Advocates of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s proposed bottle tax increase to fund city school repairs got a surprise last night – a lecture from two council members on personal responsibility.

“There’s trash in the bathrooms? Who put the trash in the bathrooms! There’s graffiti on the walls? Who put it there!” said Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young, addressing a crowd of advocates packing City Hall, among them parents and children as young as nine.

Councilman James B. Kraft aimed his barbs at Patterson High School, where last week the advocates held an event highlighting broken windows, malfunctioning boilers and overheated classrooms.

Kraft acknowledged that the school, which is in his district, “has serious, serious problems, as do many of our schools,” but complained about student behavior.

“Every single day they keep cutting the fence . . . that goes to the park. And every time Rec and Parks has to fix the fence. What sense does that make?” he said. “With those rights come responsibility.”

Their remarks came after the formal introduction of legislation that would more than double the city’s bottle tax as part of a plan to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars to fix dilapidated public schools.

After the meeting, Rev. Douglas I. Miles blasted the two councilmen for “taking a cheap shot at the children of Baltimore” and “playing to the cameras.”

Responsibility vs. Neglect

“To point out acts of vandalism when we’re talking about major problems with school buildings and systems and years of neglect – it muddies the waters,” said Miles, co-chair of the faith and community organization Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD). “Shame on the Council President! Shame on Councilman Kraft!”

It was just one taste the advocates got yesterday of the battle ahead, as they push for a funding mechanism to renovate and repair schools. A 2010 American Civil Liberties Union study concluded $2.8 billion is needed.

Rawlings-Blake’s proposal to raise the per-bottle tax from two to five cents is part of a plan that would allow for borrowing $300 million toward the problem. The advocates want her to support city schools CEO Andres Alonso’s approach which would raise $1.2 billion via bonds.

Miles, who is also bishop of Koinonia Baptist Church, reiterated the point last night. “$300 million is like putting a band-aid on a cancer,” he said. “We’ll find ourselves in the same position 10 years down the road.”

Meanwhile Maryland Beverage Association lobbyist Ellen Valentino worked the room as well, a reminder that opponents of the tax increase are mounting serious opposition.

Assembling earlier in the day at a local supermarket, store owners, some union leaders and beverage industry lobbyists said the tax hike would make it harder to do business in the city.

The tax “gives our customers a reason to cross the border to do their shopping in the suburbs, further debilitating the grocers, retailers, and beverage bottlers in Baltimore City that provide good-paying jobs to hard-working residents,” said Sandy Vary, owner of Bel-Garden Bi-Rite Supermarket, as she stood with fellow members of the Stop the Baltimore City Beverage Tax coalition.

A Bullet-riddled Portable

For the parents who came to City Hall last night, many of whom were wearing BUILD’s signature teal blue tee-shirts, the idea of putting a few pennies for a bottle of soda above their children’s schools is unfathomable.

“From the moment my children were born, they became my whole focus. And now I hand them over to the schools? They are in terrible disrepair,” said Arica Gonzalez, who lives in Panway in West Baltimore and has a four year-old daughter and three-year-old son both in pre-school.

“There’s an old abandoned portable outside my son’s school [John Eager Howard Elementary School] that’s filled with asbestos and riddled with bullet holes,” Gonzalez said. “The dealers hide their stash behind it.”

Gonzalez said she found the remarks by Young and Kraft “really disheartening” but was hopeful that the bottle tax would pass “and be one of the things we’ll do to make this better.”

Collapsed Ceiling in Roland Park

Dilapidation is not just a problem in impoverished city neighborhoods, members of the audience were there to say.

Charles Hayek, a third-grader who attends Roland Park Elementary School, described a wobbly part of a stair railing that has to be propped up with a supporting “pole,” a time this year “when we had four days without water and we had to use bottled water” and a multi-purpose room that is “hot all the time.”

“There’s a place in the pipes where the water drips and part of the ceiling fell down,” Hayek said, describing a classroom.

Hal T. Ley Hayek, Dean of the Cathedral of the Incarnation, listened to his son’s lengthy description and reminded him to show a reporter what he’d been clutching in his hand.

“I wanted to get them to pass this bill to raise money to fix the schools,” the boy said, displaying a couple of nickels.

The other symbolic objects proffered last night were the potted primroses given to council members by the Baltimore’s Safe & Sound Campaign.

At the group’s request, resolutions were introduced advocating increased funding for summer jobs programs for city youth, expanding and improving the city’s YouthWorks program and re-directing youth jail construction funds toward city recreation centers and schools.

“Scaring people and threatening them with the idea that ‘if you don’t support these kids they’re going to come and rob you’ is such a wrong approach,” said Hathaway Ferebee, executive director of Safe & Sound.

“We should offer opportunities to young people because they’re our children,” Ferebee said, “and we know that if we nurture them like those flowers, they will grow.”