Zac Blanchard for City Council
@blanchard4bmore
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Democratic Nominee for Baltimore's 11th | By authority: Zac Blanchard for Baltimore. Omar Hamza, Treasurer
Baltimore, MD
Joined October 2023
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I'm younger than the mayor, but if it had been me out there talking to reporters this morning, I feel like there wouldn't be a lot of people online complaining about my age.
Makes me think that age isn't their main concern.
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🚨370 D11 votes counted today, and we won them 189-181! Up 36 votes total 🚨
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Really proud to work for an organization that will have planted 500 trees across midtown Baltimore between 2022 and 2025.
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BALTIMORE CITY CAN HAVE A VACANCY TAX!
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Larry Hogan, worried that we might actually build the Red Line, decides to run for Senate to kill the project. Again.
Larry Hogan--currently favored in race for US Senate--asked this week if he's changed his mind and could now support the Red Line.
Apparently not.
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If we want more grocery stores in Baltimore, we should let them sell beer and wine. It's not Prohibition. We don't need to make it harder than it already is for grocery stores to turn a profit here.
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Charles St Promenade in 2022 (bottom), 2023 (middle), and 2024 (top). Let's go!!
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Shout-out to the r/Baltimore subreddit folks: definitely a key constituency/advocates throughout our campaign. And thanks to our volunteer who had me do that AMA right after we launched.
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Guys, I know how we can better activate Downtown...
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Wow, guess we won't have to look that far for examples on how to starve the incinerator!
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🚨7 more votes up!!!🚨
We're on the cusp...
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1) Over the last 2 years, violent crime is down nationwide.
2) Over the last 4 years, wage growth for low-income workers is near all-time high and unemployment is near all-time lows.
3) Both trends are more dramatic in Baltimore.
Ending concentrated poverty is public safety.
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Close race getting closer! More mail-in's to count on Monday, provisionals on Wednesday 😎
After a new round of mail-in ballots, Eric Costello’s lead over Zac Blanchard has narrowed to 17 votes. 🗳️
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Right now I'm tracking Blanchard 3,246, Costello 3,218.
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Considering the project cost $61 million, I don't understand the editorial choice of spending half the article discussing the ~$200k (~0.3%) spent on bike infrastructure.
If anything, it highlights how bike infrastructure is the usually, by far, the cheapest improvement option.
After 8 years of construction and 31% over budget, the Central Avenue Streetscape is almost done. Baltimore's Board of Estimates is expected to approve another $6.5 million today to finish a project that was bogged down in cost overruns.
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State should be releasing the results for most of the City's remaining mail-in ballots around 9pm or 10pm tonight.
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If you don't think good lighting makes a difference, walk thru Otterbein at night. Historic-style lights, not too tall and not too bright, all over the neighborhood. It makes a huge difference for perception of safety and general coziness.
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Nearly half of Baltimore's vacant building owners pay less than $250 a year in property taxes. That's about 6,000 properties. If you're a homeowner, compare that to what you pay in property taxes. And ask your state delegates if they support a
#vacancytax
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All these two-lane, one-way streets that allow cars to race through residential neighborhoods - all the residents hate them and they're dangerous.
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It's absurd that City Schools high schools start at 7:30am. Especially for those, like some of the young men I coach, who are three bus routes and 90 minutes from school.
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Love to see revitalizations like this on the 200 block of Park Ave 😍 The transformation of the area around Lexington Market is real and happening
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Wise words from the single elected official who endorsed our campaign. Incumbents always win because we assume incumbents always win and so we help the incumbents win. Not
@AshleyEsposito_
tho
I hope in the future we have less conversations about who has the most money, who has the most endorsements, or who is a “viable winner”. I’d like to see us have more conversations about who do you believe in, who does the community want, and who would do a great job.
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So turns out Baltimoreans are more likely to live in rowhomes/townhomes than any American city except Philly. This fact makes me so happy.
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I am so thankful for the 3 volunteers who put in so much work over the last years to get us traffic-calming at Light Street & Warren/Henrietta
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Much love to
@1stDistrictMark
, who actually taught me how to door-knock and gave some great advice during the campaign. Looking forward to serving with you!
As a native of the 11th district, I am particularly excited for
@blanchard4bmore
, the district, and our city. This campaign will long be remembered in city politics. More importantly, we have a great oportunity these next four years to make real and sustained progress! Let's go!
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Eric Costello was helping build a football field for a private school in the 12th District because a rich Republican donor wanted it, while simultaneously blocking the building of a football field at a public school (Digital Harbor) in the 11th. You can't make this up.
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Wait:
1) 60% of BMore incinerated trash is compostable
2) Bresco incinerator gets millions in tax credits a year, after getting $0 for it's first 20 years.
3) Our asthma hospitalization rate is 3x the national average
4)
@CouncilmanETC
has gotten $3,150 from Bresco
Good to know.
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Proud to support the initiative to unionize UMMC's residents and fellows. Love to see Baltimore's unionizing movement growing!
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Baltimore City is broke. Renew Baltimore would make us more broke. A better solution would be for us to stop doing Item (1) below
1) Locality limits housing
2) Home prices go up
3) Property taxes go up
4) Locality adopts property tax credits
5) Transfer taxes, impact fees, and property taxes < cost of infrastructure
6) Inadequate infrastructure used an excuse not to build housing
7) Locality limits housing
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Baltimore thoroughly limits how fast homeowner-occupant taxes go up (Homeowner Credit), but not how fast rent goes up.
I doubt anyone thought it was radical when we did it for homeowners.
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When
@CouncilmanETC
said he couldn't support a bike lane on Sharp Street because it was a "threat to national security", I knew he really wasn't about breaking our city's dependence on cars. Honored to be the only council district challenger to receive this endorsement
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Baltimore City has 15,000 abandoned homes that cost the City $200 million a year and tell far too many of our young people there’s no future in their neighborhood. We can solve this crisis by increasing property taxes on vacant and blighted properties.
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A 10x vacancy tax would yield Baltimore $90 million a year. That's a game-changer for the City's ability to support the business, non-profit, and gov't efforts to rehab our 14,000 vacants. Please email your state delegates to support the vacancy tax before this upcoming session.
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It’s time, Baltimore!! Polls are open from 7am to 8pm — remind your friends and neighbors that it’s time to vote!
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LOVE the tradition of taking your children with you to vote. Had no idea how common that was until today. Actually a really easy, good-civic-habit builder.
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Really proud of how much our campaign was able to increase voter turnout this election relative to citywide rates. Shows down-ballot races can influence turnout.
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Just got the word that we OFFICIALLY maxed out the public match. We've now raised $155,000.
First campaign in City history to max out. It'll be great for democracy in Baltimore when a lot more candidates are doing this in 2028.
We need change. Change is coming.
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State BoE's official explanation for the loss of the 530 Election Day votes in Baltimore's 11th District last night: likely human error or vendor error.
I'm still optimistic we can close the gap with late mail-ins and provisionals (we expect to win both). But we'll see.
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I don't think 7-month lame duck periods are good for democracy.
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The Baltimore Regional Transportation Board is planning to recommend spending 4 times as much on expanding highways as on expanding transit from 2025-2028. Please take this 3-minute survey to give your input on that strategy:
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A temporary park is way better than a temporary hole-in-the-ground (a la Mechanic Theatre) or temporary surface parking lot. Thanks
@SenBillFerg
for fighting for that.
Also, if you like public space and economic development, everything
@GuntsEd
writes at the Fishbowl is cool.
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In a city w/$9 BILLION in deferred maintenance, we should keep this venn diagram when considering zoning reform.
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Armstrong Williams' depiction of crime in Baltimore is (1) mostly misleading, (2) often false, and (3) EXACTLY the type of thing we were worried the Sun would do after David Smith bought it.
Sun owner Armstrong Williams, in a piece saying Scott administration is misleading about crime numbers, makes a factual misstatement about crime numbers. Homicides are down 33% and shootings down 25%, so how would the city not be on pace to see a 15% reduction this year?
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Too bad Google maps doesn't have this map type...
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It's important to remember that
@CouncilmanETC
received $27,000 from David Smith's family members on August 11th, 2023.
Friendly reminder that I will never accept more than $150 from anyone.
The difference matters.
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For calmer traffic, we need traffic calming, not 10,000 police stops in 6 weeks. Increased stops will hit Black Baltimoreans hardest. And 17 handgun violations in 10,000 stops shows increased stops are a waste of BPD time in a city w/the highest armed robbery rate in the US.
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Federal Hill Prep and Francis Scott Key are high-achieving schools where both lower-income and more affluent kids outperform expectations. Digital Harbor High School isn't that...yet. It'll be a priority of mine to help Digital, the city's 2nd largest HS, realize that goal.
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We need more early voting locations. There's only 8 in the entire city (and none in the 11th District). Baltimore City has one of the state's lowest voter rates: let's make it easier for Baltimoreans to vote.
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It's officially a two-candidate race! Just what we were hoping for. Thanks
@BaltimoreBanner
for covering.
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Glad to see our financially-broke city is slowly moving away from our heavy subsidy for car parking.
That said, Baltimore could easily find an 8-figure revenue increase if we were serious about enforcing parking violations. And that's with our very lenient parking fees
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Baltimore census tracts are 5x more likely to be disadvantaged than the rest of Maryland.
Our homicide rate is 5x the rest of Maryland. Our violent crime rate is 4x the rest of Maryland.
Ending concentrated poverty is a public safety plan.
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1 year ago, I was teaching Government at the Naval Academy, and
@LukeClippinger
gave some campaigning advice to my class that "the most important vote you'll ever get is your spouse's." That stuck with me, and it was really cool to see this post in my IG feed yesterday
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Awesome opportunity to talk about my vision for Downtown in front of a packed house tonight! More photos to follow. Thanks
@downtownbaltimore
for hosting
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I'm thankful the
@baltsunguild
is taking a clear stance for journalistic integrity. A vibrant local democracy depends on them keeping that courage.
STATEMENT FROM THE BALTIMORE SUN GUILD 🧵
Within the past few weeks — without notifying the dedicated journalists of the Baltimore Sun Guild — The Sun began publishing articles from Fox45, a TV station within Sinclair Broadcast Group, owned by Sun co-owner David Smith. (1/9)
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Mail-in ballots are hitting. Gametime 😎
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100%. Dolphin St should be turned in "Dolphin Place" with long Eutaw Place-style linear Park. That would be awesome.
this whole street would be sooo much safer to cross with a concrete pedestrian island, especially since the light cycles are so long
Howard St at Park Ave
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Great news for Poppleton. Can't wait to support good development in a neighborhood that deserves it.
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As of today, legislation to enable a vacancy tax has made it through it's first pass on the House (HB0002) and Senate (SB0138). This will be transformative for Baltimore if we get this into law.
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Very proud to have received the endorsement of every single public interest group who picked a side in the 11th District race (8 to 0, for those keeping score).
@sierraclubmd
@JUFJAction
@bikemorebmore
@votevets
@NewPoliticsAcad
@CleanWater_MD
@MDChildAlliance
@Progressive_MD
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Digital Harbor High School (DHHS) families are experiencing unprecedented levels of food insecurity. The staff at DHHS recently created an internal grocery store, where students and their families can stop by and take what they need.
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I expect about 1,200 returned mail-in's to be counted today in D11, and a couple hundred more tmrw. I don't think we'll be able to call the race either way until after provisional ballots are counted on Wednesday (the 22nd).
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Turns out the chief economist at Redfin is on the Land Value Tax bandwagon. I'll be sure she gets an invitation to testify
Noticing that much of the opposition around land value taxes comes down to "You want to kick grandma and grandpa out of their homes!" Please be serious. Ya'll are catastrophizing. I want the groundwork laid to create more and better housing options for Grandma and Grandpa. That
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Frustrating that Maryland is considering cutting transportation budgets while giving $10 million a year in "renewable energy" credits to incinerators.
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The Riverside Neighborhood Association is rebranding and it's awesome.
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Proud to be the Sierra Club's pick for the 11th District!
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In our 15-member council,
@CouncilmanETC
is one of only 2 councilmembers to decline to sponsor BOTH the Inclusionary Housing bill AND the Off-Street Parking reduction for Inclusionary Housing bill.
The 11th District needs more than just campaign rhetoric on Inclusionary housing
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We will need to think of a good Baltimore bird for the mascot though 🤔
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26,000 veterans in Baltimore City, would be good to have 1 on the Council!
Honored to receive an endorsement from VoteVets, who support progressive candidates for office nationwide.
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Trust me, read it.
Madison Park Improvement Association president (and our campaign treasurer) Omar Hamza's email to Council VP Sharon Green Middleton over the Anti-Complete Streets hearings.
Here’s my letter (email) to city council given the recent reintroduction of Anti-Complete Streets hearings:
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A flagship newspaper serving the specific political goals of its owner is worse for democracy than no flagship newspaper. This is how we should explain our concern to regular (non-Baltimore-Twitter) folks. 1/
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UMMC residents and fellows just won a unionizing vote 628-19. That's over 97% of the vote w/over 70% turnout.
Union City 😎
WE HAVE WON OUR UNION BY A TALLY OF 628-19!!! We are so proud of all our colleagues who came out and made their voices heard to win us our collective power. This is just the beginning. We will continue fighting for every resident and fellow every day going forward. See statement:
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In our 1st Gilded Age, the Senate was the key source of corruption and opposition to democracy. It took a constitutional amendment (the 17th) to fix it.
In our 2nd Gilded Age, we have the Supreme Court. Excited to see
@POTUS
putting meaningful reform on the menu.
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My commentary in the Sun this morning over next steps to fight the vacancy crisis, now that the Vacancy Tax bill has made it out of the General Assembly.
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If you can't walk to a grocery store, your neighborhood isn't complete.
This is not possible in most parts of the 11th district - so we need to make sure every resident can easily get to a grocery store in their neighborhood.
#Baltimore
#Food
Grocery stores are vital to community viability and stability.
But the hoops you have to jump through to land one.
The deal to get Lidl to the Perkins Homes redevelopment
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Crossing my fingers that
#AmtrakJoe
announces tomorrow that "now that I won't be campaigning, I will be putting a special focus for the rest of my presidency on
#buildingthemap
."
I know he's got it in him!
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So we're continuing highway expansion projects but slashing transit services across Maryland? Very 1950s strategy. Thanks Baltimore Transit Equity Coalition for the tip on this. And
@RobbynLewis46th
, let us know how we can help
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@davewerk
Apparently the State BoE deleted about 300 of my Election Day votes just now, and only 230 of Costello's, giving him a plus-70 vote swing. No idea what that's about
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If the US can invent a new type of vaccine, approve it, and mass-produce it for the COVID pandemic in like 9 months (which is, btw, incredibe), then we really should be able to build transit.
@PeteButtigieg
, please fix.
The German city of Erfurt (pop. ~215,000) will spend abt $115m to build a new, 2-mile light rail line - their 7th - to open by 2030.
Baltimore (pop. ~580,000) plans to spend anywhere from $7bn to $10bn on the 14-mile long Red Line.
America makes this hard on itself on purpose.
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Affordable housing without inclusionary housing leads to concentrated poverty. When we economically segregate neighborhoods, all of Baltimore loses.
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33-3.
Baltimore City Council District incumbents are 33-3 in contested primaries since 2007. If it feels like nothing ever changes, that might have something to do with it.
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TBT to 3 years ago when Shofer's closed and I started a petition to get a grocery store there. Good idea then, and it's stayed a good idea for the 3 years Shofer's has sat vacant and we have had to go 1.5 miles for groceries.
#blanchardforbaltimore
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Paca St in Seton Hill, Druid Hill Ave and McCulloh St in Upton, St Paul and Calvert in Mt Vernon, etc. All bad. Vote Zac, we're fixing all of them.
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Great feedback session at the State Center community engagement event tonight. Let's get this right and make State Center a massive asset for our Midtown neighborhoods.
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The Banner's in-depth pieces on the city council district races is great local journalism. It is hard to cover 14 district races with all the bigger races going on, and I really appreciate their work.
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Finance Dept is calling the City's $100 million projected "structural deficit" our worst in at least 17 years. Well, our 14,000 vacants cost us $200 million a year. So...how about a vacancy tax??? Let's kill 2 birds with one stone.
@reginatboyce
, please help
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Baltimore needs a petition to end gerrymandering. Future redistricting should be done by an independent commission. Elected officials shouldn't draw maps.
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We’re honored to announce that Blanchard for Baltimore is the first campaign in Baltimore City history to ever meet the requirements for the City’s Fair Election Fund, a goal we’ve hit within five days of announcing the campaign.
Read the press release attached:
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Honored to be the Maryland Child Alliance's first-ever political endorsement. Good neighborhoods need to be good for families too, and that's Birth thru 18. Check out the
@mchildalliance
, and especially the Baby Bonus Fund.
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1) Further proof that people LOVE Baltimore rowhomes and we should be working hard to build or rehab a lot more of them.
2) ICYMI
@SOUTHBMORE
is a wonderful hyperlocal online newspaper
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The Solo Gibbs Park splash pad in Sharp-Leadenhall has been closed since 2018, despite opening in 2013. It gets mentioned in a city budget line item every year. Community leaders complain about this every summer.
And kids love splash pads.
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Local journalism at it's finest!
political newcomer Zac Blanchard takes on City Council heavyweight Eric Costello in the 11th District
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