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The Department of Planning and the Baltimore Food Policy
Initiative (BFPI) have been working to more intentionally include an equity
lens in their work. BFPI created the Resident Food Equity Advisor (RFEA) group
to include resident voices and perspective in food policy making. 2017 was the
first year of the RFEA process and a second cohort of RFEAs will be recruited
for January 2018.
Sixteen
RFEAs were selected from over eighty applicants, with at least one advisor
representing each City Council district. The advisors brought a vast array of
expertise and included a former Arabber, farmers, a community organizer, a
corner store employee, a cafeteria manager, a restauranteur, and others. The
group included members ranging in age from their 20s to 80s; the multigenerational
character of the group has contributed to its success. The Food Policy
Director, Holly Freishtat, and Joyce Smith, Community Relations Coordinator at
the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future and lifelong Baltimore resident,
co-chaired the group. RFEAs were compensated for their time as a way to enhance
equity in the group structure and value everyone’s time and expertise.
The RFEAs
met once per month for six months. Policy topics focused on the Food Desert
Retail Strategy and included: attraction and retention of supermarkets, corner
stores, food environment mapping, urban agriculture, and online SNAP (formerly
food stamp) benefit implementation. Each meeting began with a briefing
from the Food Policy Director and other topic area experts in order to
familiarize the advisors on existing policies, strategies and challenges
related to the topics above. RFEAs then had an opportunity to provide feedback,
pose questions, and engage in a discussion.
Asked
to reflect at the final meeting, several residents stated that they felt like
they had influence in policymaking for the first time. One resident said, “This
group has given me a voice, and I plan to use this as a platform to help make a
difference. I have already started to work with other corner stores to invoke
changes.”
Advisors said that they have shared a great deal of the information
with family, friends and neighbors, and several mentioned they felt like they
could now be a “point person” in their neighborhood on food issues.
This
was the first year of the RFEA process and a new class of RFEAs will be
recruited for January 2018. The next group will focus on different topics such
as food resilience, transportation, and/or public markets. BFPI believes this
resident advisory board process has been a tremendous success and extremely
helpful to their work, and encourages other departments, agencies and
organizations to replicate a similar model.
New Sustainability Director, Lisa
McNeilly, Joins Office
Lisa McNeilly joined the Office of Sustainability as Director in June 2017. Previously, she was the Director of Sustainability at the University of California, Berkeley.
Where are you originally from, and what brought
you to Baltimore?
I grew up in East Tennessee, but have since lived several other places
including the Grand Canyon, and, most recently, in the San Francisco
Bay area. I came to Baltimore because of
the opportunity to be part of such a well-respected and innovative team of
sustainability and planning experts. I’m enjoying exploring the city and the
Chesapeake Bay!
As the Director of Sustainability, what are your
responsibilities here at the Department of Planning? What projects are you most
excited to work on in 2017/2018?
The Office of Sustainability is going to be busy over the next few
months. There will be several new members
of the Commission on Sustainability, and we’re planning to roll out the
Sustainability Plan update by the end of the year. I’ve been so impressed with the commitment of
the Office staff and am looking forward to continuing to learn about the inventive
ways they are working to make the City more sustainable.
Most recently, you lead the sustainability
initiatives for UC – Berkeley. How do you anticipate your experiences there
will inform your work in Baltimore?
Over the years of working in sustainability, I’ve had the privilege to
work with many smart and dedicated people.
I’ve learned a great deal from them – including how to communicate more
authentically, how to shepherd complex projects through a complex organization,
how to amplify the work of others, and how to be an effective partner and to
work well with others. But I’ve also
learned that it’s important to have fun, even while working on serious and
important issues. It’s also important to
take the time to critically evaluate the impact of your work, to be open to
mid-course corrections, and to stop occasionally to celebrate success.
Baltimore City’s Sustainability Plan update
process is wrapping up. What’s next? How will the new ideas be implemented?
We plan to release the update by the end of year, after an extensive
outreach effort with city staff, community members, and other
stakeholders. With the new year, we’ll
be working with many of those same people to start implementing the strategies,
laying out a timeline for projects, and measuring the impact of our work. As we did on the Plan development, I expect
we will apply an equity lens to the workplan development as well. While we broadened the range of voices and
the definition of sustainability that formed the basis for the Plan, we will
also need to be deliberate in ensuring that strategies and their impacts are
evaluated and implemented through a similar lens.
Now that we know so much about your current
job, what was your very first job?
My first job was a waitress at Shoney’s restaurant in Gatlinburg,
TN. They were so understaffed that I got
overtime (11 hours!) my first day.
Caulkers' Houses in Fell's Point Recognized
On June 19, 2017, a historic marker was unveiled at the
Caulkers' Houses located at 612-614 S. Wolfe Street in Fells Point. These houses date to the late 1790s. Before the Civil War, they were occupied by
free African Americans who worked in the shipyards as caulkers. The houses are rare survivors of light
timber-frame houses with brick debris filling the spaces between the timbers, a
Medieval construction method, and are now owned by the Society for the
Preservation of Federal Hill and Fells Point.
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