Where every day is an open door

Hello? Is this thing on? We’ve been without Internet for a couple of days, but it looks like we’re back, and with a stronger Mbps rate, to boot. We’ve also been slacking on the cool, eco-friendly things Baltimore has been doing as of late, so let’s pause for an update.

Before Mayor Dixon resigned, the city introduced a fleet of DesignLine 2009 EcoSaver buses called the Charm City Circulator as part of an on-going plan to revitalize the city’s public trans., and there’s lots of rooftop gardening and urban sustainability projects going on locally, as well. B’More Green, the Baltimore Sun’s environmental blog, brought up a recent interview with Gov. O’Malley where he talked about doing more to strengthen solar power development and offer tax breaks for electric cars. The article also mentions the major budget crunch hampering many of the state’s green efforts, so who knows how far any of O’Malley’s plans will go. Hopefully he’ll do better for Baltimore as a governor than a mayor, not that we have much room to complain about his mayoral legacy in light of our current, rudderless City Hall.
But before we all go patting ourselves on the back about eco-friendliness, there’s also a story about how far the city still has to go: turns out local woman Maxine Taylor was cited last year for “having a driveway and parking pad made out of wood chips.” The city’s zoning codes still insist that parking areas have to be “dustless” asphalt, brick, concrete or stone block,” even as Baltimore’s Sustainability Plan hopes to engage residents in making the city a cleaner, greener place. Oops.

We’ll stop here, just short of jinxing our repaired Internet connection, but we’ll post again later in the week.