[deleted]

Not surprising that he got away with it for so long. Baltimore city and county politics are beyond corrupt and have been in my 25 year memory.

damn that's like the sludge at.the bottom of the bay. tres tres

Honestly breathtaking stuff here. Here's just from the Friends of Cathy Bevins account:

McCollum was using Cathy Bevins campaign funds for his own personal slush fund to the tune of over $110,000, almost $65,000 of which went to paying off his own American Express cards.

From 2015-2018 he was depositing checks made out to her campaign directly into his own bank account, to the tune of $28,000.

McCollum was also taking checks that were supposed to go to vendors and putting them directly into his account, over $13,000.

Here's where it gets more absurd. He was using the card for personal travel and shit, almost $3000 out of state and internationally. ATM withdraws in Carolina, steakhouse payments in Ohio, airplane tickets for the icelandic line WOW, air travel in Puerto Rico which he put down on forms as "staff travel," and airline tickets to Florida.

From the Jim Smith Victory Slate:

$31,000 was stolen from that account and deposited into his personal account. Again, funds went to paying off American Express bills.

He deposited over $4,000 worth of checks made out to the slate into his own bank account.

He deposited over $20,000 worth of vendor checks into his own account from 2015-2016.

Edit: Statement from Bevins

""I was shocked and saddened to learn about the embezzlement from my campaign account by my long-time treasurer. This is a complete betrayal of trust placed in him by me and by my donors."

Edit 2: 11 counts of perjury included in the charging docs, with a 10 year penalty for each.

Very walkable.

[deleted]

Hello there!

Links from the domain present in your post are known to present a soft paywall to users. As a result, some users may have difficulty reading the linked content.

It may be helpful to provide a comment containing a synopsis or a snippet of the major points of the article in order to help those who may not be able to see it.

In accordance with the subreddit rules, please do not post the entirety of the article's contents as a comment.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

Prior to his response below, when did he say parklets negatively affected him?

I’ve been places where they’re more obtrusive - Mount Washington comes to mind. But not generally, no, they don’t impact me much. That said, I think it’s entirely appropriate for the city to charge for the spaces. Whether the amount given in the article is optimal, I don’t have an opinion.

So it sounds like the parklets don't negatively affect you at all.

Shutting down roads won't reduce the amount of walking people would have to do since it doesn't magically uproot the stores and homes that already exist. My dentist or my grocery store are still a half mile away regardless of the number of streets I have to cross in the middle. And if you're only closing one out of every four roads, that leaves 75% that people will still have to cross. If you have trouble crossing streets, you're still going to have trouble crossing streets.

[removed]

That's fine. Is Dubrovnik a good example of one globally?

I park in front of my house, so zero time there. Maybe a couple minutes tops on the other end; if we're getting fancy (a couple times/yr) I'll valet it. It's rare that I spend much time hunting for parking.

And like i said if the removal of roads is part of a strategic public transportation overhaul program i support it.

But arbitrarily closing off every 4th road to cars is not the right first step

How many minutes does it take for you to park and walk to your destination on either end of this 15 minute trip?

Cars are the biggest barrier to improved public transit. We could have dedicated alignments for all of our high frequency buses if there wasn't parking or car traffic in the way.

There are plenty of examples in the US and globally that make it work just fine with comparable transit systems and populations.

Decent transit comes at the expense of parking and driving convenience. Gotta pick one.

Becoming a desirable neighborhood? When was it not?

I can't afford a house in Hampden (along with the other desirable neighborhoods). And there's little reason to cram more housing there when so much of the city is full of vacant properties with space for new housing and even parking.

Yes we need more public transport so I don't have to drive to Hampden every time, but what we really need is to expand outside the white L and make all of our communities more livable and desirable. I'm tired of watching the wealthy white people bicker over parking spaces.

You dont need more people and amenities first. You need better public transportation first.

If the elimination of select roads is part of an integrated and strategic public transportstion overhaul, sure.

But "getting rid of roads" is not the first step in fixing the problem.

When my dog passed last January we donated all of her canned food to a vet office that had a food pantry. Call your vet, see if they have a setup like this?

I guess I just have to disagree with the first statement that if public transpo was offered it would be shot down. And comparing the two options -- an affordable and reliable transit system -- with a massive luxury apartment complex in a cramped neighborhood -- aren't super comparable for many reasons.

As for the email from Odette, no real comment on that -- not sure where she is referring to so can't really make any educated opinions on that

Roads and parking lots ARE urban sprawl. Get rid of them and you can fit more people and amenities!

Hello hi yes I lived in Hampden for over a decade, even owning for 7 years, and last year when moving out of the starter home we were priced out of Hampden (or more like that decent 1200 sq ft house is not worth $375k. Sorry).

The building is an eyesore lmaoooo it's so bad