Mayor Dixon Says Goodbye

Mayor Dixon held a press conference yesterday to officially resign her duties as Mayor of Baltimore. Click here to see her statement. The former mayor also took to her facebook page to let her supporters know how she really feels about the entire situation, her statement is below:

Dear Citizen,

It’s difficult to find the words to describe what it has meant to lead this City: to lay out a vision for a cleaner, greener, healthier, and safer Baltimore and actually see that vision come to pass; and, to wake up every morning and feel both the blessing and the burden of so many hard choices and know the impact they can have.

But if I had to choose just a couple of words to describe my administration, the amazing staff that so humbly served me, and our many, many partners in the community, I would simply say this: we cared. Though it sounds trite, in the world of politics it’s hard to lead with your heart versus your ambition, but we did. As I look back, there will be many great accomplishments for me to be proud of, but this one, perhaps, is the greatest of them all. Every other accomplishment we made was a result of this simple action.

When it came to crime, we focused on saving lives not on statistics. We targeted individuals that were the most violent offenders, created a gun registry to keep illegal guns off our streets, and spent countless hours on the ground in our communities. The loss of one life is one too many, but I am proud to say that we experienced a lower homicide rate in the last two years than we have in the past two decades.

We focused not just on bricks and mortar, but we focused on developing people. We invested in our citizens from prenatal care all the way to the end of life. We taught our children how to play volleyball and invited them to play free video games at ESPN Zone through our PEACE (Pledge to Engage Actions Considerate of Everyone) Baltimore initiative while we visited our seniors on Mother’s Day and traveled all across the City to host free workouts through Be Fit Baltimore. In 2008, with the input of community and advocates for children and the poor, we moved $14 million dollars in funding for afterschool programs from the supplemental budget to the base budget.

By moving funding into the base budget for the first time, programs such as After School Matters, Home Visiting for Pregnant Women, and Community Schools, were guaranteed funding each year. This step signaled that these programs were not ancillary; rather, a core part of our City’s priorities. These are not the programs that one chooses for political gain because the results are not reaped for years, sometimes even decades, but we knew the return on our investment from human development was too precious to let it pass us by.

We cared for those who weren’t yet able to care for themselves. When there were snow storms and many of us had the chance to stay home from work, there were city employees that literally walked through the snow to ensure our homeless population sought shelter. We had the courage to believe that we could end homelessness through our ten year strategic plan and as a result we have made huge strides. We now have a record number of shelter beds for homeless individuals. Over the past two years we have placed more homeless individuals in permanent housing than ever before. This year, construction began on Baltimore’s first permanent shelter for 275 homeless individuals, and we have created Baltimore’s first 24-hour, year-round housing resource center.

Block by block, we cared for our neighborhoods. We fixed our streets. The City has repaved or repaired a record number of lane miles, over 600, over the past three years through its Operation Orange Cone initiative. We cleaned our streets. Each year, thousands of residents from all over the City joined us to rake leaves and pick up trash at our annual Spring Clean Up and over the past couple of years we have increased mechanical street sweeping services by 32%!

We attended countless community meetings to talk to residents about single stream recycling and our One Plus One initiatives, helping them understand the benefits of recycling. As a result, we doubled recycling in 2008 and AGAIN in 2009. We helped communities transform vacant lots into gardens, pulling neighborhoods together to breathe life into their communities and we reinvigorated our nation’s oldest existing environmental program, the Afro Clean Block, to challenge citizens all across the City to clean and beautify their neighborhoods.

In 2008, we created the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability to create a roadmap to ensure that we meet the environmental, social, and economic needs of Baltimore without compromising the ability of future generations to meet those needs. Now, according to SustainLane’s 2008 rankings, we are one of the most sustainable cities in America.

We planted seeds for our future. Baltimore, there is an energy and vibrancy in our City that is rapidly gaining momentum as more and more young professionals, empty nesters, entrepreneurs, and artists are discovering the hidden jewels of our City and the authenticity of our charm. Our downtown now ranks 7th in the nation for population density and 8th for number of residents that make more than $75,000 a year. We have made getting around downtown easier and greener through the launch of the Downtown Circulator, and soon, our City will be connected from east to west by the Red Line. Everywhere you look in Baltimore you see development. From the Westside Superblock to advancing the development of EBDI, we made investments that will bring jobs, vibrancy, and economic success.

We even changed how people see Baltimore. Despite the challenging economic times, Visit Baltimore’s convention sales bookings have increased. In Fiscal Year 2008, the sales team booked 451,608 future room nights, 70,000 more room nights and an 18 percent increase over bookings in Fiscal Year 2007.

And these are just a few of our accomplishments. Much more of the fruits of our labor will be realized way beyond this year or even our lifetime, but I am so thankful that we have had the opportunity to plant the seeds.

As I prepare for my final days in office and reflect, I am thankful for my dedicated staff and all of our community partners. I am humbled by all that we have been able to accomplish in such a short period of time and I firmly believe we have built a foundation that will reap progress and change for Baltimore for generations to come. But out of all our accomplishments, the one I am most proud of is, perhaps, the simplest of them all: we cared for people.

It is because we led by our hearts and we cared that we were able to accomplish all other things. As I learned through my career in public service-through my successes and my failures, through my good times and bad times- in life, if you can accomplish that one thing, the one that is the greatest one of all, that’s all that really matters.

I love this City. Thank you for allowing me to serve you.