2026 Agendas

[mel]

February 23

Intro Question - what do you want your neighborhood to do for you and what can you do for your neighborhood this year?

Fill in this interest form wtih Greenlight to increase priority in bringing fiber internet to our area: https://www.greenlightnetworks.com/check-availability

Follow up coordination meeting in March - any dates 3/2 to 3/8 work?

Please suggest and comment on bylaw changes suggestions. Timeline is to bring back proposals next month and ratify if no changes or do another round and ratify in April.

Meeting Schedule:

1. Introductions
2. Resident requests
3. Scheduled guests
4. Additional guests
5. Routine org reporting (treasurer, president, swp, etc)
6. Open forum

Preregistered Guests

• Make Space
• Sarah Kanchuger from the Community Engagement Center (shes retiring! )
• Friends of Carroll Park
• Clay Pots

Supplemental coordination and planning meeting

• Legislative session coordination
• New committees rampup
• Anchor organizational outreach
• Bylaw amendments
• Events planning
• Community requests (new and old)
• Grants coordination

Events

• District Night is 3/2. Dan Morrison and his students will be performing! Carpooling to bus pickup available, contact Mel.
• First 311 neighborhood wellness walk on 3/21 starting at 1pm at 300 S Gilmor St! (the 76 bus stop with the bench)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Money Power Day March 14th 9-3 at Poly-Western (1.0 MB)

Nancy’s Third Bingo Event will be June 5th - Beach Bingo. 6pm at the Faith Center.

Resources

Baltimore Snow Corps - 311 request or volunteer to help with snow clearing

• Critical home repairs open thru 9/30, credit to Action Baybrook for this flier:
  
  

Tax season - free tax preparation resources:

• bmorefreetaxes.org for those making under 69k. Virtual Vita at the same income threshold.
  Baltimore English Free Tax Prep 2026.pdf (1.1 MB)
  Baltimore City Spanish Free Tax Prep 2026.pdf (1015.3 KB)

• CASH self directed tax prep assistance for anyone making over 69k but under 89k
  CASH FSA Self-Prep Flyer 2026.pdf (78.7 KB)

• Calling 211 will connect you with tax prep assistance.

• The Pratt Libraries are doing free tax preparation for incomes under 67k at the libraries in partnership with CASH.

• United Way does similar assisted preparation under 69k and a guided tool over that but under 89k.

• CASA does free tax prep for households undeer 64k income.

• The Comptroller of Maryland has offices that will do free state tax preparation regardless of income.

• Mel uses freetaxusa for federal and the Maryland iFile site for state taxes, they are both pretty straightforward and guided and have no income restrictions.

Surveys

Fill this interest form out for Greenlight Networks to bring fiber internet to Southwest!
DOT Dangerous Road Conditions Survey
DOT Near-Miss Crash Survey
SWP Safety Police Responsiveness Survey
Carroll Park Usage Survey

[mel]

Supplemental Planning Meeting Date TBD

Planned Attendees

Melanie Scheirer
Daniel Morrison
Jeffrey Campbell
Nancy McCormick
Jose Resendiz
Kintira Barbour
Meghan Cardoso

If you are reading this and want to attend we are planning something between 2/27 and 3/9 - email us here to get involved!

Legislative Session

Ends April 13th

Land use and transportation bills and testimony dates from BaltPOP (145.0 KB)

Committee Rampup

• Community Garden Committee (Daniel, Mia, Jeff)
• Community Engagement Committee
  • Block Captain Signups
  • Hispanic Outreach Committee - need someone bilingual, preferably that also knows French.
  • Neighbors that need support of some kind (especially if they need to shelter in place)
  • Professional neighbors doing good work - tradesmen, artists like Mia.
  • Track down blocks with insufficient or defective power transformers to get them replaced.
  • Get neighbors to get their water pressure checked and get on dpw about low water pressure, leaks, etc.
  • We need to prioritize the 200 block of Vincent and surrounding properties - Trish wants to propose a concept for the whole street. Going to work to get residents out to her presentation.
  • Mount Clare Snow Corps for future blizzards signups - people that need shoveled and neighbors that can shovel. Someone with a pickup we can get a plow?
  • Trumps Admin is adding hostile verification requirements to SNAP that will put a lot of people off the program, and they need support to get signed back up and access to local food banks in the meantime.
  • Neighborhood associations are empowered for self help nuisance abatement, particularly derelict abandoned neighbor properties. Community law center provides free legal council for this work, so we need to outreach neighbors interested in getting abatement help.
  • Trees - we need pit remediation, new tree planting, tree maintenance, new tree pits, and a perimeter of canopy trees at the garden. Chesapeke Bay Trust wants a signed maintenance plan, which I will sign with the gardening committee. We need a way to port and water trees which will need dozens of gallons a month - portable water tank in a hatchback trunk and someone with an outside tap we can use? We can use my Chevy Bolt. Can also use a wagon? We want to get water on the community garden this year. There is a maintenance small grant for $500 from Chesapeke Bay Trust that can help support upkeep of planted trees.
  • Community 311 walk days when the weather is nice, probably with pizza or something at the end at Traci Atkins.
  • Find residents being negatively impacted by vacant property and coordinate with hcd to get those vacants prioritized for rehab or demo.
  • Get a stencil big enough to spray a QR on some of our murals with a bitly link to either the website, facebook, or possibly video about the neighborhood ~Jose & Kintira

Organizational Outreach

• Corner Stores & Bar (Family Food Market, Hanna Grocery Store, Bar 1513)
• Lions Wood
• Tithe Corp / Skil-aire
• Volunteers of America Chesapeke
• Wilkens Mennonite
• Superfresh
• Black Yield Institute
• B&O

Updating Bylaws

Make suggestions here!

• Remove dues requirement
• Add requirement to attend a quarter of meetings held in a year rounded down (so 3 if we have 12, or 2 if we have less than that).

Event Planning

• Doing outreach to anchor orgs for support and participation on the spring kickoffs (Clay Pots, B&O, Carlyle, Mennonite Church, Wheelabrator)
• Planning a summer event at the Carroll Park Rec Center in May?
• National Night Out is August 4th
• October meeting do Halloween theme community cookout at faith center with spooky decor and candy giveaway?
• Coordinate Woodyear St as a halloween event street?
• Anyone want to rep Mount Clare at Live Baltimore Trolley Tour in May?

Community Requests

2025 Retrospective

Of the 28 projects tracked in 2025, 9 got completely finished, and 11 / 19 remaining had significant progress made! Projects completed:

• Planters and cleanup at the Cole St Garden - Nancy McCormick
• Professional planting in Carey St and Wilkins planters - Kintira Barbour
• The Cole St shed got broken into and tools stolen, needs new battery mower and trimmer - Nancy McCormick
• Sidewalk repairs, generally - Melanie Scheirer
• ADA compliant curb ramp installations, which can also be part of concrete curb extension installations - Melanie Scheirer
• Install 5 permanent benches at the five bus stops that currently don’t have one - there are 3 76 stops on Wilkens, one on Gilmor, and the Purple stop at Mount and Pratt. *the last stop is Mount & Wilkens where Mel’s working to get a bus shelter put in
• Our alleys are targets of illegal dumping and criminal activity and its a proven effective tactic to gate them to stop that. So we have ongoing outreach to gate anyones alley that is interested. funded in brni for 2026 thanks to SWP!
• There are a lot of grants for string or solar lighting that improves visibility and nighttime safety. swp safety grant in 2025!
• There are a lot of grants for cameras - either doorbell or fixed - and the citiwatch program subsidizes cameras as well. Cameras are proven to deter crime and are extremely useful to have for eg package theft or in case anything happens so you have video evidence. swp safety grant in 2025!

Also, Nancy and Mia got block captain boost grants from Clean Corps we are still excited to see finished!

Projects still to do, inherited to this year:

• Lighting at Fulton + Pratt, Gilmor + Pratt, Stricker + Pratt parklets - Kintira Barbour
• Painting Traci Atkins playground area - Kintira Barbour
• Three fixtures on Wilkins where airplanes were - Kintira Barbour
• 1505 McHenry Mural - Mia Morrison
• Vincent St Mural - Patricia Ofori / Make Space
• Raised crosswalk at Junction intersection - Charlotte
• Bump outs at Stricker + Ramsay at Park - Charlotte
• Woodyear Road Diet lane reduction and one way signage - Jose & Tom
• Littering & trash pickup day signage using NA logo and slogan - Kinara Barbour
• Intersection daylighting at all inner-neighborhood intersections - Melanie Scheirer
• Vacant lot acquisition and redevelopment for community benefit - Melanie Scheirer
• Replace destroyed neighborhood sign on Wilkens

New for 2026

• Diagonal parking road diets on Elizabeth Bowers blocks of McHenry and Jeff Campbells blocks of Mount St
• Get new shirts! we have 2 dozen people signed up that want them. If we printed 4 dozen it would probably cost about $1000. Mia suggests Cotton Heritage and that Abell Street Fair did great shirts.
• Sign for the Community Garden library
• Start ramping up a neighborhood camera network to try to get recording of all public row, plenty of grants to support this.

Funded Projects for 2026

Alley Gates funded!! through BRNI, thank you Southwest Partnership

• Jeffs block
• Both Make Space blocks
• Morrisons end of block
• Joses alley
• Nancys alley

Placemaking bump outs at McHenry, Mount, & Gilmor intersections

• Have a DOT letter of support for bollards, getting revised to doing it in hardscaping curb extension concrete with tree pits.

2026 Grants

• Already applied to BRNI for Pratt St placemaking in support of DOT Towards Zero work (met with mddot at their grants roadshow, so we’ll do a matching Transporatation Alternatives and Bikeways grant match next year for this funding if awarded, will likely fund bus islands).
• Already applying for Chesapeke Bay Trust urban trees grant, they want a maintenance plan - example (39.3 KB). Where do you want new street trees? (incl empty pits by your house, places you want a tree pit put, etc)
  
  
  
  
  
• Going to apply for Chesapeke Bay Trust grants to fund planned DPW bioswale installations for flood mitigation and management and also put in a BRNI request for the same.

[mel]

March 23

Disclaimer: this meeting will be recorded and publicly viewable!

Fill in this interest form with Greenlight to increase priority in bringing fiber internet to our area.

Please send 311 SRs of requests that werent done to your liking to Melanie!

HCD is talking to me about vacant nuisance abatement. Please let Melanie know any vacants or should be vacants that are making your life worse!

Melanie: president@mountclare.net 410-415-3038

Any older neighbor that is at risk of displacement from their home - reach out with your needs. We can apply for any amount from 25 to 150k from the Stulman grant to help keep elders in their homes.

Please suggest and comment on bylaw amendment suggestions. Timeline is to bring back proposals next month and ratify if no changes or do another round and ratify in April.

The city is doing investigations on smoke shops, any experiences and should we make a public statement?

Biopark has two new food places open

Black Philanthropy Circle grant is open in April - 25k for:

• Arts & culture
• Economic welfare (job placement, workforce training, etc.)
• Education, recreation and youth
• Community organizing (non-political) and community service
• Environment
• Human services
• Health and wellness.

Protecting Against Hate Crimes grant is open again in April. This can fund gating, fencing, cameras, and lighting, up to 50k. We’re definitely applying, just need priorities.

BCRP Summer Camp enrollment is open

Civic Works has summertime locally sourced produce subscriptions starting the first week of May. You can signup for weekly, biweekly, or monthly contactless deliveries or pickups at Hollins Market on Thursdays, or donate a subscription.

Its tax sale season, reach out to Donald Wright 410-545-6493 donaldwright3@baltimorecity.gov for deferral!
taxsaleprevention.vcf (453 Bytes)

University of Maryland Community Engagement Center has free Senior Art Classes every Friday! (open to anyone 18+!)

We need someone to take over the Facebook page!

Future of the spare 2 Carey St Planters? Black Cat Bakery wants to buy them to place in front of Hollins Market - Jose wants to place them in Mount Clare still. They have been sitting behind the junction for 4 years.

Speaking of planters, who wants to volunteer planting the existing ones and getting the graffiti off?

Nobody came out to the walk on the 21st from Mount Clare (Terrell and a a prospective home buyer came so we still did it and got a lot done!) so Mel cancelled the next one & invites neighbors to pick future dates, but someone should take charge on those if we want to have them.

Guests

1. B&O Railroad Museum presenting on their 200th anniversary project.
2. Tawanna Kane, executive director of Clay Pots
3. Nick Chupein our district planner! Its been a whole year!
4. Nia & Tiffany Scott from Maryland Peer Advisory Council
5. Superfresh Grocery Store, and they are bringing deli platters!

Upcoming Events

UMMS has a seizure study focus group with virtual meetings 3/31 and 4/2. If anyone can attend they are compensating time with a gift card. Email Mohammad Bayan your interest!

April 9th BGE District 9 Open House (3.3 MB)

April 10th 2-3:15 Last Clay Pots Volunteer Open House
Taxes due April 15th, see tax resources from last months agenda

Another wellness walk is scheduled for April 25th after MoveWell Festival!

Hollins Farmers Market April 18th 9-1 and every third saturday all summer (301.7 KB)

Fliers

![cpppanthers26|690x487](upload://

Sustain our Future - free home energy upgrades for households meeting income requirements that have oil propane or gas heating. (3.3 MB)
Tree Request Form (26.9 KB)
Make Space 2026 Accelerator (1.0 MB)
Transportation 101 April 29th - June 10th Free Program (42.0 KB)

Spanish_Carroll Park Sports Spring 26 PDF.pdf (179.7 KB)

[mel]

April 27

Intro Question - what do you want your neighborhood to do for you and what can you do for your neighborhood this year?

Chesapeke Bay Trust Urban Tree Mini Grant is open - could plant private trees and trees at the farm if anyone can water.

Mia suggested a stuff swap day. Would be in July at the earliest.

Melanie - trash can recovery day, where we find the big clumps of trash cans that accumulate in some parts of MC and redistribute them to neighbors who need one.

We need to vote on the amended bylaws - comment on proposed changes here or send commentary to Mel before 4/26 after that I’ll fix formatting and bring the amended docs to our meeting to vote on.

List of changes

• Redact the preamble ~ Becky Witt
• Strike quorum exemptions ~ Becky
• Adverse Interest section redacted, we should adopt a conflict of interest policy (next meeting) ~ Becky
• Striking presumption of assent in procedures ~ Mel
• No one person can hold two executive committee roles ~ Mel
• Make bylaw amendments a membership vote rather than board vote ~ Mel
• Duplicative terms of dissolution removed from bylaws - they are already in the articles of incorporation ~ Mel
• Voting is now attending 1/4 of the last 12 meetings, including the meeting a vote is called - basically, to vote, you need to have attended 2/11 meetings before the meeting you want to vote at. ~ Mel
• Members may only preemptively terminate membership via written notice ~ Mel
• Formalizes the board changes from January sans Kintira and Jeff and with Tawanna and Louis joining the board.

Guests

• SWP Housing Action Plan Quarterly Update
• Bon Secours & Lifebridge Health presenting services and events
• Healthy Neighborhoods

Upcoming Events

Nancy is planning another mothers day giveaway at the War Memorial * on May 10th from 2-4PM!

Clay Pots Community Day is on May 30th from 11-3 at 1635 W Pratt St!

Fliers

Healthy Neighborhoods Homeowners Resources (889.3 KB)
Healthy Neighborhoods Loans (1.3 MB)
Healthy Neighborhoods Purchase & Rehab FAQ (3.4 MB)
Healthy Neighborhoods Improvement Loans (5.9 MB)
Legacy Homeowners Pilot Frequently Asked Questions (910.9 KB)

Resources

• Clean Corps Community Challenge is open again for $1500 grants. We got 2 awards last year and 3 for their block captain boost so everyone that has any project they want in the neighborhood should apply. Reach out for application support.
• HUBS program, home repairs for seniors
• Universty of Maryland guarantees tuition coverage of unrollees with family incomes under 75k a year.
• Baltimore City Community College is tuition free and accessible on the CityLink Navy on Lombard & Carey streets.
• Meals on Wheels is accepting new applicants now if you are aging, homebound, & disabled.

Pet Food Banks

• Baltimore Humane Society/Bmore Kind Pet Food Bank –
  www.bmorehumane.org/services/bmorekind-pet-food-bank; 410-833-8848 ext. 2.
• Maryland SPCA - Kibble Connection Program - www.mdspca.org; 410-235-8826 extension 5003;
  rsilva@mdspca.org
• Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter (BARCS) – www.barcs.org/pet-owner-solutions; 410-396-
  4695; resource@barcs.org.
• MCQE - Mcqe Mobile Pet Pantry; (443) 507-6849 TEXT ONLY.
• Charm City Companions – www.charmcitycompanions.org; 443-863-8117;
  outreach@charmcitycompanions.org; located near McElderry Park.

[mel]

May 25

TBD have an outdoor meeting at Traci Atkins? A cookout style meeting would go from 5-8 with the formal meeting from 6-7.

Schedule second half of 2026 dumpster days

311 app tutorial?

Guests

• Eric James, Baltimore City DOT

Events

• Clay Pots Community Day is on Saturday the 30th from 11-3 at 1635 W Pratt St!

[mel]

June 22

TBD have an outdoor meeting at Traci Atkins?

[mel]

July 27

Do we want to do another meeting at Hollins Market? Could have it start early and let people shop from 5-6 and have lighter catering.\

Guests

• SWP Housing Action Plan Quarterly Update