Hours before a scheduled press conference today outside City Hall by family members of a Baltimore sanitation worker who died of heat stroke, Mayor Brandon Scott announced the hiring of a high-priced D.C. law firm to conduct a review of city practices “specifically as they pertain to heat safety.”

The attorney who organized the event for loved ones to share memories of Ronald Silver II, who collapsed and died on the job in sweltering heat, called the mayor’s announcement suspect and its timing an attempt to distract the public from the role that the Department of Public Works may have played in the tragedy.

“It is strange that the city would hire its own investigator when there is a Maryland state agency as well as the Baltimore Police Department conducting investigations,” said former deputy attorney general Thiru Vignarajah, who has been representing the family since the August 2 incident.

“That is what guilty parties do – hire their own investigator when they’re in cover-up mode,” Vignarajah said at the press conference. “Not what public officials and public agencies do when they’re trying to get to the bottom of what really happened.”

“The family finds it a touch offensive,” Vignarajah added, ushering Silver’s fiancée, Renee Garrison, up to the microphone.

Garrison described the 36-year-old father of five as “straightforward, diligent and the ultimate organizer” and “a man whose family meant the world to him.”

“He took extreme pride in being able to take care of us,” she said, noting that over 12 years “every school event, he made it. He may have been late, but he made it.”

“I see you daily in the faces of our children,” she exclaimed.

“I don’t want any other mother to have to experience the loss of a child to a very preventable illness”  – Faith Johnson, mother of Ronald Silver II.

Also speaking was Silver’s mother, Faith Johnson, who praised her first-born for stepping in to take care of her, as well as his family, when her husband died.

She described him as hilarious as well as hard working and a faithful provider.

“I miss his voice. I miss his scent. I miss his hugs,” Johnson said. “I don’t want any other mother to have to experience the loss of a child to a very preventable illness.”

“My son would want the world to know his story,” she said in closing. “So I beg of you to remember Ronald Edward Silver II.”

A Toxic Culture

Silver’s death came just days after the latest in a series of scathing investigative reports about DPW facilities – including the Cherry Hill Sanitation Yard on Reedbird Avenue that Silver was assigned to.

Baltimore Inspector General  Isabel Cumming visited that location on July 10, amid a stretch of days with triple-digit heat, and found no functioning air conditioning, broken thermostats, inoperable water fountains and no ice.

A “cooling trailer” showed temperatures of 83° and 85° before 7 a.m., she disclosed in her report.

A subsequent report found more hazardous and inhuman conditions at Cherry Hill and other facilities that Cumming and her staff visited.

Cold water and Gatorade still were not being given to the trash and recycling collection crews leaving early on another hot morning.

At the Eastern Sanitation Yard on Bowley’s Lane, toilet paper dispensers were found to be empty and broken and “the male employees must ask for toilet paper before using the bathroom,” Cumming wrote in her report.

The report also pointed to larger issues.

Cumming decried “a culture that thinks it’s okay to make the people who work for us put up with terrible conditions” and faulted DPW officials for failing to correct simple problems, such as non-working sinks and broken ice machines, that were well known for months.

“This is about more than water and Gatorade,” Cumming said.

Ordering More Bottled Water

Since then, union officials and several City Council members have taken up the issue and denounced “a toxic culture” at DPW.

Mayor Scott has responded that the facilities “that have not been touched since they were built long before Brandon Scott was taking breath” must be repaired first.

Pointing to his administration’s three-year-plan to upgrade Bureau of Solid Waste facilities, he told reporters that “stuff just takes time.”

His administration has also complained that they are handicapped by circumstances beyond their control.

They say supply chain issues slowed the process of replacing the city’s fleet of garbage trucks with new ones that have air conditioning.

Law firm Conn Maciel Carey LLP, which began its work this week, is expected to release a final set of recommendations “by the end of September,” city officials said today.

With the supply of bottled water to city workers now a prominent issue, the administration is asking the Board Estimates to approve next Wednesday a $322,000 contract with Blue Triton Brands/Ready Refresh by Nestle to supply water dispensers and bottled water to DPW and other city agencies.

The contract would run for three years with two one-year renewal options.

“Worthy of protection”

In a previous news conference on Monday, Silver’s aunt, Renee Meredith, demanded change as soon as possible.

“We will use Ronny’s legacy to make sure that this will never happen to any other DPW worker,” Meredith said.

Today, his fiancée expressed the family’s priorities another way:

“I would also like to say to every man that is providing, problem solving, protecting and sacrificing for his family, that you are valued and important and worthy of protection yourself.”