I’m on a plane back from Minnesota’s Twin Cities with seventy government, corporate, and nonprofit leaders from the Baltimore metropolitan region. It’s my fourth annual Baltimore Metropolitan Council Chesapeake Connect trip, and once again, my head is swimming with the images of new places, new people, and new lessons.
Nashville showed me that an economic miracle to some is a failure of planning to others. The forest of new skyscrapers had left behind a housing crisis, a traffic nightmare, and a government unable to deliver basic services.
Philadelphia proved that a handful of deep-pocketed institutions could turn a crumbling downtown into a wonderful space to live, work, and play. As long as you keep that small group happy.
Detroit demonstrated that when a skilled mayor stays in office for a decade or so, they can amass the kind of power it takes to make really hard things happen, mostly good things.
The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and the small towns and unincorporated areas around them, face the same challenges we face in our county - housing, transportation, a severe racial wealth gap, and recent immigrants who need to be embraced as new neighbors - and they are demographically similar to us.
The first session began with a presentation by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. I was impressed, and captivated. This is the city where George Floyd was murdered. It’s a place where the racial wealth gap is as jarring as Annapolis and Baltimore. Government, businesses, and the community understand that closing that gap is an existential imperative.
That’s why they’ve led the country in zoning reform, making it possible for smaller dwellings, duplexes, and quads to be built in even the most exclusive neighborhoods. Hearing about the politics of that change from a thoughtful, articulate mayor was a great privilege.
Mayor Frey pushed back against demands to defund the police, but he engaged residents in a real conversation, a raw conversation, about how policing gets done. Being able to compare our crisis response system to theirs was also a privilege.
Regional progress on transit there has been real. Their light rail system is nearing completion, and after a twenty year campaign to get it done, they just passed state legislation to fund transportation with a ¾ cent sales tax. Maryland recently launched a commission to identify new transportation funding strategies as revenues from our gas tax decline.
Our minds were spinning as leaders from their Metropolitan Council described the process of herding literally hundreds of political jurisdictions to deliver shared infrastructure and services to their residents.
Their region is headquarters to a lot of heavy corporate hitters, like UnitedHealth Group, Target, Best Buy, and 3M. Many of them are fully engaged in the Center for Economic Inclusion and Groundbreaking Coalition, a new fund to provide credit to entrepreneurs of color, led by Adair Mosley, the chair of their African American Leadership Forum. They are putting their investments in their community because talented leaders are showing them how.
What brings these trips to life is not only hearing from the movers and the shakers who are making the progress happen, but also getting out and seeing the results. The trips have brought me to the highest poverty neighborhood in Philly, to the best park in Detroit, and this time I rode a super cool electric bike (first time ever) on Minneapolis’ Midtown Greenway, where a community coalition drove transformation of a rail line to a trail, which in turn attracted much-needed multi-family housing to a former industrial area. Our county has a history of community opposition to trails, so it was good to see how and why these neighborhoods embraced theirs.
The final session was at the stadium of the minor league St. Paul Saints, whose success offered a vision of what the Annapolis Blues soccer team could become.
And it was there that we heard from St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter III, who said what we needed to hear. He told us that he loves Minnesota and all of the things that it’s known for. He just wishes that some of it was in the neighborhood he grew up in.
It was a reminder that cities show off the bright and shiny things we build and hide the reality of life for the people who can’t access those things. He spoke of the way bureaucracies resist change, and the power of formerly silenced voices to make change. This brilliant young Black leader put his finger on our greatest obstacle to progress. Ourselves. Our own fear of trying new things.
Mayor Carter was part of a trip like ours to Baltimore at one time. He said it inspired him and others to take on new challenges. It also inspired the Baltimore Metropolitan Council to create the Chesapeake Connect trips. So stay tuned. New things are coming.
Steuart Pittman
Anne Arundel County Executive