Help for Rosemont PAL?
The shuttered Rosemont Police Athletic League Center may get a second chance after all. Residents in West Baltimore have been trying to reopen this rec center since the city closed it several months ago and turned over the police youth centers to the rec department.
But the man leading the charge, Richard Mosely, whose son Sean plays for the University of Maryland basketball team, has met nothing but obstacles. Today, at a scheduled meeting of the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, Gary D. Maynard, secretary of Public Safety & Correctional Services, offered to help.
Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton reports:
Maynard said one of his agency’s initiatives is to get inmates working and involved in community service. To that end, he said he saw news reports in The Sun about the Rosemont PAL center closing and has proposed a partnership to renovate or assist in renovations that could help the center stay open.
“We want to look at the possibility of making it functional and available for kids in the community,” Maynard told an assembled crowd of criminal justice leaders.
Under the proposal, Maynard said inmate labor crews would use the skills they’ve learned to renovate the center. He envisions creating apprenticeship programs to prepare others to assist with key work, and said the agency would work with the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation to make sure it is up to code.
“We would be the gopher in trying to pull this together,” Maynard said.
In addition to providing inmates with community service projects, Maynard said there’s the added benefit of keeping kids off the street. “It makes my job easier,” Maynard said.
