetings are open to the public. (Note it was only through prolonged prodding by community activists that the CVCBD finally agreed to allow public comment at the Board meetings but the public comment time was placed at the end of the meetings rather than during or just following pertinent discussions.) The Board has quorum responsibilities regarding votes taken, must adhere to the State' s Open Meetings Act (again this required prodding by community activists), is required by City law to hold a general Fall meeting where Quad Representatives are elected and a Spring Budget Hearing, must follow Robert' s Rules during meetings, and in January each year elects from its members of the Board those to serve on the executive committee.
This is only a part of the City' s enabling legislation and again I strongly suggest that anyone interested in how the CVCBD works look at the Baltimore City Code, Article 14, Chapter 6-1 through 6-17 (links provided near the beginning of this blog post).
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Regarding this second question of Part II of this blog, my husband and I often heard, "When do we get to vote again on the CVCBD?" The answer is simply never again unless the legislation is amended to be more democratic. The only community vote or referendum on the CVCBD took place in 1994 and it allowed the passage of the City' s enabling legislation. There is nothing in either the State or the City legislation which provides for any other type of community vote to continue or end this Special Taxing District known as the CVCBD.(6)
At the beginning, only the State had the power to address the "sun-setting" provision of this 3-year "pilot program" and to consider the same in additional 3-year increments. In 2000 supporters of the CVCBD requested the State cede its control over the sun-set clause to the City and to expand the life term of the program in 4-year increments. This is why the CVCBD' s "reauthorization" is now determined by the City Council and approved by the Mayor every 4 years. (Enacted 1994, the State' s 3-year period for renewal was in 1997 and then, in 2000, the City took over for a 4-year period. When the City attempted to reauthorize the CVCBD in 2001 community activists found that an error occurred in the City' s lack of proper preparation as required by law to begin the process of reauthorization. So the City and supporters of the CVCBD went to Annapolis
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(1)Since the legislation was passed by the one and only community vote on it there have been 5 amendments to Chapter 63 of the Charter, changing it, first in 1995, then in 1996, 1997, 2000 and 2007.
(2)While this was accomplished through the inclusion of less affluent areas covered in this CBD it also put an additional burden on the poorer property owners by way of its surtax. During reauthorization a few years ago complaints about lack of service by residential property owners at the very northeastern part of the area persuaded their City Council Representative to have the law amended and those properties were removed from the CVCBD. Petitions from other area property owners asking for removal were not granted the right to remove their properties from the CVCBD despite the fact that 12,000 petitions were hand-delivered at that time to the City Council.
(3) Actually, since the Charles Village Civic Association (CVCA) has both community residents and businesses as members it is difficult to know whether the CVCA will vote for the benefit of residents or of businesses when considering issues on the Board of Directors of the Charles Village Community Benefits District. So the CVCA may actually provide an additional seat for those given to business associations.
(4) It is important to note that the City law also states "At least a majority of the Board shall be composed of owners or representatives of property owners subject to the tax imposed by this subtitle" but "A voting member of the Board must be eligible to vote in the election…". This item (Section 6-6,(e), (7)) does not mean that all "representatives of property owners subject to the tax may fill voting seats but it specifically points to the requirements needed to fill a voting seat and a "representative of property owners subject to the tax" may or may not be eligible to fill a voting seat depending on whether they own property in the District or are registered voter within the District. There is no getting away from the strict stipulation of the law that states ""The following persons are eligible to vote subject to the limitations that no person may have more than one vote: (1) owners of property within the District which is subject to tax under Sec. 6-8; and (2) voters registered to vote within the District". So, therefore, if a corporation owns a business the corporation itself (not being a human being despite what our Supreme Court thinks) cannot sit on a Board seat. The corporation would then have a President or CEO fill that seat as a representative of the property owner (the Corporation) only if that President or CEO is either him/herself a property owner subject to the surtax or a registered voter in the area. A restaurateur who personally owns the property housing his/her restaurant may be allowed under this provision to fill his seat by way of a son/daughter, tenant, worker but only if that representative is either a property owner subject to the tax or a registered voter in the district. There is no legal way around the two requirements for filling voting seats. Unfortunately, the CVCBD attempted to get around this legal requirement for filling voting seats by way of an amendment to the bylaws allowing granting voting seats to “representatives of businesses” without the specific requirements of the law. See Part IV, B below.
(5) Please note that at the last Annual Budget Hearing (March 2012) Christian Wilson asked the CVCBDMA if they had such a Baseline agreement with the City and the answer was that they tried to get one but haven' t been able to for years. Christian asked the Board to then stop the hearing and, until such agreement had been accomplished, to not plan the expenditures of surtax monies because the CVBD would not know if they were duplicating services. Members of the community later found out that in 2007 the Administrator had a copy of such agreement in working form but apparently the CVCBDMA did not follow through on having it finalized.
A final word here on this subject: the corner trash cans previously provided by the City and emptied by the City were replaced by $600. Charles Village Community Benefits District cans and are now emptied by the CVCBD. This alone means that the City is no longer providing us with the same services neighborhood who don' t have a CBD get. What could have been done was to leave the City service in tact and if the City' s schedule of empting the cans isn' t sufficient a ' supplemental' service would be to give an additional round of emptying the cans, not to take over the entire service we are paying for in our City taxes.
(6) Except, note however the wording regarding first the original referendum and then its "renewal", page 36 of the City Code, Sec. 6-15, "Election approval process (a) List of eligible voters. The Board of Estimates, with the assistance of the interim Board, the Department of Finance, and the Supervisor of the Board of Elections, shall be responsible for compiling a list of those persons eligible to vote on the establishment of the District and on any question relating to it renewal" (bold added for emphasis on the wording).
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Part III. What does the CVCBD do?
Here' s what it' s supposed to do:
The legal description of the Purpose for establishing the CVCBD:
The State' s enabling legislation, City Charter, Art. II, Sec. 63 "Community Benefits District Authorities" gave the City the power "(2) To establish community benefits district management authorities to promote and market districts, provide supplemental security and maintenance services, provide amenities in public areas, provide park and recreational programs and functions, and after an authority is established, other services and functions as requested by the authority and approved through an ordinance by the Mayor and City Council." This is what the City' s enabling legislation, City Code, Art.14, Sec. 6-3 also designates as its (b) Purpose."
We' ll consider each Purpose:
1) To promote and market districts.
For years community activists have fought against what the CVCBD' s Board has decided the words "promote" and "market" mean. To the activists it meant that the CVCBD would use advertising materials and distribute them to the local real estate agencies and that the CVCBD would ensure that Charles Village and the extended neighborhoods the CVCBD covered would be prominently displayed on City maps, websites and in any information available for the promotion of this vibrant neighborhood to prospective homebuyers even as far a D.C. and Pennsylvania. How distressing it was to us to visit York , PA and Lancaster , PA and find brochures from Hampden but not from Charles Village , to find City maps at Inner Harbor kiosks and many City websites prominently displaying other neighborhoods but all missing any notation of a "Charles Village
What the CVCBD determined "promote and market" meant was something else. Several years ago two CVCBD Board members invited several community activists to meet and try to work out their differences. One source of contention was the interpretation of "promote and market". After a few meetings of the small group a general community meeting was held but the results were anything but successful in addressing the grievances of the activists. They found out the CVCBD was adamant in its interpretation of "promote and market" as "economic development" something the activists felt was not made clear to the community when the legislation was originally put to a vote, if that was indeed what the supporters had in mind. The activists contended that if the law envisioned "promoting and marketing" as meaning "economic development" the law would have plainly stated "economic development" so people knew what they would be voting on. Of course, that might have raised questions at that time and may have resulted in much more opposition to the legislation, something which was carefully kept in check. In its interpretation of "economic development" the CVCBD uses City Ordinances to force property owners to accomplish such repairs and maintenance as building repairs, painting and landscaping upkeep. One problem with this is that property owners are forced to pay a surtax to the CVCBD for services, not for ' snitching' . Community associations, of which the CVCBD is not, may have committees to address these problems. But when a community association decides to report problem properties, consideration can be taken for any special circumstances affecting the ability of a property owner to care for their home. Because of the actions of a CVCBD committee member a few years ago an older widow was reported to the City for peeling paint on the side of her property. This widow had always taken the utmost care of her home and her surroundings as much as her very limited income would allow. She even cemented broken areas of the sidewalk around her house but the cost of painting the property was well beyond her means. She was so utterly distraught that Peabody Heights Resident Homeowners Alliance found out about the $500. per day citation she was to receive took up a collection and arranged to have the side of her house painted to help her.
Again, with the idea of "economic development" and in utter contempt for the wishes of the majority of the property owners in an affected area, the CVCBD put through an Urban Renewal Plan (URP) for the City to pass as an Urban Renewal Ordinance (URO). The CVCBD' s Administrator claimed time and again that a URO had to be "community supported" and time and time again the activists proved it was not. URO' s have been notorious as a tool cities use to move out African Americans from a neighborhood by calling the area "blighted" and taking over those properties by means of "Eminent Domain" to gentrify the area. The chosen area in the Charles Village Community District was far from "blighted" and in response to community complaints about the CVCBD overstepping its bounds by pushing the URP, the CVCBD' s President at that time called the URO "not your father' s Oldsmobile". The CVCBD portrayed it only a way to control what types of businesses could move into the area and how the historical designs of the neighborhood could be protected. Other members of the community never believed this since "Eminent Domain" was clearly written into the urban renewal ordinance in question. They noted that the CVCBD' s President' s home in a more depressed area abutting the URP was excluded from the URP boundaries. This was typical of the strange, meandering boundaries chosen by the CVCBD for the URP. In some cases it was drawn to exclude ½ of a block. It also included a local school and church and well-cared for historic blocks such as "Little Georgetown Row" and "Pastel Row", the very block in which Grace Darin, who coined the name "Charles Village Charles Village
Time and again the CVCBD' s President extolled the virtues of URO' s and the CVCBD took great pains to explain how by way of the URO' s enhanced zoning regulations they would set up a committee to address the type of businesses that would be allowed in the area or that would require a special zoning agreement. The committee would set standards of color, design and greenery allowed in any future façade changes to buildings in the URO. But the community activists recognized that the committee had no "teeth" to enforce these changes and all the committee had power to do was to ask for the involvement of the City' s Planning Dept. when such changes were contemplated. This is very similar to a PUD (Planned Urban Development) where the community allows developers to be given substantial considerations under City zoning laws in exchange for promised powers over the PUD area that turn out to be easily overcome and basically worthless.
The idea that the URO required "community support" from the District was easily dispelled when a staunch supporter of the CVCBD, owner of the Anderson Automotive' s property which spanned three whole blocks, had his property excluded from the URP boundaries because, as was explained to us by the CVCBD' s Administrator, he was a very wealthy and influential man and was being represented by attorneys to have his property removed from the URP.
In the end, the URO passed even though activists submitted a long list of petitions to the City from the URP' s property owners requesting the same exclusion as was granted to the owner of Anderson Automotive' s property. Even though a greater number of the affected property owners, those within the boundaries of the URO, signed up at the City Council' s public hearing to protest the URO and fewer property owners, including many who were excluded from the URO boundaries, signed in as supporting the URO, the City passed the Ordinance anyway. Shortly thereafter, the CVCBD committee dissolved and so none of the "not your father' s Oldsmobile" description used to promote the URO as keeping away certain businesses from the area and to give the community control over new property designs, signage and the like are ignored but eminent domain remains.
2) To provide supplemental security and maintenance services
Supplemental security -
When the promoters of the establishment of the Charles Village Community Benefits District pushed forth their political campaign for the community to pass the City' s legislation they promised the residents in their advertising handouts that they would provide security personnel 24/7. This promise dovetailed with the promoters' use of fear of escalating crime because of the murder of a young employee of the firm of Whitman, Requardt & Associates during a robbery occurring in the back parking lot of the building on the 2400 block of St. Paul St
At the beginning, the CVCBD did use an outside security firm, Wackenhut, to patrol the District' s streets. Then the CVCBD decided to replace this company with their own employees to patrol the streets by foot and by car. Since the levels of crime never changed within the District and murders continued to happen, members of the community on three separate occasions requested that the CVCBD revert to a professional, outside firm for their security services. Each time the community members provided a formal proposal from a local Charles Village ' s budget, the CVCBD Board roundly refused to even consider the proposal.
Finally, the CVCBD' s Administrator proposed to the CVCBD' s Board that they eliminate even their own security services because these proved ineffective in halting crime. There was no measurable success in this area. Again, they reinterpreted the "supplemental security services" purpose in the law as merely employing an in-house person to basically do what formerly had been accomplished through the various community associations such as arranging for Northern District Police security reviews for residents as requested, posting security suggestions on their website or in their occasional publication and much the same as this, with none of the promised 24/7 patrols.
After yet another area murder, Steve Gewirtz, one of the activists who formerly served as a Board member, decided to become a court watch person to represent the concerns of the community at trials involving crimes committed in the area. This valuable service to help keep repeat and dangerous offenders off the streets was immediately co-opted as a committee of the CVCBD despite the fact that Mr. Gewirtz has publicly and repeatedly contended that he attends these trials as an individual and not as a CVCBD committee person.
Maintenance services –
Year after year community activists have complained to the CVCBDMA, testified at City hearings and corresponded with their City representatives about the deplorable conditions involving the abundance of trash and garbage in the streets of the District. Yet, the CVCBD would respond with outrageous and clearly unsupported claims of vast amounts of tonnage picked up by their "clean team". When the President of the City Council required the CVCBD to have a performance audit to show proof of their claimed successes, the CVCBD decided that an internal audit would suffice. So, much time was spent by the CVCBD in putting together reports of their own hard work while the streets of Charles Village ' s ankles.
Then, with a new Administrator, they got a bit smarter. Emptying City corner trash baskets gave the CVCBD provable tonnage of waste removal. Never mind that the City already provided this service with unionized City employees emptying the corner baskets. The CVCBD decided to replace the free City trash baskets with $600. CVCBD trash baskets that their own workers could empty and claim as "maintenance services". This is not a "supplemental" service since the City provides this service to all Baltimore
And, year after year the CVCBD boasts that it performs such maintenance services as caring for tree wells, keeping sewer outlets clean of debris, removing grass growing in-between cracks in the sidewalks and year after year they perform little if any of these services, at least not in most areas of Charles Village where tree wells abound in weeds growing almost as high as the trees and grass in the sidewalks and gutters keep pace with the tree well weeds.
3) To provide amenities in public areas, provide park and recreational programs and functions.
Community people and others in the City often mistake programs provided by other groups as services to be provided by the CVCBD and activists cannot identify any "amenities in public areas, provide park and recreational programs and functions" run by the Charles Village Community Benefits District itself. There are few ways that good work performed by ordinary citizens or grassroots organizations to be publicly known and these are easily co-opted by those with the funds from surtaxes and donations to claim. So here again are other "Purposes" for the establishment of the CVCBD that are not provided to the community that is obligated to fund the CVCBD for those very purposes.
4) Other services and functions as requested by the authority and approved through an ordinance by the Mayor and City Council.
Unfortunately, the power given to the CVCBDMA through this last description of the purpose for establishing the CBD' s is at the expense of the rights and powers of the affected communities. What the one and only referendum on the establishment of the CVCBD offered in the way of specific services can now be extended to cover services and functions never considered by the voters. With an almost totally unelected Board the CVCBDMA can request whatever service or function the City would like that Board to handle and the citizenry have no control over it. The Board has been given the power to replace the community and this political prize is cherished by those using the undemocratic method in which the CVCBD is run.
So, we finally get the question: "What does the CVCBD do?"
1. It spends a lot of money on self-promotion, with time and money spent to establish and run a website that doesn' t just give information relevant to the community but every bell and whistle of a corporate website. I wonder who in the community is so enamored with the CVCBD to actually follow them on Twitter or to Tweet them and for what purpose? They all have cell phones for contact with the CVCBD office and these are frequently used. Must the employees cleaning the streets now check tweets in addition? All this uses up our surtax money for the CVCBD' s own aggrandizement, money that should be going to keep us safer which is the reason people voted for its establishment.
2. It provides a Board of Directors with reasons to acquiesce to any decision made by the Executive Committee, whether it is good or bad for the community, and if Board members don' t, they may very well face the new bylaw threat of expulsion “without reason”. Actually, though the new bylaws just gave them this power about a year ago, the Board used this expulsion before, even removing a non-voting board member who dared speak in support of his community. Yet when as a Board member I requested that the President of the Board be removed since he sat on the Board claiming to represent what was in reality a non-operational and non-constituent organization I was told by the Vice President that there was no way to remove anyone from the Board. I guess she wasn' t aware that Roberts Rules would have given the Board this power since this was a serious violation of the law itself. How can a board member represent the best interests of his/her association when faced with the threat of expulsion for no reason but when a most grievous reason for removal is ignored?
3. It has trouble filling board seats. Many people who have joined the Board trying to make a positive impact on the running of the CVCBD gave up and left. See also reason number 2 above.
4. It has grown into a bloated, non-democratic bureaucracy run by like-minded individuals for purposes unknown.
5. It uses up volunteer time that community associations in Charles Village
6. Its Executive Director (its fancy name change for the Administrator' s position as provided in the legislation) attends meetings of the Central Baltimore Committee but does not report in either their infrequent newsletter or in the "Charles Villager" anything about this involvement of the CVCBD in these large, less publicly-known plans the universities, certain non-profits and the City have for the area? All we know is that he claims to be the representative, the "voice" of our community, when he is in fact just an employee paid for by our surtaxes to provide services to us. This is what can happen when you don' t have a democratically elected Board of Directors running such an entity as the CVCBD.
I could probably continue in this vein but this is a long article and I think you all get the picture of what the Charles Village Community Benefits District does.
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Part IV – If you are wondering "Why don' t I get any services" I think you' ll understand the reasons when you read below " What would happen if it was to cease operations, if there was no CVCBD?"
A. What would happen if there was no CVCBD is that very little would change in terms of losing services because:
the most we get now from the Charles Village Community Benefits District for its almost ¾ million dollar a year budget (our surtax money and some donations such as from JHU which doesn' t have to pay the surtax although they own a large swath of land in Charles Village N. Charles St.
Unfortunately, many other businesses do not do this although they are required by City ordinances to keep their areas litter free. It is the City' s requirement that property owners keep ½ of the street(s) around their properties clean and free from debris and ice. If businesses and business property owners do not wish to comply with City regulations by cleaning the streets in front of their establishments themselves, then they should run a business benefits district as many cities do, paying for and running it themselves. The same goes for those in the business of renting out their properties whether for commercial establishments or multi-unit dwellings. Why should resident homeowners have to pay for the work absentee landlords ignore? Basically that' s what we are paying for through our Benefits District surtax. A homeowner recently suggested that the CVCBDMA abolish its so called "sanitation" services, and instead aggressively work to have the City fine those property owners who don' t comply with City sanitation ordinances.
B. What would happen if there was no CVCBD is that we would not have to pay for a Benefits District that breaks its enabling legislation as the CVCBD has done through the years:
by employing individuals who reside outside the City of Baltimore ' s "Limitations on Authority" for the CVCBD;
by preparing and voting on annual budgets prior to entering "into a memorandum of understanding with the Mayor of the City regarding the level of services to be maintained by the City annually (the "Baseline City Agreement") as is required by the law so as not to charge a surtax for duplicating services; and in this regard
by repeatedly depriving area residents of City services that the rest of the City gets, by duplicating such services themselves. (This flies in the face of the legal promise of the City Code' s Agreement in the CVCBD' s enabling legislation to have "Baseline City
by putting ineligible people into Board voting seats, in total disregard for the City Code that specifically state that "A voting member of the Board must be eligible to vote in the election [original referendum]" (which that eligibility is twofold – (1) owners of property within the District which is subject to the tax and (2) voters registered to vote within the District);
by being ridiculously presumptive of the enabling legislation in attempting to change this voting eligibility by way of changes to their bylaws rather than by changing the actual legislation. (The CVCBDMA absurdly used bylaw changes last year to bypass what would have been legally required for such a change, most likely because new State and City laws would have had to have been enacted and the CVCBD might never stand the test of another referendum);
by often allowing voting seats on the Board to be filled by individuals supposedly representing the legislatively named "constituent organizations" while the named organizations were/are dormant and had/have no constituents as required by the City Code;
C. What would happen if there was no CVCBD is that the community involvement and volunteerism would very likely increase because:
the CVCBD and its controlled and undemocratic methods in which the CVCBDMA decided to handle itself all these years has diminished community involvement (The CVCBD has trouble filling positions and seats on the Board of director and has problems with gaining quorums for issues requiring a Board vote);
the CVCBD has discouraged community and business volunteers because of endless and meaningless committees, meetings and self-promotion (Because the CVCBD cannot easily fill seats on the Board, the Board had to make changes in the new bylaws so that the hired Administrator ("Executive Director") who does not live in the District, can now fill the Executive Committee seats of Secretary and Treasurer of the Board);
the CVCBD replicates what were CVCA programs and projects and people who are paying for services don' t want to volunteer for jobs they are paying to have done;
the CVCBD runs questionable Quad Elections that have resulted in problematic outcomes rather than open elections respectful of community people willing to honestly run for these seats on the Board;
of years of attempting to change the enabling legislation by way of changes to its bylaws, which is strictly forbidden by both City and State laws (Why should community people wish to work with a Board that strips away original protections granted by the enabling legislation?);
over the years the CVCBD Board developed so many programs and committees to address aspects of the CVCBD' s services and responsibilities and, when these programs and committees are not successful, they are resurrected every two or three years with the same lack of success (These committees become a waste of time and take up a lot of precious community volunteer time that would be better utilized through REAL volunteer Community Associations).
D. What would happen without a CVCBD is that the Community of Greater CharlesVillage may finally begin to heal -
The rifts between neighbors, brought upon in good part by the fact that a group of like-minded individuals hold very close reigns over a non-democratically elected governmental agency that has the power to put one' s home in jeopardy by way of its taxation, can be repaired. Community associations can return to helping the residents, keeping City regulations intact and bettering the area for all who live here. The business associations can again address their differing issues likewise, as an independent group rather than as part of a political football of a "Community" Benefits District rather than a "Business" Benefits District.
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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 out of 18 voting seats from named associations and quad representatives.
[I am adding to this paragraph of my original posting today, Dec. 29, 2012. The red parts are from the original posting.] From recently learned information from a Johns Hopkins University (JHU) publication, JHU admits to being one of the founders of Greater Homewood Community Corporation (GHCC). GHCC was the promoter of the CVCBD enabling legislation so I am retracting parts my original comments. From this admission by JHU as to their relationship with GHCC I realized GHCC was not a grass-roots or true “community-run” entity, so what we questioned before we now know to be true. 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
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. Waverly Main St.
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 ' 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 ' 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 ' 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 (1).
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
(1) At the recent (in June 2012) 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
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