Gordon Stick's campaign slogan is a retro beauty: “Stick With Stick Because Stick Will Stick With You.” That would make a memorable bumper sticker, but Stick's low-budget campaign will probably spend less on his run for Baltimore City Council than Donald Trump spends on a haircut.

A khakis-and-blazer guy with a preppy bearing, Stick is a gemologist who works for a pawn shop on Greenmount Avenue. He's thought about running for mayor someday, but right now, at 31, he'd settle for the 12th District seat in City Council.

No one expects him to win Tuesday's primary. But Stick, like other political aspirants I've interviewed over the last several weeks, has some interesting ideas.

Here's one worth mentioning: “Trash for Treasures.”

It sounds more like a game show than a political platform, but there's something Schaeferesque about it — a throwback to the time when, as matter of course, Mayor William Donald Schaefer famously dressed in costumes and funny hats and engaged in stunts to promote civic engagement.

“We get a [hidden] camera,” Stick says, “and we plant a piece of trash — or, in a lot of neighborhoods, there's so much trash already, you don't need to plant it — and if a kid or anyone picks it up, and you catch him doing it, you give him $100 cash right there, on the spot. One person every month will win $1,000. And, at end of the year, there's going to be a lottery and everyone that participated will have a chance to win $100,000.”

In Stick's vision, people all over the city will be picking up litter on the chance that, at any given time, the “Trash for Treasures” camera will be trained on them.

There's logic to Stick's idea. Behavioral psychologists have found that positive reinforcement almost always leads to consistently better results than the threat of negative consequences. A federally funded study of drivers found that rewards for obeying the speed limit were far more effective at changing behavior than fines for breaking it.

Here are some other ideas I've heard from candidates:

Kerry Davidson, a Harvard-educated attorney who is running for the 7th District City Council seat, bought and renovated a rowhouse on Druid Hill Avenue in West Baltimore. He's frustrated and angry about the trash that accumulates weekly — sometimes 4 feet high — in a nearby alley.

Davidson has been observing and thinking about this behavior for a long time. “Weekly trash pickups are not frequent enough,” he says. “A lot of these people dump in specific places because they want the trash to be picked up. They don't scatter it all over the street because they know it's more difficult [for city crews] to pick it up there. So people have that mindset.”

Solution: The city should park large, rat-proof bins near the spots where residents commonly stack trash. “That,” says Davidson, “will allow the dumper to walk to his usual dumping location and see a legal place to put his trash. ... If 50 or 60 percent of the trash goes into the Dumpster, you have a much cleaner city, much less exposed trash for rats to break into and scatter all over the street.”

Antonio Asa, also a candidate in the 7th District, thinks the city should get into the construction business and renovate some of the thousands of vacant homes that it owns, then sell them at affordable prices.

“If we create a construction division,” Asa says, “and utilize the unions to teach people skills, we will get plumbers, carpenters, electricians. So, even when a job shuts down, these people will still have learned a viable skill. The city will hold the mortgages on these houses for 10- or 15-year periods. ... This will improve the neighborhoods. There will be homeowners; they will care about these properties. And the city will have a [new] means of getting revenue.”

Alan Walden, the retired broadcaster who is running for the Republican nomination for mayor, thinks North Avenue needs a light rail or trolley-car line, from one end to the other, east to west, across numerous bus lines and the existing light rail.

“There's a thing about trolley cars we have forgotten,” he says. “They imply energy, action, interest. They are non-polluting. They are an effective way of moving large numbers of people. A light rail along North Avenue would do a great deal to spur the redevelopment of small businesses along the avenue and enhance the neighborhoods.”

Joe Hooe, who owns a South Baltimore tire shop, is running as a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate to push his solution to the immigration stalemate: Charging undocumented immigrants $1,000 annually for a work permit, and charging employers $1,000 a year to hire them. Deportation is not a realistic option, Hooe says, so Congress should create a pay-to-work program and use the billions in new revenue (from the permits and income taxes) for increased border security and infrastructure.

dan.rodricks@baltsun.com