My experience with the code enforcement folks has been horrible. The neighbor at the end of my street puts his trash out on the street whenever he wants, no can, only a big trash bag. Rats just have a field day so several of us have called the city. Two months later nothing has been done. When we call, they take their sweet time going out there and by the time they do, trash has been collected and they see nothing wrong. Welcome to Baltimore!

i think that's a great idea!

It sure looks like a good idea on the surface, huh? The law of unintended consequences will show up in about 3 months.

Absent the enforcers "ticketing" people (with clear ID) when actually caught in the act... this will only penalize and serve to even further alienate owner residents and make rentals even more expensive.

The trash is a **symptom** of the problem in these alleys and only in a very very few instances is it caused by the property owners who will be getting these bills (if the city can even get them mailed to the right party).

Although some people detest the new "One Plus One" trash & recycling pickup schedule, I have to give DPW credit for sticking by their promise to step up their sanitation enforcement efforts. Before the change, I was frustrated with the amount of time it took them to investigate illegal dumping and other sanitation violations. It would take them over 72 hours to investigate the problem- and by the time they arrived, the trash had already been picked up. I've now seen some of my complaints investigated within 24 hours, and now that they're opening trash bags and citing the offending parties, the illegal dumping that's occurring in my alley has decreased significantly.

Now if they would only crack down on the people who are using the public trash cans to dispose of their household trash.

M,

Don't bother calling 311- it's a waste of time. Instead, file your complaint online, and write down your confirmation number. You can look up the status of your complaint using this website. If the problem wasn't resolved to your satisfaction, then escalate your problem to Michael Braverman's office.

Mr. Rational,

The inspectors are opening up the trash bags and looking for anything that has an address on it in order to cite the dumper, not the property owner.

You can infer that the party with their name on a letter dumped the bag of trash. Infer all you want... but don't try to go to court with it.

MCG I'm not disputing the surface intention as being a good thing... I just have no confidence that it won't prove to be unmanageable and, as in your example, unprovable.

Call me skeptical.

Wow, that's absolutely ridiculous. Ok, some of the things pictured are legitimate, but I saw a lot of pictures of signs on the sides of businesses or things in peoples' own backyards. I wouldn't be able to handle city living with that level of code enforcement. It's oppressive when they peek in your windows or peer into your yard. It looks like it's a violation just to have an outdoor patio set!

The place on Baylis has been cleaned up. They have been working on the property and it looks 100x better. Maybe this was the reason for the increased activity.

Sorry, I was looking at the violation not citation portion of the website. On the Violation portion the 1000 baylis is the property that looks good,

Thanks for the shout-out, Jamie!

We love the new feature -- I've always wondered who left three black garbage bags on my corner week after week -- and now I know. Turns out it's not even a neighborhood resident -- it's someone who lives across town!

I hope they enjoy paying the fine...

"Yes Officer Obie, I put that envelope under that pile of garbage."

And let's not forget that Guthrie was convicted.

I was pretty excited to read the Baltimore Sun article about the new code enforcement rules - the problem is, I can't seem to find anything in writing on the Baltimore Housing website that acknowledges the change. There's a press release about new rules for failure to get a permit, but nothing about fines for code violations. I'd like to share this news with my neighbors, but want to give them specific information, straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak. Any idea where I could dig this up?

Olga, I haven't seen anything in writing from Baltimore Housing -- probably because it won't be rolling the fines out for another three to six months. (I called the agency about the citation photos, which is how the subject came up.)

But you can send neighbors here -- this appears to be the authorizing legislation: http://legistar.baltimorecitycouncil.com/detailreport/?key=4351

It appears that housing is not keeping this database up to date. The last violation that was listed for my neighborhood was dated 8/28/09.

Thank you, Jamie! Your link was a great help!