There is a simple answer to how Baltimore could spend the $670 million from the American Rescue Plan — a temporary Baltimore Conservation Corps (”How Baltimore is planning to spend $670 million in latest federal COVID relief aid,” May 3).
For two years, hire thousands of Baltimoreans to conserve and improve the city by cleaning vacant lots, remediating properties polluted by past industrial uses, installing green infrastructure such as solar panels and rain barrels, installing energy efficient windows and building and maintaining urban gardens and food forests making Baltimore a healthier, greener, more equitable city.
Direct jobs could employ thousands of unemployed and underemployed residents while pumping money directly into residents’ hands and therefore back into the local economy. Baltimore Conservation Corps employees would gain technical and vocational skills, not to mention cash, to improve their lives, their communities and gain marketable skills for new jobs after the American Rescue Plan funding runs out.
At $15 per hour, Baltimore could hire 5,000 corps members for two years for approximately $260 million, spend $200 million on equipment, materials and projects, spend $100 million on Conservation Corps administration and still have more than $100 million to play around with. Instead of paying for jobs to improve the city, those funds will probably wind up in the pockets of developers or to expand our $500 million-plus police budget or maybe to pay down the debt we’ve taken on to fund all those police pensions. That is old thinking and old thinking isn’t going to get us out of old problems.
Mayor Brandon Scott, be bold. Please. Baltimore needs more people who are being paid to make it healthier, greener and more equitable and with fewer people who are paid to keep the peace of poverty and stagnation
Charles Calvert, Baltimore
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