The inaugural Heart of the 4th Music & Arts Festival, which was scheduled to take place Saturday along York Road, has been called off after a Baltimore City councilman said the mayor retaliated against him for raising issues with the city’s budget and opioid strategy.
Councilman Mark Conway, who represents Baltimore City’s 4th district, said this weekend’s event was postponed after the Mayor’s Office repeatedly imposed “arbitrary or irregular” hurdles on the festival. He believes these “politics of retaliation” were a response to him opposing the reallocation of Baltimore Children and Youth Fund money, as well as his questioning of the city’s opioid strategy as not going far enough.
“It has become painfully clear that it is petty political grudges, rather than practical considerations, that are driving these roadblocks,” Conway said in a statement.
Mayor Brandon Scott’s office, on the other hand, said Conway’s claims of retaliation are without merit. They said that shutting down a large segment of York Road for the event would have posed traffic and safety concerns, and that organizers declined the alternative locations that the Mayor’s Office proposed for the festival.
“The Mayor’s Office has met repeatedly in good faith with Councilman Conway regarding event permit requests for the Heart of the 4th event,” according to a statement from the Mayor’s Office. “Throughout those conversations, our office, in consultation with the Fire Department and DOT, relayed prohibitive concerns regarding the legitimate public safety issues presented with closing down such a large portion of York Road for the event. In an attempt to find a solution, the Mayor’s Office proposed two alternative locations. It is disappointing that after Councilman Conway rejected those proposed alternatives and continued promoting the event without having received permits, he is now baselessly claiming that he is the recipient of some sort of political retaliation.”
Conway told Baltimore Fishbowl that his office began working with the York Road Improvement District in April to plan the festival.
The event’s footprint was planned to cover about a half-mile stretch of York Road from Belvedere Avenue to Benninghaus Road.
When Conway’s office met with agency representatives in June, he said everything seemed to be running smoothly. But days later, he said the Mayor’s Office reached out with concerns.
According to Conway, those concerns included the fire station being too far away to service the event, and that the festival would impede fire department officials from reaching area hospitals.
“That’s not true…. From Chinquapin Park, where the fire department is now, they can go immediately east to Good Samaritan Hospital and that allows access to the entire east side of York Road. If they’re on the west side, they can take Northern Parkway to get there, and they can access St. Joe’s and GBMC if absolutely necessary,” Conway said.
Another concern from the Mayor’s Office, Conway said, was that the festival would obstruct one-way streets that feed into or from York Road, namely Rosebank Avenue, Orkney Road, and Cording Avenue.
To accommodate this, Conway said organizers decided to shrink the festival’s footprint so it would not shut down those roadways.
“Our proposal was to shrink the size of the event, which would still allow us to have the 170 plus vendors that we had been working with, but would have significantly reduced the size of the event. We were ultimately still told ‘no,’” Conway said.
Conway said the Mayor’s Office offered three alternative locations for the event away from York Road, but he said each presented their own issues: Woodbourne Avenue near the Maryland Youth Residence Center, which he said “is not someplace you would want to put a festival, that’s not a very festive environment;” the parking lot in front of Govans Elementary School, “which is significantly smaller than the initial plan;” and in front of Belvedere Square, which is private property and would have required permission from the property owner.
“For very obvious reasons, Belvedere Square might not want to lose all their parking for
an entire Saturday,” Conway said.
Conway believes the Mayor’s Office was retaliating against him for disagreements he has had with Scott and his administration.
He said the administration wanted to reallocate money from the Baltimore Children and Youth Fund to youth initiatives of its own. While Conway said the initiatives included “critical programs that I think are phenomenal,” he also said the city’s charter prohibits remitting funds from the Baltimore Children and Youth Fund back to the city to cover general funded efforts.
“The Children and Youth Fund may not be used to substitute for or replace funding for children and youth programs or services provided in the Ordinance of Estimates for Fiscal Year 2017, except to the extent that federal, state, or private agency funds for those programs or services have since been discontinued,” the city charter reads.
“I proposed the administration either return the money to the Youth Fund and stay in line with the charter, or call it a loan that would be returned in a year, or a loan that could be forgiven if there were cuts from the federal government that affected youth programming,” Conway said.
Ultimately, Conway said the administration refused his options, so he voted against the budget.
Conway also said he and Scott have had “dust ups” on the city’s efforts to address the opioid crisis.
“I believe that the city should have been making a more aggressive approach on opioids, and not have waited a year-and-change to begin doing things,” he said. “I’ve been more vocal about that than my colleagues, and I do believe that because I didn’t just fall in line and go with the administration, the retaliation of course comes from that.”
Conway said City Council President Zeke Cohen brought him and the mayor together to squash their beef over crab cakes.
“I felt we were in a good space,” Conway said. “But what I continued to see after that were attempts to block essentially everything that I did, not just around opioids, but really any policies.”
With the Heart of the 4th festival postponed, organizers are now looking at a new date, Aug. 30, and likely a new location. Conway hopes all the businesses and vendors who were going to be part of this weekend’s event will remain for the rescheduled festival.
“The location is to be determined, very likely not going to be on York Road, thanks to how this has played out,” he said. “But you know, at the end of the day, we still want to see an opportunity to celebrate the businesses, the people, the neighborhoods and all the folks of the fourth district.”
Mayor Scott has a track record of petty retaliation. I’m inclined to believe Councilman Conway on this one.