Madison East End
Tuesday 14 April 2015 was the second neighborhood association meeting that I have been able to attend in almost three years. This is also the second meeting for which I received any type of notice and the notice for this one was delivered to my house two hours before the meeting and I almost threw it in the trash since the announcement was so primitive.Our guest speaker came to bring to our attention the intention of CSX to transport dangerous fuels through the City of Baltimore to a plant in south Baltimore. The next day Dee and I discussed this and we do not think that Jon had his information correct. For one thing, he did not ask Johns Hopkins Medical Center to sign on his project. They would be greatly affected. Also, we do not think that Amtrak would allow CSX to use the tracks in our neighborhood simply because Amtrak needs them for their passenger service.
But we are very happy that maybe something will be started in our neighborhood. Both Dee and I complained that every time we tried to attend a meeting nobody was here.
Mitchell Henderson started the meeting with a prayer. At 18:22 we had nine people at the meeting. Many of us did not find out about the meeting until just hours before the meeting.
Jon Smetan was our guest. He told us that the oil training is traveling through Baltimore City. There is a company that wants to transport oil from North Dakota to Curtis Bay. It will be shipping down the east coast. This oil is incredibly flammable and explosive. There have been four separate accidents in Virginia. We want a bill to study before any oil can be shipped so that we know that it is safe. CSX is suing so that their route would not be known. This is frackling oil. The cars transporting them need to be DOT 101 cars. There is a permit to allow them to ship this stuff.
You have to evacuate a half mile area for any explosion. Jon works in the building but he does not live in the area. He read aloud the letter which he wants us to sign. He is a volunteer for this project.
There are 10,000 people in the area. A man asked how many other people know about this.
Johns Hopkins just put in a new school in Ashland Avenue and they wanted to run a highway to Bay View.
We are hoping to have the bill considered in May or June. There is an informational session in Curtis Bay in the next few weeks.
We are constantly ignoring ourselves because a lot of folks won’t come out to meetings. There is speed coming up on Madison Street. They built a new school in the neighborhood but we are not a part of it. We need places where kids can play. This building is going to become a school. They are making preparations now for this. This was a perfume factory and people don’t even know it. There is a computer lab with 10 or 12 computers never used. There is a pool table that was never used.
The king rat, black rat, goes up to the roof and comes into your house through he walls. Grime and crime work together.
The meetings are the second Tuesday of each month at 18:00.
The City will put a park on the 2300 block of East Eager Street. About six months ago at a meeting people were complaining about flooding.
