Business to new mayor: Bail us out from trash, theft
Wednesday's column focused on the woes of Crossroads Industrial Park in Southwest Baltimore. In the last couple years companies there have put up with construction waste dumped on their properties, theft and destruction of expensive air conditioning equipment, burglaries, squatters in RVs, streets that don't get plowed and trash all over the place. 
From the column:
Exhibit A of the squalor is a dumped boat that has been sitting in the park for months. Bindagraphics' Marc Van Camp sent this shot to the city in an email titled: "Ahoy There!" I'll let you know when the city gets rid of it.Send us ideas," Baltimore mayor-apparent Stephanie Rawlings-Blake told businesses. Here's a radical one: Deliver minimum amounts of cleanliness, safety and service to city companies or keep watching them bug out to the suburbs.
The people in Crossroads Industrial Park don't just perform the equivalent of two or three jobs - the typical lot of the small-business operator. They also have to be cops, detectives, trash haulers, snow plowers, railway repairers, lobbyists and God knows what else to get basic services they pay the city for but don't receive.
