stop using state tax dollars to subsidize sprawl and instead use it for transit and bike lanes... that's not an option on the survey? ohh.

hijacking this comment to remind people to register to vote and check where they're supposed to cast a ballot if they haven't already.

Good point. In theory, they could put improved exhaust on them, but I don't think anyone wants to do that

not all activities are the same everywhere. if I grew up target shooting in my back yard, that does not mean it's ok to do so in a city.

as the phrase goes: your right to swing your arms stops at someone else's face.

you're absolutely right about a motorbike of either kind begging for bad behavior. that's one reason why riding dirtbikes in an area with high population density, like Baltimore, is just a bad idea to begin with. riding in a rural area, you're more likely to hurt yourself, which I'm more accepting of. when you start endangering others, that's where the "kids will be kids" argument that some make falls short.

there are a surprising (or unsurprising if you're paying attention) number of AI bots that write articles. perhaps this is one.

I wish more people could see the nuance of the situation. riding a dirbike around carefully is annoying because it's loud, but it can be done relatively safely and with minimal impact to others (aside from making a neighborhood look trashy). on the other hand, people can go too far and ride wheelies down busy sidewalks at 30-40mph, which could easily get someone killed. I wish we could separate those two and shut down the irresponsible/dangerous riding.

I wish more people could see the nuance of the situation. riding a dirbike around carefully is annoying because it's loud, but it can be done relatively safely and with minimal impact to others. on the other hand, people can go too far and ride wheelies down busy sidewalks at 30-40mph, which could easily get someone killed. I wish we could separate those two and shut down the irresponsible/dangerous riding.

1. everyone should get a dashcam if you don't have one.
2. if you get in an accident, make sure to take pictures or video of everything. their plate, both cars, them, and especially their ID. if they promise to pay, then they should have no problem giving your their ID.

when I get in an accident, I step out of the car with my phone held as if I'm not doing anything but the video is rolling the whole time.

you rebutted that people buy tax defunct property but have not shown that they would do so if such properties were required to bare the majority of the city's tax burden.

it is also not true that people stop improving houses to avoid taxes. look at the renovated houses in wealthier neighborhoods like roland park or bolton hill. people renovate those and make them amazing.

you're hand waving away all the problems.

you're focusing on the microcosm of problem that are solved by LVT and ignoring the problems created. meanwhile, the city could absolutely pass ordinances so places like 37-41W Preston get fined up the wazoo and could solve that problem if they wanted.

I had the unfortunate experience of living in one place while they fixed the gas pipes... then within a year of them finishing and re-paving, I move somewhere that was just starting the process. yes, they repave and repair sidewalks when done. in the meantime, there will be a lot of patches.

>Most of the vacants in Bmore are actually paying their taxes

source?

also, how many are going to keep paying when their tax bill goes up 100x? I would wager none, so the city would have to spend years in court and tax sale to take the properties, meanwhile have a fraction of the tax revenue. THEN you have to convince someone to buy it with the super-high taxes and build something... except developers already get tax deals in the city and they are still not developing most of those parcels of land anyway... what is someone's motivation to buy and build on a site when the only difference with LVT vs now is that LVT gives them a higher tax bill?

> the city is awful at actually enforcing fines, penalties, etc

that's because they know most won't pay it and it will cost the city a fortune to take over the property and they will never recoup their costs.

>There are reasons Baltimore is unique in the Northeast Corridor for its degree of abandoned property

yeah, crime. it's not the tax structure that is stopping development. property values in neighborhoods that are perceived to be safe. when I first moved the the city, a friend lived next to an abandoned hardware store in fed hill. it sat vacant for at least a decade... then... fed hill/SOBO became known as safe neighborhoods that property values doubled, which caused that hardware store to be replaced with brand new nice houses. it didn't require any special tax structure change, just a perception of safety.

>That means the neighbors house would only see 4% more taxes per year if owner occupied.

the taxes have to come from somewhere

> A 3 story rowhouse is not appraising for double a two story.

not true. 4br row houses (3-story) are often right next to 2br (2-story) and the price difference is often hundreds of thousands of dollars (30-50%) (just look at federal hill/south baltimore). that is enough to put someone's mortgage underwater to a degree that they will likely walk away.

>so rich areas would have much higher land values than poor

how would you even appraise this?

>As it is now, the tax code says if you don't improve your land, you pay less in tax, and thats enabling people to hoard derelict property that has extremely low tax rates

but there are already mechanisms that can be used to charge fines, fees, and taxes to people who aren't developing property. the #1 reason the city does not take over the bulk of vacant properties in this city is because they have no value to anyone and they cost money to maintain. if the properties were valuable to develop, the city would slap fines and fees on vacants for being attractive nuisances or fire hazards or whatever. the city does not want the properties, so they don't do that. land/property is undeveloped because of public safety, which causes people to not want to live in a place.

> but the whole point is to average the taxes out so that vacants get punished more and developers have more incentive to build up

average between whom, though? bigger houses with richer people get a break while smaller houses with poorer people pay more... yes, after they go bankrupt and the house sits vacant, maybe a developer would have more incentive to bulldoze the old row house and build a high density slum triplex... not sure that's what we want....

>I will admit, I don't think the historic townhouses in most of the city are sacred. They are, ultimately, just brick when their interiors rot and get burned out from arson. If historic preservation keeps places vacant and unlivable, the question becomes do we want Baltimore to be a mausoleum to 19th century brickwork or a livable city.

if LVT was applied only to neighborhoods with high vacancy rates, you might have a point. but there absolutely ARE many neighborhoods with very cool historic properties that would then be under very strong incentive to bulldoze and build higher.

​

>And nothing stops you from just adding a third, fourth, or fifth story to existing brick, or just requiring replacement construction adhere to those 19th century design standards of brick face

that's not how that actually happens, though. first, that does damage the history of the building. second, 12ft wide row houses make little sense to build up, but rather buy 2+ units, or whole blocks, and build very high up from that one location. LVT incentivizes knocking down whole blocks rather than adding 1 additional story to existing structures (which is all you can add due to the limits of existing construction.

there are also tons of things you're not accounting for, like: how do you set the land values? if it's not based on the structures that are there and their condition, then what is it? can such valuations be gamed? like, could a landlord intentionally buy a few houses and let them fall into disrepair so that the neighborhood's land value drops, thus lowering the tax burden on the rental units?

>How do you get to work in the winter or summer? Or when you have to bring supplies? Or when you have to commute a few dozen miles? Or when you can’t get to work covered in sweat? How do you take your kids to soccer practice? How do you get groceries? What about old people? What about people with physical disabilities? Bicycling only works under certain weather conditions for a very narrow set of people that has everything they need within 5 miles of their house and never has to transport anything bigger than a backpack.

I asked that you inform yourself and gave you links.

but I can give you the TL;DR: the advent of cargo ebikes and 3-wheel e-scooters remove all of the issues you've just mentioned.

> But most of us are getting fed up with the resources this city pours into

the city puts less money into bike lanes than into a single bus on a single bus route. you just don't know the cost of transit and the cost of infrastructure. if metros cost the same as bike lanes, then I would be saying we should build metros everywhere. bike lanes cost 1/60,000th the cost of a the average metro line in the US, per mile. but you don't know that because you drive a car everywhere because you have the mind of a boomer and haven't questioned whether there are ways that the city itself can improve things.

sorry for being so flippant with my dismissal.

taxes aren't the reason we have vacants. shifting the tax burden away from the higher value properties and onto the lower value properties would have a worse effect. say you own a 3-story rowhouse in some neighborhood... awesome, your tax bill drops, the value of your house skyrockets. but what if you're the person who owns the 2-story house next door?... your taxes suddenly go up dramatically, meaning you cannot sell your house for what you paid for it... now you're WAY under water on your mortgage. may as well file for bankruptcy and walk away. over time, all of the historic houses in the city that are 2-story can be bulldozed, I suppose, if you can get the historical society to agree to that. in the mean time, you'll have a lot more vacants and a much smaller tax base because you gave all of the wealthiest owners a huge tax break. you can raise the overall rate, but that will disproportionately harm the properties with lower value structures, exacerbating the problem.

in sim-city, such a system could work. in the real world, it's trading one distorted incentive for another, and the only way out is the destruction of historic properties. if the goal is to encourage development, other methods can be used.

>I live in the district with the most bike infrastructure, and no one uses it. You can count on one hand the number of bicycles I see in a year

1. that's just false.
2. networks of bike lanes grow ridership exponentially. think about if we swapped so that the streets with fully separated, protected bike lanes were the only streets on which you could use a car... nobody would drive because a single street does not get you anywhere.

>but 99.9999% of people in Baltimore have no plans to commute via bicycle.

with no bike lanes and no subsidy of bikes or scooters and no 3-wheel scooters, I wouldn't expect huge numbers of people to commute by bike. that's the fucking point. lots of people actually do commute using the lime/spin/etc. scooters already instead of taking buses. you make those options free, you give every route within the city the option of a protected lane, you make many of the lanes covered, and you distribute 3-wheel scooters and you will see lots of people using bikes.

it costs $2-$3 per passenger mile to operate buses in Baltimore city, but the ride is 75% subsidized so people still ride the buses (in low numbers). if you did the opposite, and subsidized rental bikes/scooters/trikes $1.5-$2.25 per mile and took the monthly bus pass from $75 to $308 and you would see skyrocketing bike-lane use (and plummeting bus use), and it would be faster and more environmentally friendly. but we can actually do one better than that, we can not just subsidize the rentals, but we can subsidize employers to lease bikes/scooters/trikes to employees. a new entry-level bike costs the same amount as a single month of bus pass if it wasn't subsidized. an e-bike costs as much as 3 monthly bus passes. except, the bikes will last 10x-100x longer than the bus pass for the same amount of money. other organizations can provide the same role of unemployed folks.

>We need rail, subways, and busses. Transportation for taxpaying adults with families and jobs that need to be able to work in the summer and winter, travel with their children, and get groceries

again, more boomer stupidity. educate yourself. and here.

>As bad as Bikemore wants this to be Amsterdam, this isn’t Amsterdam and it never will be

you're probably right, but not for any legitimate reason, just the pure ignorance you've already shown, which is all too common. people think they'll die if they're outside in the rain with full rain gear on, but the only thing that is killing people is car-centrism.

• abolishing the BPD would have to be done incredibly carefully or everyone with a good paying job would leave the city (more than they already are) if they perceive the transition as being rocky/dangerous. the city would likely have to increase police budget during the transition. this could certainly pay dividends in the long term, though.
• not enforcing traffic laws isn't an issue of resources, it's an issue of it being politically unpopular to fine poor people
• land value tax is stupid and never going to happen.
• I guess cities can put their own gas tax in place (either directly or indirectly). that might actually help with the budget. not enough to build substantial transit, but maybe it can build some bike lanes since they're orders of magnitude cheaper. the lost tax revenue from stations moving out of the city or closing may or may not be made up for by the extra tax rate.

yeah, more frequent buses, especially for central-city routes like the circulator, will draw more riders. it still won't be as fast or as green as bikes/scooters/tricycles, but better than cars.

yes, people CAN buy a tile, and everyone who hears about it AFTER their car is stolen goes "that's a great idea, I'm going to get one with my next vehicle". people tracking their cars only deters crimes if a significant portion of people have tiles. if you just wait for people to buy them on their own, most people simply won't because they don't know they exist, assume there is a subscription, or are otherwise unsure. if you give all car owners one, then they will try it out, see how it works, and will spread the word.

the trash cans or recycling bins could have been given out to only residences under a certain value and tell everyone else "hey, it's better for you and everyone if you buy a $100 can" but people wouldn't have bought them. some things have to be done all at once and across everywhere to work.

I started typing but I'm just deleting that message. it's so pointless arguing with someone who has no idea why it's impossible to run transit all over the county and also thinks that the only people who bike or would bike are 20-somethings. it's just so far out of touch that I would have assumed you were from towson or Timonium without you even having flair.

looks cool, but also looks expensive to install (and might be incompatible with how baltimore runs water/gas/sewer lines). I would definitely like them to study the concept.

better lead paint rules.

currently, the rule is that any chipped paint at all means you fail the inspection, even if there is no lead paint in the whole room, or even anywhere in the whole interior of the house. this leads to layer upon layer of caked on paint every time a rental unit turns over so they can pass the test before it starts flaking again.

the way it is done does not actually stop the paint from flaking once it is touched, it just hides the flaking long enough to pass the inspection.

blistering and flaking paint should have to be tested and if found to have lead, then you fail. if it's not leaded, then blistering or flaking paint isn't a problem and there is no need to slather another coat onto the old house, causing the windows and doors to eventually not work well.

currently, blistering paint, as long as it has a fresh coat over it, still passes the test, even though just touching the blistered paint can expose lead, let alone a kid teething on some trim, which would go straight through the layer of new paint.

it would be much harder than them just tracking your cellphone everywhere. the Tile itself does not know where it is. if you're too paranoid to carry a cellphone, then maybe you're too paranoid for a Tile as well. if you carry a cellphone, then this is a dumbass comment

they are only in a couple of cities. I don't think baltimore has them yet, but if we offered to subsidize rides like transit, I'm sure companies would be willing to offer those to get the deal done.

how about Tile Pros for every car owner?

car jackings are dangerous to citizens, AND they have follow-on effects where the danger depresses housing values and pushes people (taxes) and businesses (taxes and jobs) out of the city.

a Tile is a little bluetooth tracker that updates through the network of other users, but those other users never get to see where your tile is. that means you can hide a Tile in your car somewhere, and if it is ever stolen, you would be able to track where your car is, without a subscription. if every household or car owner in the city was sent one of these, along with instructions to hide it in their car, it has the potentially do dramatically reduce car theft and car-jackings because the chances of catching the thief go way up, and often the thieves use stolen cars for doing some other activity, like running drugs or hits, but even a small chance of being tracked would dampen that use. reducing the rate of theft would lower everyone's insurance rates, putting money into the local economy, and it would reduce armed crime rates, which will improve property values and safety. and nobody would be required to share their data with the police or anyone else. people would track their own devices, so no big-brother issues.

so:

• track your car if it is stolen (or you forget where you parked)
• no subscription
• change battery once per year
• no big-brother tracking you. only you get to see the location (and whomever you let log into your account)
• range is good enough that within baltimore city, devices will locate your Tile every couple of minutes (faster if it is moving)
• could use it for other property as well, like a bike, motorcycle, ATV, dirtbike, etc. that might be stolen.
• would cost less than the trash cans or recycling bins that everyone was given (even after the private donation)
• users could also buy additional ones to track many pieces of property or just their keys