Baltimore’s non-profit hospitals and universities should foot more of the city’s bills, residents said on Wednesday at the Board of Estimates Taxpayer’s Night.
The annual event gives Baltimore City residents the chance to voice their priorities on the mayor’s proposed budget before the city’s spending board– that budget, which comes in at $4.06 billion, was introduced earlier this month. The fairly small crowd of just under two dozen people testified in hybrid fashion with the predominant concerns coming from various members of the With Us, For Us coalition: that’s a group of unions and advocacy organizations trying to build a community wealth fund via a November ballot initiative
“It’s well beyond time for anchor institutions, for ‘eds and meds’, to pay their fair share to the city of Baltimore. We’re demanding that 25% of assessed property value creates a community wealth fund to invest in Black Butterfly communities,” said Nicole Fabricant with the South Baltimore Community Land Trust. The “Black Butterfly” is a term coined by Baltimore academic Lawrence Brown– who also attended the evening’s events– and refers to historically disinvested Black communities on the east and west sides of the city.
15 area hospitals only pay six-million dollars in property taxes per a payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) agreement, according to the coalition.
That’s just one concern that may be top of voters’ minds as they head to the polls on May 14th for the primary election; this is Mayor Brandon Scott’s fourth and final budget of his term. Scott, a first-term Democrat, is vying against sizable competition from former mayor Sheila Dixon and former deputy-attorney general Thiru Vignarajah to keep his seat.
The fiscal 2025 plan is an approximately $4.06 billion budget proposal which is a decrease from last year’s $4.4 billion total. It dedicates $3.4 billion to operating costs, which covers things like salaries and other daily needs to keep the government running, and another $654 for capital improvements.
The preliminary budget proposal was finalized right before the collapse of the Francis Scott Key bridge in March, explained finance director Laura Larsen.
“The city is continuing to track these costs and to look for different ways to react to the ongoing situation in terms of providing services to our residents as part of the recovery effort,” she said, noting that the city is monitoring how the collapse and subsequent closure of the port may impact the overall city economy.
In the fall, during a City Council hearing on affordable housing, representatives from the city’s finance department warned of an impending structural deficit of $107 million. When the proposal was unveiled earlier in April, those same representatives said the deficit was less than they anticipated. That’s in part because the city’s tab for the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future came in at only a $3 million increase for FY 2025.
The current proposal avoids major service cuts despite a $61.9 million hole. During a news briefing earlier this month, officials from the city’s finance department told reporters that the Scott administration tasked agency heads with identifying potential cuts of 5% in the agency budgets. Much of that comes from streamlining and identifying positions that have long been vacant, they explained.
Major savings are slated to come out of the Baltimore City Police Department budget where 55 long-term positions are up for elimination– that’s out of a total of 89 long-term citywide vacancies to be cut. Those eliminations will save around $13.3 million, officials say.
That does not necessarily mean fewer police officers. City officials say a new state program will cover 80 new positions in the police department; 40 of those are to be added in this fiscal year and another 40 in FY 25.
“We’re not eliminating 55 positions, we’re eliminating them from the general fund and the costs are being picked up on the state side,” said deputy finance director Bob Cenname when the budget was proposed. Those positions will be replaced with 66 civilian positions. It’s part of the effort to shift sworn positions back to patrol, reduce overtime, and move towards a “civilianization” of the police department.
The department’s overall budget sees a slight decrease. The current proposal budgets $593.1 million for policing compared to the $594.4 million in the current fiscal budget.
“I encourage you to go actually further and I think you can, because while you are decreasing violence, you’re actually showing that all of this budget to the police is not necessarily the factor,” said Lawrence Brown, a Baltimore academic, who was referring to the recent 20% drop in homicides and overall declining violent crime in Baltimore.
“Can we reduce our police budget incrementally?” Brown wondered. “Maybe $20 million a year?”
Another area where the Scott administration seeks to plug the budget hole comes from parking revenues. The budget proposal estimates that the city will take in about $2.6 million from license plate readers that will be used to increase parking enforcement in residential zones. An estimated $3.2 million may come from the reinstatement of parking penalties which were suspended at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
In response to the more than one dozen people who came out in support of higher property taxes for universities and hospitals, Mayor Scott said, “You don’t see any animosity on my face.”
He said the city is in conversations with those stakeholders as it begins to look at its next 10-year plan.
“We know that that new PILOT, that new agreement that we have with them has to be more than it is today. But we will do that responsibly balancing out the needs of our community,” said Scott.
The City Council will host their own taxpayer’s night later this spring. By city charter, the budget must be approved by June 26th.
