A National Aquarium without dolphins?

“Unfortunately once an animal, dolphins included, have become accustomed to human interaction it is impossible to erase that from it’s history. Even if they were capable of hunting they would still solicit food and affection at any available opportunity putting both the animal and people in harms way. I have worked in and around the marine mammal field for the better part of 20 years, including training in human care to ocean-based research and tracking. There are many papers, reports, and studies on attempted releases, none could be classified as successful, if you hear otherwise it’s just PR spin.”
– my2cents

“What you said is not true at all. There are very successful release programs, and long established protocols to do so. (For more info, search for Dolphin Project, then look for Release Captive Dolphins.) And if release back to the wild is deemed not suitable for some dolphins, to release them to sea-pens rather than being kept in tiny tanks in aquariums is shown to be much more humane as well. At least they won’t be punished and starved if they don’t feel like doing tricks for humans.”
– Helen Tam-Semmens

“Dolphins are NEVER punished or starved in captivity, at least in the USA. As someone who has been in the marine mammal training field, I can tell you that the dolphins are the ones running the show. . . Dolphins have set amounts of food they get every day, and the animals will always get that amount of food.”
– Ky

“There is no better alternative for the care and maintenance of captive born or long-term captive dolphins than an AZA accredited facility. Sanctuaries are less-regulated and underfunded and release is a death sentence.”
– MeccaEcco

“Great article. Very informative.”
– Tom Gregory
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ACLU opposes youth curfew it calls a ‘show your papers’ law

“A quick search through some academic studies on Google Scholar produced results such as this, from the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science: ‘The evidence does not support the argument that curfews prevent crime and victimization. Juvenile crime and victimization are most likely to remain unchanged after implementation of curfew laws.’”
– greatestcity9

“I live in a street where children of 3-16 years are often on the street after 9 PM I have seen a 3 year old nearly get run over twice this week alone. Then there is the screaming yelling running and jumping on other peoples porches with no regard or respect for other people. Small wonder. Its time to clean the streets up keep the kids safe and out of trouble because many are just left to their own devices.”
– db
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Mayor loses patience with a Council critic of proposed curfew

“Good for our Mayor, speaking the brutally honest truth!”
-Mark Counselman, via Facebook

“The mayor wants to appear to be addressing crime but in actuality is doing nothing because the police cannot even stop the most violent offenders and keep them off the streets. How will cops have the time and resources to round up dozens of kids citywide? The mayor should be focused on trying to fund more rec centers, early childhood education, and after school programs that will keep kids occupied, engaged, and give them somewhere safe to play.”
– Khary Lemon

“Headline assumes mayor ever had patience with criticism to begin with.”
– LexSnazzimoniae, via Twitter

“This is such a complex problem, and no one action will ‘fix it’. After 32 years as a Baltimore City Juvenile Probation Officer, I can say this with certainty – you have to start at the very beginning (maybe even before conception). . . The solution requires ALL ‘stakeholders’ to be willing to step up and do their part. I have NEVER experienced that there is the will to do this and I wish that were not so.”
– Joanne Masopust, via Facebook

If your five-year-old is roaming the streets at 1 am, you should go to jail.”
– Jessica Weller Kartel, via Facebook

“How does [the mayor’s] proposal work over time? We end up with these expensive and mostly empty ‘connection centers’ that need to be funded forever. Meanwhile, Rec Centers and Ingenuity and other programs are cut. Stokes makes a great point – have a cop take the kids home. Create a protocol where there is a social services follow up to the incident, and you are done. No permanent infrastructure, salaries, leases, etc. need to be put in place only to become part of the embedded system that cannot be reversed or even AUDITED. How about this? NO NEW INITIATIVES UNTIL ALL AGENCIES HAVE BEEN AUDITED!”
– Smiley

“Youth Connection Centers only exist in her imagination. The first of which has NO location identified nor have the services and/or programs to be offered identified and it’s supposed to be operational in June.”
– Trueheart4life

“The Baltimore Housing Authority does grant funds through Community Block Grants. The organization I work for has one for Brooklyn/Curtis Bay. We utilize these grants by providing workforce development programs. . . We propose to use our center as a Connection Center. We have 40 years of experience providing positive activities to youth in Baltimore City. Some of the activities we are proposing include basketball in our half-court gym, cooking classes, and use of our computer lab. These are the resources that we have that are being underutilized.”
– Josh Harrold
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MTA plans to move Red Line station to appease Paterakis

“Arguing about which east baltimore plan the red line should take misses the point that the red line east of downtown just doesn’t make any sense right now at all. The fact that it goes nowhere other than hopkins bayview is proof that the powers that be can’t figure out what to do with it either. even if it went down fleet or eastern avenue, it would still be pointless. canton, patterson park, highlandtown, etc. are all close enough to be very adequately served by an expanded circulator and by judicious use of bicycles, and far east baltimore and dundalk lack sufficient population who work downtown to justify a billion dollar+ subway extension.”
-PatrickLyons

“If you have seen how MTA and MDOT clean and take care of the Metro subway stations in Baltimore, you can hardly blame any property owner for not wanting to be near one of their facilities. Contrast the Charles Street station to the Owings Mills station. I do not live in the southeast section of town, but everyone I know who does only wants the Circulator expanded, not the Red Line. If seems that alternative could save the taxpayers a whole lot of money.”
– Lizzie 58

“This isn’t such a bid deal. We need more Paterakis’s, frankly.”
-Andrew

“Andrew, that’s why it IS a big deal. The city has bet its future on high-end waterfront development from Paterakis, Beatty and their ilk, and now realizes its largest-ever multi-billion dollar transportation project is not compatible with their plans. That’s a huge deal. The city and state need to re-focus on creating a comprehensive transit system that serves the entire city and suits the areas it serves, instead of trying merely to tuck it away.”
– Gerald Neily
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City to pay $200,000 in utility costs for Paterakis’ new bakery center

“Maintain existing 70 employees for SIX MONTHS? SIX MONTHS? What kind of project managers inside the City are negotiating these deals? It shows that H&S did not want any commitment of employment in exchange for the City’s free money in the amount $200,0000, so the City settle for a measly six month period in order to pretend that it did not give the money away. And the City does this so H&S can redevelop its former Central Avenue warehouse into apartments and retail in order to make more money.”
– Lizzie 58

“This is the problem with using TIFs and similar central planning tricks to pick winners in a high tax high regulation environment. You lose the dynamism of letting small and medium sized businesses build up because the cost of doing business discourages risk taking.”
– Patricklyons

“Were Paterakis the tax refusenik you make him out to be, he would have moved his facility to Baltimore or Harford Counties. His property tax bill would be less than half of what it is now in Fells Point. Instead, he moved to Hollander 95 Business Park (nee Hollander Ridge public housing complex) just inside the city line. That is one snake-bitten piece of property, with a topography and a configuration ill suited to running a business.”
– James Hunt
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“Something should be done before we have a real disaster”

“It was the same deal with the Fort Avenue bridge in Locust Point. Residents kept hammering the city about the condition of the bridge until city officials engaged CSX in a fight over getting the bridge rehabbed. Otherwise CSX would have ignored it until it collapsed.”
– Nacho Belvedere

“I’m not getting the part where CSX had to smash and demolish the stranded automobiles during the clean up. The autos that slide over looked pretty much intact. A towline couldn’t be used to retrieve the vehicles?”
– Tom Gregory

“This deserves a congressional hearing and Maryland’s senators – shame on them – should bring CSX to the congressional table to be skewered. Should have done this long ago. There has to be a sea change in CSX attitudes and culture. Now is the time to investigate, inquire and enforce sweeping changes.”
– ushanellore
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Let’s get rid of that hole: CSX line needs to be tunneled, not returned to the status quo

“Thanks for the article. I love the proposed ideas. Only thing to add: regardless of the future of CSX’s belt line and whether to enlarge it, construction of a tunnel allowing a park at 26th and Charles would be ‘cut-and-cover’ at a fraction of the cost of new tunnel burrowing or new excavation. For uber expensive civil projects, it’s a steal.”
– Day_Star

“Great points! The Belt Line cut is not nearly as corrosive a ‘border vacuum’ as other transportation barriers in Baltimore, but I agree that tunneling it might hasten the stitching of neighborhoods in the Charles Street corridor.”
– Marc

“I read the story and it is very interesting. While it mentions increased traffic from the port it doesn’t mention the Mega ships coming in from the Far East through the Expanded Panama Canal.”
– Tom Mulligan, via Facebook

“Only a properly executed tunneling-over of the cut is likely to durably stabilize it. To pretend the contrary is to proffer snake oil. If the cut survived for as long as it did without being tunneled over, this owes doubtless not insignificantly to the fact that the trains it served during the first 60 years of its existence were incomparably less massive than those it serves today. Not for aesthetic reasons, then, but for purely functional ones, the cut should be made covered. Whether as part of an improved freight alignment, or as an extension of the Light Rail, the Belt Line along 26th Street needs to run in a tunnel.”
– CV Resident
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Top mayoral aide hires her neighbor for minority business post

“Yeah, hire people who can’t successfully run their own business to counsel other people. Or are they just mentoring them on the ‘take the money and run’ techniques?”
– Sheila Ebelein, via Facebook

“ANY ONE BRAVE ENOUGH TO OPEN THEIR OWN BUSINESS, especially a brick & mortar business, IS a struggling business owner – black, white, asian, male, female!! WE ALL DESERVE HELP + support from the city & state. We get ‘nuttin,’ honey except mo taxes, fines for sandwich boards, signage on building etc.”
– Beth Hawks, via Facebook

“This is the definition of Cronyism. Makes my stomach churn.”
– Christian Dunn, via Facebook

“Got it. . . . You have to be upper middle-class, minority, with questionable past, in bed with developers, and residing in Howard County to hold a position of prestige in Baltimore City.”
– Matt R.

“Council President, you always say high-level City government employees should live in the City. Why are you not throwing a fit on the steps of City Hall?”
– Lizzie 58
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New delay for new Greyhound bus station as contractors squabble

“I didn’t even realize the current terminal was ‘temporary’. At first, when I saw the article and realized it was temporary, I hoped that meant the permanent one would be a different, more convenient location. Then I read on, and see, nope, that’s the permanent location. In which case I don’t particularly care when or if they build a different building there. The building is fine, what’s not fine is how inconvenient and ill-served by local public transit that location is.”
– nil2

“Make no mistake, Messrs. Glaze, Johnson, and Jones are in this for themselves, which as businessmen I would expect. So let’s not pin our hopes of solving or even contributing to solving Baltimore’s chronic unemployment problem among African American Men (46% according to the candidate’s in last night’s gubernatorial debate) on the MBE community, this is a red herring and a weak attempt at pacifying an economically disenfranchised city.”
– Tim B

“It doesn’t matter how glittery the new terminal is – it’s still on a lousy site! (It doesn’t even offer great highway access, as the Dogs have to wind tortuously through and along perpetually-clogged Russell to get to the terminal.) My pie-in-the-sky dream is to centralize all intercity and commuter bus service in a new terminal atop the MARC commuter tracks at Camden Station, with a dedicated bus ramp connecting the terminal to 395 (and thus to 95). Boston’s MBTA did precisely this atop South Station, New York has long had the subway-adjacent, and even Philly has a tolerable Greyhound + NJT + commuter bus terminal next to Market East Station. Yet poor old backward disconnected Baltimore limps along with its transit ‘connections’ scattered to the four winds.”
– Marc

“This comment from a perplexed traveler – ‘Baltimore is an odd place and the bus station is kind of the vortex of all of the oddness.’”
– Baltimore Brew

“I understand there is a vacant lot at 210 W. Fayette Street that could be used as a bus terminal.”
– Baltimatt
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Hollywood joins hospital workers to press Johns Hopkins to “pay a living wage”

“so Hopkins can’t afford to pay higher rates? yet they can afford to basically rebuild the middle east neighborhood? don’t get me wrong. I’m not entirely against the redevelopment of middle east. but I wonder if simply paying people more would help solve a lot of the inner city problems that were happening there in the first place.”
– Aaron Mirenzi

“Can Obama put forth an executive order stating that any institution that receives federal research grants must pay a locally determined living wage? Can that be written into grant guidelines without legislative approval? Seeing as Hopkins lives and breathes on federal grant money, such an order would solve the problem here.”
– RickinBaltimore

“Sadly, macroeconomics 101 shows us that unemployment increases with minimum wage increases.”
– Andrew Keimig

“Sounds like something the plutocrats would say to scare people into accepting a pittance for being stretched like rubber bands.”
– ushanellore
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First “zombie” licenses, now the “200 foot rule”

“Patrons that stumble out of an establishment drunk and rowdy, cars that stop to pick up/chat with/threaten said drunks and block traffic, people firing weapons after leaving an establishment? That’s only affecting the folks that live within 200 feet of the establishment?”
– Denise

“I am the owner of Goodfellas and while i understand how people can be upset by this rule. there are still many facts here that you dont see and are unaware of. I am more than happy to answer any questions any of you may have but please understand this is not so black and white. I have been harrased for quite a number of years by residents whos only purpose is to close us down wether or not we are good for the community or not. Please keep that in mind before passing full judgement. I would also like to make a one point here. If a communitys main point of argument is loud music than how can anyone being further than 200 feet from an establishment make that argument.unless theres a concert going on or speakers blasting in the street it is almost impossible for anyone further than that to be able to say that the music is bothering them. So 200 feet in a case like that would and should be a legitimate argument.”
– eli

“We have 300 seat megabars being proposed in the Southern Gateway area which will impact residents within a 2,000 ft distance as customers are invited to transit from the Inner Harbor and Orioles/ Ravens Games to Federal Hill Cross St sites. To impose a 200 ft limit for impacted residents to complain is more of the ‘screw the residents’ attitude routinely exhibited by the state-staffed city Liquor Board lacking city representation. This is a return to the 1890’s-1920’s political boss operations where Zombie licenses and ‘strawman’ licencees are routine. It’s time to clean house on this sorry discredited group.”
– Reverend Hank
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Inside City Hall: Young and Pratt go along with new round of sewer consultant contracts

“The consent decree is about sewer overflows and the city’s failure to monitor and maintain the sewer system. That means all the work on water mains, as noble and needed as it may be, is not going to address the court sanction. And really the consent decree is one big boogy-man that has been used to justify way too much piss-poor planning and management at DPW.”
– lanas

“It seems like Baltimore has let DPW wither as an organization capable of doing ANY engineering work. The city’s public works department is pretty much now just a parking lot for people with patronage jobs who shuffle papers while these firms do the actual engineering. Maybe the city should just put a contract out for Chow’s job as well and be done with the pretense of overseeing the city infrastructure.”
– Nacho Belvedere
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Brew follow-up: City Hall carpeting budgeted at over $10 per square foot

“Thank you for shedding light on this, BB. It’s so typical of City Hall to be extravagant with themselves and pound foolish.”
– Andrew

“Here’s an idea: One of these days, SRB will get around to green lighting a major sandblast/washdown of the Benton Building at 417 E. Fayette (also known as “Castle Graziano”), depicted here in it’s current “WASH ME” splendor: https://baltimorebrew.com/…
– Citizenpane