Flower Mart relocation is a smart move

Most of us treasure tradition and don't relish change. Yes, the Flower Mart in Mount Vernon Place was an idyllic setting. But so is the proposed new location at City Hall Plaza, an under-used center of historic buildings and a large, open square ideal for such functions.

Such a relocation could prove to be a "win-win" situation for the fund-raising activities of the Women's Civic League, its many charitable causes and patrons, and Baltimore City as a whole.

Relatively few of our citizens have had the opportunity to stroll leisurely through such magnificently designed institutions as City Hall, the War Memorial Building, the Peale Museum and Zion Church (founded 1755), while enjoying all the benefits of the Flower Mart.

In addition to the aesthetic benefits, there are practical benefits associated with relocating the Flower Mart to City Hall Plaza:

* In case of rain, the surrounding institutions provide shelter and interest for many more people.

* The plaza has more readily available parking adjacent to the actual Flower Mart exhibits and other offerings.

* Fewer traffic tie-ups at rush hour.

Our mayor and the Women's Civic League deserve much credit for their courageous decision in view of the sentimental opposition to the move.

But Mount Vernon Place will always remain an internationally recognized architectural gem.

William H. C. Wilson

Baltimore

Disappointed fan

I am a typical Oriole fan -- 10 games a year, watch every night on TV and check out the call-in shows and newspaper sports section every day.

The O's are a part of my life. When they win my days are better, and when they lose it bothers me all day. But I am now on strike against baseball. Both sides are right and both sides are very wrong. Both sides make me sick.

As far as I'm concerned, the season ended in July. I won't go to the stadium. I won't watch TV. I won't read about baseball this year.

I believe there will be a play-off and a World Series, but I've lost interest.

I'm not naive enough to think that I won't be back next year. I always come back. But baseball has lost me and many others like me for the rest of the year.

Geoffrey A. Becker

Baltimore

Who's the boss?

I disagree strongly with residents becoming embroiled in internal police department matters. Their meddling into Maj. Barry Powell's reassignment ultimately could be detrimental to the career policeman ("NW police commander says he serves at pleasure of commissioner," Aug. 12).

The police commissioner, hired to oversee Baltimore's entire force, announced early that he would be broadening job experiences of all officers through re-assignments. It is his prerogative to move his workers about to serve the greatest ultimate good . . .

We elected the City Council and mayor. They hired the police commissioner, who has responsibility to run his department efficiently and effectively . . .

Citizens' right to elect representatives does not make us a personnel agency for any city or state department. Any elected representative involved in promoting the present chaos in northwest Baltimore deserves to be voted out of office.

Mary E. Weller

Baltimore

F.O.B.

When he was a candidate, Bill Clinton's promise of loyalty was stated in this manner: "I'll be with you 'till the last dog dies."

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals should be surrounding the White House now, as canine deaths approach epidemic proportions.

Initially, F.O.B. stood for "Friends of Bill." Now it has come to mean "Fear of Back-stabbing."

McNair Taylor

Baltimore

Earthy wisdom

Please let candidates and their staff in on a quote from Thomas D'Alesandro Jr. years ago:

"If you sling mud, you lose ground."

Bill Pappas

Baltimore

'Social engineering' housing is not new

In her letter "Moving the poor" Aug. 10, Ellie Fier decries "social engineering" by which government "is forcing its own decisions down the throats of property owners and the wage-earning middle class."

Ms. Fier asks: "When has there ever been a successful precedent for such planning?" If the measure of success is accomplishing the intended objective, then examples abound; let me cite a few.

1) In 1910, the Baltimore City Council passed the nation's first racially restrictive zoning law prohibiting blacks and whites from buying homes in city blocks already occupied by only one race. This successfully fostered segregation of neighborhoods by race.

2) A 1945 Housing Authority of Baltimore City document details its use of federal funds to build separate "Negro" and "white" housing to discourage "racial and group movements within the city." Again, successful "social engineering" to maintain segregation.

3) Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) succeeded in shaping the housing market in the United States through blatantly discriminatory lending policies and practices that favored young, white families and made it virtually impossible for similarly qualified black families to obtain FHA insured mortgages.

Less than 2 percent of FHA insured loans were granted to blacks; almost all were granted to whites for homes in white suburban counties.

4) The Veterans Administration had a similar record, with whites receiving 98 percent of its guaranteed mortgages. Black veterans,

who had served their country just as honorably as whites were generally denied the opportunity to become home owners with virtually no down payment, as VA loans made possible.

5) FHA and VA policies of giving commitments to insure mortgages on entire housing tracts in advance of construction permitted lending institutions to make advance financing commitments, thus enabling builders to construct hundreds of thousands of houses, all exclusively white and all outside of central cities. Again, we had successful social engineering on a grand scale.

6) After World II, massive federal expenditures for highway construction succeeded in spawning millions of acres of new suburban development.

Those developments provided new housing and job opportunities for millions of young, white, middle-income families, and the new roads provided quick and easy access from home to job.

Blacks were excluded from those developments first by law and various legal devices and later by covert practices.

Highway construction also made it possible to "engineer" the destruction of established, middle-class black communities, located undesirably close to new white communities, forcing their residents to move to the cities.

Here in Maryland, for example, 22 black families were forced to move when Baltimore County built an interchange through their neighborhood.

The families all had jobs in the county; none received compensation for their loss.

These government initiated policies and practices that helped to institutionalize racial segregation in America could all be characterized as successful examples of "social engineering."

They all involved the expenditure of billions of government dollars to benefit white "property owners and the wage-earning middle class" and the deliberate denial of the same benefits to blacks.

Such "social engineering", to use Ms. Fier's words, succeeded in deciding the "demographics of our neighborhoods, dictating the ratios of people to live there, and determining what subsidies they . . . receive -- all without the input of those on whom this disaster" has fallen.

For most of this century, the disaster has fallen on blacks, not whites. Let us not even consider the preceding 250 years.

Ms. Fier may characterize the moving of 285 Baltimore families under the Move To Opportunity program as "social engineering" and "population control," if she chooses.

I hope that she would similarly characterize and condemn with equal vigor these other government actions that succeeded for so long in benefiting whites and helping to create the problems that programs like MTO are trying to address.

Unfortunately, her condemnation, at this point, would do nothing to lessen the tremendous advantage that whites have received or correct the damage done to blacks.

Martin A. Dyer

Baltimore