The fix is in.
It's been a year since Watchdog debuted with a column that prompted the city to remove jagged light pole stumps along a path used by schoolchildren in Northeast Baltimore.
Since then, this space has addressed 52 problems, of which 34 have been resolved. Eleven have not been fixed, and repairs are pending for seven others.
The street "Charlers" is now correctly spelled on a subway sign; a broken hydrant in Towson now has water; parking spaces have been reclaimed by customers at a post office in Brooklyn Park; corn sprouting from a storm drain in Highlandtown has been cut; a directional arrow telling drivers to turn the wrong way on one-way Pratt Street has been removed.
It is here we tackle the issues that don't quite qualify as being scandalous but are still too important or too embarrassing to ignore - problems that seem to have been forgotten by the government to become accepted quirks of unresponsive or complacent bureaucracies.
"You cannot see where to make a left or a right on the bridge at Ruxton Road and Bellona Avenue because of overgrown grass," Joyce Williams said in a recorded message to the Watchdog hot line.
The government will not fall because the grass is too high. Angry mobs will not march on City Hall. People will complain and maybe write a letter or two, or call some official office, but deep down they fear that few things will ever get fixed, or fixed in a reasonable amount of time, or that they will ever talk with a human being who can help them.
All too often they are right.
The city urges people to call 311 as a one-stop complaint shop; frustrated residents call Watchdog when their calls to 311 go unheeded. An elderly woman left a message on the Watchdog line the other day: "Please help me. I have called the city 21 times for a stray cat. No one comes."
We all know the city and surrounding counties have vexing problems: crime, troubled schools, drugs and all of the countless interrelated factors that contribute to social ills. But it's the little things that really irk the citizenry: poorly maintained streets, unkempt lots, waterless fountains, confusing signs, potholes and buses that don't run on time.
This column is a way for people to vent.
All Darrell Bishop wanted was an ugly billboard removed from the side of an apartment building on St. Paul Street in Mid-Town Belvedere. For months he complained, and when he turned to Watchdog, a city attorney promised it would come down.
A month later, it was still up.
"The Sun does regular updates on issues that appear in this column where the problem hasn't been fixed," Bishop wrote the mayor in August. "This issue has been updated once. My question for you is this. Just what do I have to do to get this thing removed? I have followed established procedures and the city government, which you head, apparently doesn't. If I were you I would be livid because THEY MAKE YOU LOOK LIKE AN IDIOT. If they don't do their jobs, replace them. The buck stops at your desk."
The billboard was removed over the Sept. 22 weekend, about 60 days after Watchdog's first report.
Other issues also remain unresolved. A gap still remains in a fence at the bottom of South Charles Street, allowing access to CSX railroad tracks; a newly repaired sidewalk in Annapolis still looks like a roller coaster; and delivery trucks still block rush-hour travel lanes on Calvert Street near the Inner Harbor, despite stepped-up enforcement after a column.
Sometimes, fixes aren't really fixes at all.
The city promised to take care of a crosswalk at the northern entrance to Federal Hill that guided law-abiding pedestrians to a traffic island from which there was no escape. Workers did repaint the crosswalk at a better spot, but left the old one to simply fade away. Now it just looks like a crosswalk that needs repair, instead of one that shouldn't be there at all. People still cross there and end up as confused as ever when they reach a dead end.
And not everything is clear-cut. A resident of North Baltimore called to complain that speed humps on Walker Avenue were too high and could damage cars. Watchdog investigated and discovered they were indeed built higher than the city standard, and officials vowed to make changes if necessary.
But Adrienne Barnes, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Department, said other residents read the item and called the division chief listed in the column under "who can fix this" and "pleaded with us not to modify or change the humps." They wanted them big to slow speeders. "They are grateful that we installed the humps the way we did," Barnes said.
So there was a problem, and it was addressed by not being addressed, to the satisfaction of many, but not of all.
Watchdog "allows us to receive feedback and helps us to make decisions for future work orders and requests," Barnes said.
Most of the time, one call from this column sends officials scrambling to make amends. The cornstalks in Highlandtown were cut down within hours of an inquiry. A state highway official, on his way home from work, drove out to scope out a problem intersection and then ordered a fix, again within hours of a call from the newspaper.
The fear is that our diligent city, county and state workers are quickly fixing problems the newspaper chooses to highlight, while not being as diligent about the hundreds of other problems that pour in every day. The hope is that this column prompts our civil servants to take all complaints more seriously.
Traffic issues remain the No. 1 issue of concern. The city Department of Transportation leads the Watchdog hit parade with 11 items, followed by the Department of Public Works (city and Baltimore County) with 10 and the State Highway Administration with eight.
Kurt L. Kocher, the spokesman for Baltimore's Department of Public Works, one of the oft-quoted public officials, notes that the column "has been useful in bringing up issues that may have been overlooked or which straddled the private versus public sphere and therefore fell between the cracks."
The spokesman said a "vast majority" of complaints are effectively handled through 311. "Prior to 311, there were times even I didn't know who to call, so the ease of a one-call center for all issues has certainly alleviated that problem," Kocher said.
That most of the complaints come from the city is no surprise to Kocher. "Baltimore City's infrastructure predates by over a century most of the surrounding jurisdictions," he said. "As we continue to make massive investments in our infrastructure, that will equal out, or may even be reversed."
Watchdog will be watching.
Need help?
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Watchdog The Baltimore Sun 501 N. Calvert St. Baltimore 21278 Please include a daytime phone number. We can't respond to every call but will address as many submissions as we can. And we'll follow up on as many of the problems as we can.