Notes from the Beach

Notes from the beach…

Baltimore:

Mayor-by-default Sheila Dixon proposes requiring those convicted of gun crimes to “register” with the police department. Does the city prosecutor not have a record of these people’s names? And if the courts have not declared them to be probationers, what legal basis might the city have to require that they keep the police apprised of their whereabouts?

The Accidental Mayor, Sheila Dixon, now proposes requiring landlords who evict non-paying tenants to store the eviction chattels for three days until the deadbeats decide whether or not to claim them. Whether the stuff is stored on-premises by changing locks and barricading windows, or hauled away to a mini-storage facility, this requirement increases the property owner’s cost by a factor of 3 or 4 times, without providing any benefit. The defaulting tenants would be free to reclaim their property, but there is no provision to allow the aggrieved landlord to sell it to recoup his losses. Much has been written about the poor, unfortunate tenants’ plight, as though none of the seven thousand evicted in the city each year bear any responsibility for the situation in which they find themselves.

Downy Oshun:

A common human error is to assume that because we have something to say, someone else—too frequently a person who just happens to be within earshot—might be interested in hearing it. That’s the beauty of blogging, and other forms of writing-for-the-drawer: if someone is interested enough to read, fine. If not, no one is put on the spot, having to politely tolerate a boor.

County officials here in Worcester debate whether or not it is appropriate or necessary to have “school resource officers” in the high schools. Meanwhile, nobody debates whether the necessity for cops in the public schools (much less prison-style management techniques such as lock-downs) are a shameful indicator that the education system has failed.

We visit the shore about once a year, and the same debates seem to be raging over development. The market has been beyond saturation for a few years, but developers still manage to propose and start new projects. The last estimate I heard was that O.C. will require five years to absorb all the dwellings currently offered for sale. Ocean City residents express concern about the number of seemingly-abandoned construction projects, even as in nearby Snow Hill the powers that be prepare to permit a project proposed to add two thousand dwellings. Worse, the developer will eventually be required to build a wastewater treatment facility, but will be allowed to build and sell the first few hundred units, connecting them to the existing one. This means that when the developer goes belly-up, the new facility will remain unbuilt, while the existing one will be overburdened. This process has repeated itself enough times to be predictable, and avoidable. In the meantime, when local government people allow it to happen, the blame will eventually fall on someone higher-up, as happened with the late governor Ehrlich.

An errant young driver is stopped in Ocean City for playing his car stereo too loud, and ends up arrested for the possession of three “replica guns,” under what law, who knows? Meanwhile, Ocean City Today reports that “numerous” of the items were seized. The number three is indeed “numerous,” under the standard definition of the word, but to lead the story with that word is inflammatory, when the word “several” would have been more appropriate. It can only be presumed that the editors of the paper intended the exaggeration.

Verbatim:

Ocean City police arrested an 18-year-od man on April 27, after numerous fake weapons were allegedly found in his car

Brandon Scott Olup of Halethorpe, MD, was charged with possession of gun replicas.

Police stopped a car driven by Olup at 30th Street and Philadelphia Avenue because the stereo system was playing louder than allowed by local ordinances. when police approached the car, they reportedly saw what looke like two guns on the floor of the back seat.

After police got the two occupants out of the car, they found that the guns were replica firearms and arrested Olup. A third gun replica was also found in a bag on the back seat.

tags: real estate  rkba  ocean city md  

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