BALTIMORE - Today, Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young launched his Clean & Safe initiative, another component of his Clean It Up! Campaign. The Clean & Safe initiative will collaborate with community organizations to develop and implement tailored action plans designed to meet the specific needs of each community.

At Mayor Young’s direction, CitiStat looked at public safety and 311 cleaning data across the city and from that information he has identified four neighborhoods that could use more cleaning and safety support. Our four neighborhood partners are Penn North, Broadway East, Carrollton Ridge, and Milton Montford.

“We know the link between crime and grime is undeniable,” said Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young. “This is the reason we have identified, through data, four neighborhoods where we will develop targeted safety and cleaning initiatives partnering with community leaders. This new Clean & Safe initiative will be a long-term partnership with each of these neighborhoods. Fostering and supporting critical partnerships like these is how we will continue to build Baltimore.”

Through this new initiative, city agencies will be collaborating with community members to prioritize these neighborhoods. In these neighborhoods, we will identify several initiatives where multiple city agencies can be activated to address specific issues related to crime and grime. Clean & Safe will work with community leaders to identify opportunities to engage and empower residents to assist in the crime fight.

In each Clean & Safe neighborhood problem vacant properties will be addressed; vacant lots will be transformed into community assets and increased enforcement efforts will be employed at known dumping sites. There will also be an added emphasis on eliminating environmental issues and debris that facilitate criminal activity. CitiWatch cameras will be strategically deployed to help reduce crime and grime in the identified communities. Clean & Safe will have clear goals and outcomes which will be tracked through CitiStat.

Mayor Young launched the Clean it Up! Campaign, a set of eight data-informed cleaning initiatives, on January 29th. A few of these initiatives include publishing a list of the 10 most cited sanitation violators on a public web site and committing to closing out 5,000 pothole work orders in 50 days. You can follow our progress on our public dashboard at baltopi/cleanstat. A few highlights are:

• We’ve reduced the number of overdue cleaning work orders by 29% since the launch of the campaign on Jan 29.
• We’ve completed 683 pothole service requests since the Feb 12 launch of the Mayor’s Pothole Challenge.