Complaints about Baltimore’s squeegee guys drop significantly; angry letters to this columnist have tapered off, too.

I hear and receive by email a lot of complaints about the Baltimore city government under the administration of Mayor Brandon Scott — that it has experienced too much executive turnover, that it seems too slow to react to problems, that it hasn’t done enough to stem gun violence and support downtown businesses. I agree with some of that, but try to keep in mind that Scott is the city’s fourth mayor in seven years, and he came into the job during the pandemic. The gun violence is a national problem, not unique to Baltimore. From what I see, a lot of good efforts are being made to address various problems, but people are impatient; convincing them that things are getting better in Baltimore is a tough sell.

I received dozens of emails over the last three years about the squeegee guys — boys and young men, mostly — who offer to clean windshields at busy Baltimore intersections. People wrote to me to blame Scott for not doing enough to crack down on the practice; suburbanites commuting into town, especially, wanted police to arrest squeegee guys. They found them annoying, and some of them too aggressive. Restaurant owners complained that the squeegee guys were hurting business, and I read plenty of letters from people in the counties who swore they’d never come into Baltimore again — all because of the Black boys and young men with spray bottles and squeegees.

The talk of talk radio: Arrest them! Clear the corners!

But Scott didn’t go there. He knew that would not solve the problem — in fact, a police crackdown was bound to create more problems.

So he went the opposite way — against arrests and into a holistic approach to dealing with the squeegee guys. It took a while for the Squeegee Collaborative that Scott established to come up with a plan, and, again, critics complained that Scott was on the slow road. When the plan finally emerged, several people, including former Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, criticized it without reading it.

Anyway, five full months into the Squeegee Collaborative’s initiative, and there appears to be some early success. My Friday column has details. Not only have citizen complaints about the squeegee lads dropped significantly, but I haven’t had an angry letter about it from a motorist in months and, boy, what a relief that is.

Early signs of progress on Baltimore’s squeegee front, but here comes summer