Likening the bottle tax hike to “a bake sale,” Stokes defies crowd
Advocates say crumbling city schools should get the millions tax could leverage.
Above: Councilmembers said they’d vote “yes” for a bottle tax to help city schools, but one man may make their position moot.
What motivates a person to tell a crowd of nearly 700 people something they don’t want to hear?
In front of a stomping, cheering pep rally last night for Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s proposed bottle tax increase to leverage funds to begin fixing dilapidated city schools, Baltimore City Councilman Carl Stokes said, in so many words, he would not let the bill out of committee.
“We don’t have to have bake sales to raise money for our children,” Stokes told the crowd gathered at the War Memorial Building by the Baltimore Education Coalition.
“I won’t do it!”
Stokes, chair of the council’s Taxation, Finance and Economic Development Committee, left the stage to silence and a few boos, walking past fellow council members who had just said “yes, yes, yes,” they would support the bill.
Councilman Stokes didn't budge at a rally pushing him to support a bottle tax hike for city school repairs. (Photo by Fern Shen)
Stokes – whose committee can keep the bottle tax bill from ever reaching the full council – discussed his position after he left the stage.
“I’m standing on principal,” he told The Brew.
Stokes said he doesn’t believe city officials when they say they don’t have more money in the budget for schools.
He pointed to city spending for events like the Grand Prix or “to give hundreds of millions to private developers that already have plenty of their own money to complete their developments.”
“They’re really telling our children that they don’t deserve the money off the top – that they have to beg and plead and come up with special tactics and gimmicks and regressive taxes and bake sales,” Stokes said.
“Baltimore City gives 11% of its budget to education – almost every other jurisdiction gives 40 or 50%,” Stokes said.
“I just refuse to give in to these confrontational tactics when we all know the money is already in the city budget,” he said.
Money from Mayor on the Table
Confronting Stokes was just what last night’s rally – composed of parents, students and educators from 40 schools, 35 religious institutions and 26 organizations – was all about.
“The vote of one Councilman: Carl Stokes, outweighs the full city council and 83,000 students in need of new buildings,” read one of the releases that organizers handed to media as they entered the room.
"Are you happy with the condition of your schools?" a speaker asked. "No!" the crowd of Baltimore city students and their supporters shouted. (Photo by Fern Shen)
The bottle tax supporters, on the other hand, were brought up on stage, to cheers.
Pledging to support the bottle tax hike was City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young, said to be a late addition to the group.
Also pledging their support were Mary Pat Clarke, Robert Curran, Edward Reisinger and Rochelle “Rikki” Spector.
Additionally, some pro-tax council members were represented on stage by large photos because, organizers said, they either couldn’t come or had to leave early due to a funeral.
They were William H. Cole IV, Sharon Green Middleton, Brandon Scott and William “Pete” Welch.
Stokes’ refusal to join the nine pro-taxers clearly frustrated Bebe Verdery, education reform director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland.
“A bottle tax is a legitimate source of funding that the mayor has put on the table,” Verdery said. “If somebody wants to make other resources available we will take them too.” Rawlings-Blake has said the tax would leverage $155 million that would be dedicated to school repairs.
Stokes, Verdery complained, has made no realistic alternative proposals to help schools, which the ACLU says need $2.8 billion to repair non-functioning heating and cooling systems, roofs that leak, windows that don’t open, poorly equipped science labs, etc.
Students and parents from 40 Baltimore public schools came to support more funds for construction and renovation. (Photo by Fern Shen)
“He can talk, but he’s not offering any alternative that can pass,” Verdery said, pointing to Stokes proposal to use red light camera revenue for the schools.
“Is that any less gimmicky?” she said.
Stokes has also proposed using audits to find savings in particular department budgets (Recreation and Parks, for example).
He introduced a bill that would impose an annual fee of $500 per bed for colleges and hospitals that don’t pay property taxes. The revenue would go to help fund school construction.
State and City “Out of Balance?”
Amid speakers decrying conditions in city schools, in a room raucous with the chants of “let it out” (meaning the committee-stalled bottle tax bill) Verdery was hardly the only person pushing for Stokes to relent.
What’s more, bottle tax revenue wasn’t the only measure advocates were pushing on behalf of the city’s children.
Speakers called on lawmakers meeting now in Annapolis to reverse the Doomsday Budget’s $22.5 million in cuts to funding for city schools.
They also called on Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to reverse cuts to after-school program funding, making their own arguments about how government leaders can find funds when they want them.
“She can find money to support the Grand Prix, but she can’t find money for the kids?” said the Rev. Glenna Reed Huber, pastor at the Church of the Holy Nativity and a leader of Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD), who were an active presence last night.
“The mayor can find millions for tax incentives for developers. . . She can increase the budget of her office, but she can’t find money for our kids?” Huber continued, calling city and state priorities “out of balance.”
Pushing Mayor to Reverse After-School Cuts
By the end of the session, organizers announced that council members were pledging to offer more than a dedicated bottle tax to improve the lot of city students.
A group vowed to find cuts in the proposed FY 2013 budget and urge Rawlings-Blake to commit those cuts to after-school funding.
Led by Council Vice President Reisinger (the mayor’s whip) and Bill Cole, 11 members of the body agreed: Clarke, Curran, Bill Henry, Helen Holton, Middleton, Spector, Stokes, Welch and Young.