February
- Intro Question - what do you want your neighborhood to do for you and what can you do for your neighborhood this year?
- Baltimore Snow Corps - 311 request or volunteer to help with snow clearing
- us@mountclare.net opt in?
- Tax season - free tax preparation resources:
- Virtual Vita does your taxes for you if you make under 69k a year
- CASH self directed tax prep assistance for anyone making over 69k but under 89k
- 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.
Guests
- Make Space staff
- Sarah Kanchuger from the Community Engagement Center (shes retiring!
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Legislative Session
- Ends April 13th
- Advocacy to fund Clean Corps, Bmorebus
- Land value tax shift
- Letter of support to state delegation to fund Clean Corps
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.
Organizational Outreach
- Clay Pots
- 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
Charter Amendments
- 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).
Events
- District Night is 3/2. Dan Morrison and his students will be performing! Carpooling to bus pickup available, contact Mel.
Planning
- 2 Spring dumpsters - I’ll do one in March with Clean Corps before they wind down on a weekday, taking day requests. I can take off work to watch the dumpster. Second dumpster in May on a weekend.
- Spring kickoff in late March and/or cookout in April at the Garden. Need a grill if anyone has one. Doing outreach to anchor orgs for support and participation (Clay Pots, B&O, Carlyle, Mennonite Church, Wheelabrator, SWP)
- Planning a summer event at the Carroll Park Rec Center in June
- 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?
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!
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.
- 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.
- 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.
Upcoming Events
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Tree Maintenance Plan Example (39.3 KB)