While it’s way too soon to develop a lasting impression, we find Stephanie Rawlings-Blake a merciful breath of fresh air running city hall in Baltimore. Talk about trial by fire, having just assumed office on Thursday, February 4th, the following day the snow began to fall and by Saturday morning, the city of Baltimore was brought to a screeching halt by a historical snow storm. Immediately, she was thrown into office having to make executive decisions working with the city’s public safety and emergency preparedness operations to make sure resources are deployed to clear the streets and deal with having police, fire, and paramedic resources ready to deploy as needed. Naturally, she’d be called upon to address the media quick to drill her with questions on every little detail but having to maintain a sense of civility and calm to dispel public restlessness. As if the storm that disrupted the Mid-Atlantic region entering the weekend wasn’t bad enough, the city was just beginning to function again when more heavy snow, blinding winds, and significant accumulation, another blizzard in the popular vernacular, and given this was on top of that which has already fallen, the new mayor was leading the city through by far the worst winter weather emergency in the history of the region.
Through it all, the mayor remained upbeat and positive being very clear on what the challenges are and firmly telling the public what their responsibilities were, but she also showed tremendous respect and appreciation for all those involved in bringing Baltimore back to life from under often more than three feet of snow with substantial drifting with power outages through out the city. She noted, “Baltimore has never seen anything like this before,” and added the city was dealing with a, “difficult and inconvenient time for our citizens.” She also observed the real personal reality of the storm, “This city is not clear until your street is clear, so let's do this together.”
An attitude like that will earn much cooperation unlike the scolding the Governor and not too distant former Mayor, Martin O’Malley laid upon the State of Maryland.
We heard no whining, no finger pointing, no whoa is me, just clear determination. In less than a week, the new mayor dealt with circumstances never even remotely faced by her disgraced predecessor who has certainly not only disgraced the city with her criminal behavior but also left office kicking and screaming denying any wrong doing throughout burning every bridge en route on her road out of public life.
No mistake about it, Sheila Dixon was a bitch, a mean ugly bitch who was drunken with power, opportunistic from the word go who felt a sense of almost royal entitlement to the trappings of power serving as mayor of one of the nation’s great cities. That the charges against her involved the theft of resources set aside for the city’s most misfortunate for her own personal use showed a calloused disregard for the very people she was charged with trying to help. One could hardly hear Ms. Dixon speak without realizing the narrative was always about her and a sense that everyone else either owed her something or were out to get her. The finger pointing grew stale in a hurry.
Sheila Dixon’s misdeeds got national coverage from the Fox News Network to the National News pages of the New York Times showing a city government engrossed in corruption leading to its top official. This is not the kind of negative publicity the City of Baltimore needed having made so many advancements in rebuilding parts of the city where from the University of Maryland Hospital and downtown campus area and stadium neighborhoods in the west to Canton in the east, Baltimore is a city on the move with desirable business and residential properties filled with great entertainment, recreational, and dining facilities. It’s also a city with a failing school system which continues to crank out failure, decaying slums, and a dangerously high homicide rate, though slightly improved still presents the grim reality on any given day of the year, odds are better than not another African American male will be murdered.
One never got the impression that Mayor Dixon had any ability to act as a cheerleader for the city to invite businesses and residents to consider coming to Crab City nor did she give any indication of sensitivity dealing with the troubled neighborhoods of Baltimore. It was all about her, speaking in the first person, and attempting to shine in the spotlights.
What could be a more dramatic symbolic time for the City of Baltimore to turn a page in its history as one of America’s oldest cities must hope to see a bright history in its future. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake seems to understand this and we hope she will bring a pragmatic approach and new energy facing the mountains of challenges the city faces as one of America’s great cities.
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