Mayor Brandon Scott spoke before a packed crowd at the Baltimore Center Stage on Monday night as he touted the city’s “renaissance” during his fourth, and potentially final, State of the City address.
Monday’s address could not have been more of a departure from the 39 year-old first-term Democrat’s first State of the City in 2021.
“I stood at a podium like this one … alone … giving this speech virtually as a deadly global pandemic continued to take its toll on our city,” said Mayor Brandon Scott, who is running for re-election. “We had a virus to fight; vaccines to distribute; businesses to support; and lives to save from both COVID and violence. And let’s be honest both the pandemic and epidemic had Baltimore in a choke hold.”
That address was held virtually in front of masked staffers at the Waxter Senior Center while much of the city was still under tight COVID-19 restrictions.
“One of our biggest accomplishments as a council was ensuring that the city came out of the COVID pandemic with the resources and opportunities necessary to rebuild,” said Council President Nick Mosby, a Democrat who is also up for reelection.
The mayor’s main message was this: the policy in place is working and it’s time to stay the course. Little was announced by way of new policies.
Last year’s promises
In last year’s address, Mayor Scott made promises to restore weekly recycling by the end of 2024’s first-quarter, a goal he narrowly met by restoring services on March 5th. He also planned to help curtail youth violence by extending recreation center hours and investing in youth programs.
Last year saw 22 teen homicides, including the Brooklyn Day Mass shooting that killed two people, Aaliyah Gonzalez, 18, and Kylis Fagbemi, 20, and wounded 28 others, many of them teenagers.
“As a new Dad — blessed with a step-son and a new baby boy — the stakes are all too real for me,” said Scott, who just got engaged and had a son in December.
He lauded the Teen Pool Parties, Midnight Basketball, and Block Parties that 3,500 teenagers attended last year, according to the city. With that, he also highlighted his administration’s $120 million investment in recreation centers over the last three years.
He also promised that the Patterson Park Pool will be reopened this summer. The mayor drew some ire last summer when the pools at Patterson Park, Clifton, and Cherry Hill splash pad were closed for either repairs or upgrades.
For the mayor, the investment in youth programs is part of an approach to youth public safety. In 2023, there were 22 teenagers killed in the city and 122 that were shot and survived, according to an analysis from The Baltimore Banner. It was the highest rate in at least a decade although a follow-up preliminary analysis showed that the teen homicide rate may be going down.
“For years, mayors said they prioritized youth, without backing that up — shutting down rec centers and defunding programs. I was determined to lead differently, and show our young people they are worth more than empty promises and shuttered doors. Gone are the days where we will balance the budget on the backs of our children,” said the mayor, taking a subtle swipe at one of his electoral opponents, former Mayor Sheila Dixon. Dixon closed recreation centers to balance a tight budget when she was mayor.
He also shared that the city was just awarded three-quarters of a million dollars to focus on school-based violence prevention efforts.
Vacants and Housing
When Scott took office the city had 16,000 vacant properties. When one of those properties caught fire on Stricker Street in 2022, three firefighters were killed battling that blaze.
The city now reports 13,531 vacants. In December, the city announced a partnership with Baltimoreans United In Leadership (BUILD) and the Greater Baltimore Committee for a multi-billion investment to eliminate vacants over the next 15 years.
“The vision we put forward in December would make us the first city in the United States to issue non-contiguous TIF bonds targeted at vacant properties,” said Scott, claiming that it was “so good others are copying it and calling it their own.”
That full plan comes with an estimated $3 billion price tag to be financed by city, state and private funds. The mayor says the city will put $300 million towards that.
Public Safety and Violence Reduction
As he looks to the close of his term, Scott emphasized his administration’s holistic approach to tackling gun violence and public safety. When Scott first took office, the homicide rate had been continually trending upwards after the in police-custody death of Freddie Gray. The city recorded 335 homicides in 2020, mostly from shootings; that year the country reported a record number of deaths from gun violence, according to the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.
In 2023, the city recorded 263 homicides: a 20% drop. The mayor credits much of that to his administration’s version of the Group Violence Reduction Strategy– a program that uses community partners to target people most at risk for committing gun crimes or becoming gang-involved and then intervening before violence starts.
“And so far this year, we’re building on top of that reduction, dropping another 21% in homicides and 12% in nonfatal shootings,” said Scott. “It is not yet enough — it will never be enough until we do not lose a single one of our neighbors to violence. But this progress showcases that our strategy is working. Now is the time to double down, not to pull back or return to the failed, broken policies of the past.”
“Brandon Scott was a true visionary and bold in his approach,” said Daniel Webster, who researches gun violence at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions and served on the mayor’s public safety transition team.
Evidence from third-party researchers at the University of Pennsylvania indicates that there is a strong relationship between a reduction in gun violence in the city’s Western District, where the GVRS pilot launched, and the program itself. That reduction could be as high as 25%.
Scott has faced criticism for making promises to reduce violence early on in his administration that did not materialize until last year.
“I will just tell you that it is far more common that you see breakthroughs and then more dramatic declines and then you see this gradual decline,” said Webster, noting that early data for 2024 indicates that the city may be getting close to meeting the 15% gradual violence decline that Scott promised early in his administration.
Much of the GVRS program and the mayor’s holistic non-law enforcement public safety office MONSE (which stands for the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement) are funded with dollars from the city’s $641 million allotment of American Rescue Plan Act funding.
Mayor Scott also announced that he will be unveiling his budget for the next fiscal year next week. In late 2023, representatives from the city’s finance department shared that the city was looking at a potential budget shortfall of $100 million.
“I am proud to report that the budget we will put forward completely covers the gap — without furloughing employees, without closing rec centers or fire stations, and without cutting city services or turning our back on the priorities moving Baltimore forward,” Scott told the audience on Monday.
Scott is in the last year of his first term and faces competition in the May primary from former mayor Dixon, who leads him slightly in current polling. Former deputy Attorney General Thiru Vignarajah and businessman Bob Wallace are also candidates competing for the Democratic vote.
