Midtown Baltimore and the Mayor

If you own property in Mount Vernon, Bolton Hill, Madison Park, and Charles North, you may be familiar with the Midtown Community Benefits District. You might be familiar with it because you pay the organization money every year, around the same time you pay your taxes. You should be familiar with it because of what it does for you. The organization was created in 1996 to make these four communities "stronger, better places to live and work." It is a citizen run group that is there to advocate and improve conditions in our neighborhoods. How do these citizens implement their plans? They use the property tax surcharge that we give them in a variety of ways. Would you like to know on what they spend the money? Check it out! Currently, a draft of 2011 budget is available at www.midtowncommunity.org/2011 A presentation of the proposed 2011 Midtown Budget will be given on Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 7pm. The location is Payne Memorial Church, 1714 Madison Ave. (Corner of Laurens.) This is part of the regularly scheduled spring Town Hall Meeting, and the keynote speaker is Mayor Stephanie Rawlings Blake. I certainly intend to the be there, and encourage all other property owners and neighbors to attend.

Mount Vernon Gardening in Baltimore

After a week of weather that has caused most of us to consider building an ark, the sun is finally shining again in Baltimore. I had the pleasure of showing a number of rental properties to an incoming Johns Hopkins student today, which made me especially happy. Why, you ask? Because she was looking exclusively in Mount Vernon, and therefore I was able to spend two hours walking around my neighborhood, giving a tour to a potential new resident, and enjoying the fabulous housing options available to her. She and her family were particularly impressed with Mount Vernon Park, so I was happy to tell them about the Friends of Mount Vernon Place (www.friendsofmountvernonplace.org), and all of the good things they do to keep the neighborhood beautiful. If you'd like to volunteer for this organization and our corner of the world, FMVP are having a spring clean up this coming Saturday, March 20, from 9am-1pm in the West Park. Please bring gardening gloves, a shovel, and a hat! Refreshments will be available. Please RSVP to Cathy@ccrrar.com (The rain date is Sunday, March 21 at 11am.) Hope to see you there!