City Councilmember Warren Branch faces four challengers for his 13th District City Council seat, which he’s held for one term. All of his challengers say they just don’t see him around much at community meetings. For his part Branch says anyone can win. But not everyone in the race has been making it to the debates or “forums,” and two have baggage—arrest records, business irregularities—that could handicap their efforts to appeal to voters in the east-side neighborhoods dominated by Johns Hopkins hospital and its ambitious redevelopment plans.

The rap on Branch from some observers is that he says little, even during council meetings, and does even less in the way of actual legislating. “I noticed a lot of council people put in legislation that is not going to go anywhere,” Branch says, adding that when he drops a bill into the hopper, it’s because his constituents have requested it.

Asked to name his proudest legislative achievements, Branch mentions two: a city ordinance requiring fire sprinklers in some newly constructed homes and “a bill for sex offenders,” which Branch says people in his district demanded after seeing a sex offender trying to lure kids from a schoolyard.

The sprinkler bill, number 10-0437, names Mary Pat Clarke (D-14th District) as its lead sponsor. Branch says he came up with the idea and put it through her committee. The sex offender bill—in fact, a proposed ordinance and a resolution—called for prohibiting registered offenders from living within 2,000 feet of “a school, day care center, or location where children congregate,” effectively banning them from the city (“Exiles on Main Street,” Mobtown Beat, Dec. 10, 2008). Branch’s ordinance never got out of committee. His resolution passed but the requested state-level legislation has yet to materialize.

Branch says his proudest nonlegislative achievement as a councilmember is “working with developers to contribute funds to both Fort Worthington and to Tench Tilghman [schools]. They are giving $15,000 a year for next three years.”

Branch has raised around $20,000 in campaign funds this year and spent around $24,000.

He courted controversy when he fought, and voted against, the city’s proposed bottle tax on soft drinks. He says the Coca Cola plant in his district employs 100 people, 50 of whom live within walking distance of the building. He says fighting that 2-cent tax was about saving those 50 jobs: “I think we have an obligation to try to preserve employment.”

Branch also touts the 300 or so new houses that have gone up in the district since his 2007 election, including 50 built by Habitat for Humanity and sold at zero percent interest to people who now pay about $500 per month in mortgages. Branch promises to work with Habitat for Humanity to get 47 more houses built. “When I hear people complain about the district, I say it’s not perfection but progress,” Branch says. “I believe what Confucius said—in order for a man take a journey of 1,000 miles he must take the first step.”

Shannon Sneed’s first step was buying a house and moving into the 13th District a few years ago with her husband. The former producer for TV station WJZ says she’s lived all over town, but chose the Ellwood Park neighborhood and immediately got involved. “We organized to get trees on our block,” she says, adding that the 2900 and 3000 blocks of Fayette Street had become “a cul de sac where everything illegal happened,” so getting the neighbors together was a priority. “So we moved the drugs out, we moved the prostitution out . . . we want to green it, get benches.”

Sneed, 30, says she wants to extend that spirit of neighborliness throughout the district to attract merchants with fresh produce and other goods and services the residents need. She says Branch’s big mistake has been “not being an advocate of the people. Not being around the people. Then you know what’s going on, you know what to fight for.” Campaign finance reports show she’s raised about $7,200 for her campaign so far.

If elected Sneed says she’ll work to get better enforcement of the existing codes and laws in the 13th District, and focus on the city’s minority contracting ordinances to get people jobs. Her second priority will be quality of life issues, she says, including an education campaign for residents. Third, she says she would propose a bill to “partner with our youth. Getting our youth involved in some of these projects in our neighborhoods will get their brains working. A lot of them want to be part of the change.”

Sneed, who says she supports Otis Rolley for mayor, agrees that high property taxes are a problem, but thinks the first priority should be improving services and attracting new residents, “then come up with a plan over time to cut” taxes. She says she’d consider a commuter tax like the one Washington, D.C., has. She also likes D.C.’s tiered property-tax system, which charges higher rates to speculators who let buildings sit empty.

Sneed hopes to bring a farmers market to the Northeast Market on Monument Street, and promises not to stay in office long. “This is not going to be a career for me,” Sneed says. “I want to make sure a person with some new ideas comes in, and not 20 years later.”

Antonio Glover’s big idea—he mentions it every chance he gets—is “the rule of reciprocity.”

It means that companies doing business with the city ought to give back to city programs and hire city residents.

Warren Branch’s big mistakes, says Glover, were his lack of support for the living wage bill and fighting the proposed bottle tax. The revenue from the tax was slated to save the jobs of city sanitation workers—like Glover, 34*, a lead worker and mechanical street-sweeper operator at the Bureau of Solid Waste. “That was aimed at us,” Glover says. “It showed me he didn’t care about the folks at Solid Waste . . . and one of the reasons why is because he’s bought by the establishment.”

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