New Ideas Abound From The Mayor's Trip

In what seems to AP to be an attempt to justify the mayor's 6-week absence while touring Europe, The Capital today provides testimony that the mayor has some new ideas as a result of her sister city voyage:

Ms. Moyer said she's now armed with a "whole notebook of ideas" - and she's ready to go through it and find out which are viable options for the city.

Is that so? Well, the city could use some fresh ideas. I had a fresh idea once, but was distracted by my friend who claimed to be using his computer to access some type of 'internet' (that's what we called it back then), and since that time my creativity has taken a turn for the worse. So continue, Mayor Moyer, whadda' ya' got?

Near the top her list is lifting some transportation ideas from Paris, including more underground parking and increased public transportation on the water.

Umm, geez, you didn't think of this before? Also, I bet that the underground parking city was not the same as the public transportation on water city. Because when you have water, you usually can't build underground. If we had a public works director, we could ask him what the city rules are regarding underground building near waterfront.

So, most notebooks have, like, 200 pages or something. What else do you have?

She described bicycles lined up in the main tourist areas; with the swipe of a credit card, a bike could be unlocked for use.

So, instead of car rental, bike rental. Many towns have this already (although they may be run by private enterprise). I have a hunch: that this idea has been discussed before while Ellen Moyer was mayor. This guy might be able to verify that.

Adelante!:

A public "boat bus" stops at eight locations around the city.

A boat bus? You mean a water taxi? Right. We already have that. Way to waste space in your notebook.

These are not new ideas, and I'm guessing they are especially not new for transportation experts like hopefully we have working for the city. So what's the point of all this, from the mayor's point of view?:

Ms. Moyer said she's also interested in planning special programs to raise money for the sister cities program, to "treat them as well as they treat us."

B-da-bing!! Nailed it!! Right on targ.......

Subsidized housing just doesn't look like it there.

Oh no!

The cottages all have flowers in the yard and are well-kept and fairly attractive.

Too much propaganda....this post is out of control.

"No Taj Mahal (parking) garages there.

What?

Ok, enough with the quotes. The main issues touched here were public transportation and public housing. As far as transportation, we need to look at a solution that gets people out of their cars and off the roads. Building more parking garages and widening roads only encourages driving.

And with the public housing, ownership is the key. Using a highly anecdotal (and highly current) piece of evidence, just look at the kind fellow who was featured in the paper yesterday.

(If you want more scientific evidence, as I do, I must offer an apology. I am one of the worst "search term" people ever. I never know the right keywords to put into Google. Other people find things right away, and it takes me forever. So if you know where to look, or already have this data, let me know.)

This has been the city Republican Central Committee's objection to the direction of the MPDU program. People who qualify for public housing should be on the path to ownership, not renting from a non-profit or anyone else. (Note: the MPDU program is very different from public housing.)

To be fair, it doesn't matter where the mayor gets her ideas. So long as they are developed, and proper solutions implemented, I would be fine with that.

Politics On Tap

About 2 years ago, the Annapolis Republican Central Committee (note: this is different from the AA county CC) started a 'politics on tap' schedule of informal meetings. Basically, on the 4th Thursday of each month we would meet at a bar and talk about things.

Attendance has dropped off somewhat, but I know that this blog is viewed by some people that are outside of the quasi-blast emails that we send for the central committee. So, what I'm asking is, would you folks like to institute this type of thing? Not necessarily republican oriented, but city oriented, and I promise that we will have it at a bar.

Capital Punishment does this on Thursday mornings at Aah Coffee, but I was wondering if people are interested in meeting at night. (Sometimes I am at bars on Thursday nights, regardless of whether or not there is a meeting going on.)

Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. If response is good, we'll set it up.

Employer Responsibility for Illegal Immigrants

Last week, county executive John Leopold issued an executive order forbidding the county from entering into contracts with businesses that employ illegal immigrants. This order is somewhat redundant, as county contracts already stipulate that all businesses contracted by the county must be compliant with federal laws, and since we are talking about illegal immigration, this is already covered. But, in Mr. Leopold's words,

I wanted to make it clear that there is this federal law and that this county takes this law seriously.

This order reinforces Leopold's anti-illegal immigration stance, as he recently denied a $115,000 grant to an organization that could not prove that it worked with only legal immigrants. (Much of this money was later restored by the state.)

(On a side note, anti-illegal immigration should not have to be a stance. It is ILLEGAL--that's the key word--we should be opposed to everything that is against the law, or we should change the laws.)

But this raises the question....how much responsibility to employers have? Currently employers must make a copy of 2 forms of identification, as well as complete a new hire reporting form called an I-9. Is this enough? Should employers also be required to check their employees against a national database? Or are employers going to be penalized for hiring illegal immigrants no matter how hard they work to verify their legal status?

I know what you are thinking, and normally you would be right. You are thinking "What a hypocrite. Here is a free-market guy whining about the free market being to expensive to deal with. Get your story straight AP." But there is a difference. In this case, the private sector is being asked to do what the government is responsible for doing--securing our borders--and indeed they are being asked to succeed where the government has failed.

Businesses are not required to verify that the money they accept is not counterfeit; the Secret Service is responsible for this enforcement. Why should they be responsible for verifying identity, when the government has 2 chances to do it first? Secure borders should be preventing illegals from coming, but if they don't, the MVA and/or the Social Security Agency should be refusing to issue identification. What I'm trying to say is, if somebody shows up to work with a driver's license and security card, an employer should have every reason to believe that this person is legal.

That having been said, I applaud Mr. Leopold for this order. He seems to be doing what little he can to oppose illegal immigration, which you will recall, is illegal.

Employers should not knowingly hire illegal immigrants, and should be penalized if they do. I would even be in favor of requiring employees to be checked against a national database, provided that this process is fast and inexpensive.

Mike Collins Email

Mike Collins provided some additional context for the events surrounding the county central committee. I have not posted it here, but I did post it at Maryland Politics if you want to take a look.

Actual Crime Data!

I came to a conclusion about police staffing using data from the most unscientific study possible, in the hopes that in time I would be proven either wrong or right with some real data.

To my delight, an elite reader of this blog has emailed me this data! He said that his data shows a different picture than mine (which I expected), but the conclusion he came to with regards to police staffing was the same.

I look forward to reading this data and passing it on to you, even though many of you are undoubtedly also 'elite' readers and have seen this study already.

Where is Crime in Annapolis Happening?

Encouraged by an emailer today, I did some research on where most of the crimes around here are happening. I did this by using the daily email report from the police department, which you can get by clicking here. I recorded the crime if it was a felony--I tried to exclude 'citations' such as driving violations--and the location.

(Disclaimer: I am not a criminologist. I may have mis-categorized which crimes are felonies and which are not. But my point will be the same. I am also not a statistician, but this math is simple enough that I can guarantee accuracy.)

(Personal reflection: I just realized that I am not many things. In fact, the only claims to fame I have are being able to make good crab cakes and being a moderately handsome blogger.)

I have come to a conclusion, and I don't care if it is not politically correct, because it is right:

If we want to get rid of the crime, we should get rid of public housing.

Of the crimes that I looked at, 66% of them occurred in or very near public housing developments. So, 66% of the crimes are committed by about 10%* of the population.

(*I have heard numbers saying that the public housing popluation in the city is actually 1 in 6 (16.7%). But, HACA's web site claims to have 2,2oo residents, plus a couple hundred more as a result of section 8 vouchers, which I do not understand because I have not researched. The city of Annapolis population is about 37,000.)

The mayor has frequently cited the ratio of officers per thousand citizens as a measure of how well the police department is staffed. But, if the majority of crimes happen in public housing areas--which they do (I will work on a citation), and Annapolis has more public housing per capita than anywhere else in the country--which it does (ibid), than that freggin' ratio is useless.

I hope that somebody can actually prove me wrong, because to do this would require a level of statistics that we can use to really analyze the problem, and figure out a solution. Apparently, though, we will have to do this without the help of the mayor.

Crime Plan From the Mayor

Yesterday AP asked how exactly we plan to combat crime. So, when I received a press release from the mayor's office entitled "Mayor Ellen Moyer proposes a five point plan to address concerns being raised about public safety in the City of Annapolis", I was jubilant. After all, I was confident that the mayor could not oppose the political winds that are demanding the fulfillment of the vacant police positions.

But then I read on.

Here is a summary of the mayor's 5 point plan:

1. REDUCE the number of shifts at the police department from five to three. Idea being: more officers per shift = higher visibility.

2. Buy 4 Segways.

3. Get a horse. (I can't make this stuff up, this is what it says.)

4. Make entire city a drug free zone, get money from other jurisdictions to implement major drug treatment and prevention program.

5. Turn lights on at night.

This is amazing. I barely know where to begin. First of all, the mayor refuses to commit to filling the vacancies on the police department!!!!! She declares:

Our principal obligation is to find new ways to use the people that we have now to enhance public safety.

By reducing the number of shifts, she is actually trying to create the APPEARANCE of having more officers WITHOUT ACTUALLY GETTING MORE OFFICERS!!!!! If we still have the same number of officers, and they still work the same amount of hours per week, then this idea does absolutely nothing. Or, we can pay ridiculous overtime, and have all these officers work until they can't stand up. Unbelievable. In item #1 of the plan, the mayor spends the first sentence detailing what she wants to do, and the next 5 sentences defending what her policy has been so far. She says:

While much has been made recently of the numbers of police officers that are currently employed by the City, the fact is that the APD maintains a ratio of 3 police officers to every 1000 citizens-the national average is only 1 officer per thousand.

We have already been over this. These ratios are useless, especially for Annapolis because it is (1) a maritime city and (2) a capital city.

The mayor goes on to say that the war in Iraq and retirement have caused a nationwide talent shortage of interested police officers:

The war in Iraq and retirement have both greatly impacted the number of qualified people that are available for and interested in police work. Jurisdictions nationwide are drawing from the same talent pool and facing the same challenges.

We have been over this too! There are hundreds of people who want to be police officers in the city of Annapolis, but the city won't offer the entrance exam (until now)!

Now, for the famous "this is not my fault, I am doing everything right" quote from the mayor:

We offer a very competitive package of pay and benefits to our officers and are always looking for talented people. We will aggressively continue that search without lowering our standards.

Yesterday, I said "The prevailing political climate--which usually lags behind the will of the people (unless ignoring it completely)--is that the department needs to fill the 20+ vacancies. There is probably no amount of reluctance from the police chief, or anyone else, to stop this from happening." I was dead wrong, as long as the mayor has something to say about it.

As for the Segways, fine. If the police need the Segways, get them the resources they need. But what's wrong with bicycles?

As for the horse mounted unit, the mayor states that one horse-mounted unit is equivalent to 10 officers on foot. What? Really? I guess so. But by most accounts these units are best utilized in crowd control. And will only one horse mounted unit really make a difference? Will it be in the exact spot to deter a drug deal or stop an assault?

I don't know what the obsession is with a drug free zone; it seems to me like more of a formality than anything else. Shouldn't we be combatting drugs at all times? I think a treatment plan is a good resource, but we need to go after the dealers too. What, besides getting money from the state and county, are we going to do about this?

And for goodness sake, we will turn our lights on if it will make you happy.

Solve the Problem, Not the Not-Problem, Part II

This morning, inexplicably, AP was listening to AM talk radio. The topic being discussed was the legal drinking age, and whether it should be lowered to 18 (or some other age less than 21)

The arguments typically go like this:

For lowering the drinking age:
-The age of majority should apply to everything, and when you are determined to be an adult, you should be able to vote, drink, serve in military, get married, enter into contracts, etc.
-Other countries have lower drinking ages and kids do not have the same taboo about drinking that causes them to binge.

Against lowering the drinking age:
-Drunk driving will go up if you lower the age, as will drinking & driving injuries/accidents.

I am not interested in this argument, per se. What I want to talk about is how we frame the debate.

On the radio show this morning, they said they did a poll, and it was about 50/50 for and against. But what if this was the question:

"Do you support lowering the drinking age to 18, provided that EVERY car was equipped with a breath analysis device and the car would not turn on if the driver was over the legal limit?"

I imagine that more people would say yes. So how about the argument that under the current laws, 21 year olds buy alcohol for their younger friends, and if we lower the drinking age, 18 year olds will do the same thing, and we will have really young kids drinking. Well, think about this question:

"Do you support lowering the drinking age to 18 provided that every beer bottle was made with DNA analysis software and the bottle would actually not allow any beer to be dispensed unless the drinker was over 18?"

Obviously this would only happen in a science fiction movie, but do you see the point? These arguments have to do with drunk driving, and underage drinking--NOT THE DRINKING AGE ITSELF.

So many times this happens in debates--sides draw lines in the sand and make emotional arguments based on associations they make with the behaviors in question. More often than you would think, people actually agree on the majority of what they are arguing about. We need to focus on the actual problems.

In the case of the drinking age, we endorse an arbitrary and unfair practice. Rather than using the drinking age as a proxy to try and control drinking and driving, we should focus on simply stopping drunk driving--take out the middle man, so to speak. The act of drinking is not itself an evil act. Failing to drink in a responsible way is the problem, and this is what we should try and address.

Crime: Ward 3

Crime is evolving into a favorite topic of this blog, quite possibly because public safety should be the #1 concern of any government. (Normally I would not make such a blanket statement as this, but this is a generally accepted premise, right?)

I receive the daily email from the police department, which you too can receive by clicking here. I usually scan the police reports, trying to get an idea of what types of crimes are occurring and where.

I happened to notice a trend of events happening in the Bowman Dr./Ct. area:

THEFT ( OR, * SHORTY ROB* STRIKES AGAIN) On August 14th, a Housing Authority Property Manager reported that someone had removed 9aluminum window frames from six different townhouses in the 1800 block of Bowman Court. The perpetrator had removed the frames and windows in tact, then broken out the glass and disassembled the frames before taking them from the scene. Investigation determined that the frames had been sold to a nearby recycler as scrap metal. The man that sold the material was known to the recycling center only as * Shorty Rob.* Other community members also said that * Shorty Rob* was seen taking the window frames. * Shorty Rob* has also been implicated in other unsolved crimes in the area. He is described as a black male, age in30's or 40's, short, with a heavy build. He is known to frequent the Annapolis Gardens. Anyone with information as to * Shorty Rob*s*true name and identity is asked to call police at 410-268-9000.(07-004474)

BURGLARY: On August 8th at 12:38 AM resident of the 1800 block of Bowman Drive reported that she had encountered an armed intruder in her house. The victim said that she had been upstairs. When she came down to the first floor, she saw an unknown male suspect holding handgun on her three daughters. The victim ran back up the stairs. The suspect then pointed the gun at a male resident and demanded that the resident give him something that he claimed was owed to him. The resident told him that he did not know to what he was referring. The suspect then fled out the back door. He had apparently entered through the same door, which had been left unlocked. Officers searched the area for the suspect with negative results, and the investigation is continuing. (07-004332)

DRUG ARREST: On August 8th at 9:01 AM, an officer on routine patrol noticed a suspicious subject lurking behind some bushes in the 1800block of Bowman Court. She was identified as Kim Renee Harris, 39, of Eastport Terrace. Investigation led to the recovery of a crack pipe from her person. She was arrested and charged with Possession of Drug Paraphernalia. (07-004334)

(I'm sure there are recurring crimes on other streets, but this is just one I noticed.)

So I got to thinking...where the heck is Bowman Dr.? Answer: In between West St. and Moreland Pkwy, near the Merrit Athletic Club, and within walking distance of The Capital. More important answer, at least for the purposes of this post: in Ward 3.

Wait a minute....Ward 3? But the alderwoman for Ward 3 just said:

There have been no recent calls or complaints of crime in Ward 3, said Alderwoman Classie G. Hoyle, D-Ward 3. However there have been a few break-ins in the Germantown/Homewood neighborhood, she said.

"I was disappointed that we didn't get the kind of support for National Night Out that we should have," she said. "People are complaining, but we didn't have the numbers out there to demonstrate that we are concerned."

Mrs. Hoyle said mandatory sentencing for crimes involving guns is her top concern, and she's investigating what can be done to reduce the number of guns on the streets.

She also wants to focus attention on enforcing the laws against dark-tinted windows on vehicles.

These seem like "recent calls or complaints". Does the alderwoman pay attention to the reports? What kind of priorities does the Honorable Ms. Hoyle have? Drugs and robbery--including armed robbery--seem like a pretty big deal to me. And these reports just scratch the surface. How many crimes go unreported? How many reports have been filed and I/we have not seen?

Merely adding police officers will not solve the problem. (See previous post) We need a comprehensive plan, which starts with a chief that is willing to admit there is a problem and willing to address it.

Travel Update: Mayor Moyer

Mayor Ellen is still touring Europe, and has updated her blog with accounts of the two most recent cities she has visited.

The mayor started her blog around the time she went on this trip, and thus far it has mainly served as a travel guide, along with some peculiarities of history regarding her various destinations.

Even so, if this blog failed to comment on the mayor's blog, it would drop to the ranking of, perhaps, only the 200th most popular political blog in Ward 5. Wanting to maintain the popularity of this URL, I have selected 2 items for presentation:

-The mayor of Newport, Pembrokeshire, Wales, is named Barry Onions. Barry Onions! I have a long day planned for today, and I expect to be stressed out--albeit ever so slightly. When this happens, I will say "Barry Onions" 10 times to myself, and surely people will be asking why I have a goofy grin on my face. I mean, just listen to this excerpt:

Today there is a bird habitat nearby. Two swans have finally returned to the area. Mayor Onion would like more.

Laugh out loud!! Are we characters in a Harry Potter book?!! I am sort of a weird person, but I can't help but believe that even the more 'normal' of the people amongst us find this amusing.

-The mayor visited Wexford, Ireland, which appears to be the hometown of Naval Commodore John Barry. She had this to say:

The Mayor wonders why Annapolis doesn’t do more to recognize this Naval hero. John Barry served with George Washington in our war for independence and was listed as #1 in the American Navy.

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First, you may be wondering why the mayor refers to herself in the third person. This actually is not unexpected, as we have learned that the mayor does not actually make her own blog posts. Somebody else likely wrote this, and therefore would refer to the mayor as "the mayor" and not "I".

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Second, this is how AP interprets the above quote:

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"The mayor wonders if she can spend money, or create a position in city government, based loosely on John Barry. Early ideas include statues or a museum, but all opportunities are being explored.

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I wouldn't be surprised if John Barry appeared in the budget for FY 2009.

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I look forward to her next post!