The Baltimore City Council approved $68 million in extra costs for various city agencies on Monday night.

That amounts to about 1.6 percent of the city’s total $4.2B budget.

Nearly half of that, about $33 million, went to the Baltimore City Fire Department to cover overtime for sworn positions and unexpected contracting costs for fire and EMS services. Overtime has been an ongoing problem at BCFD since the COVID-19 pandemic.

During a hearing before the council last week, Baltimore City Budget Director Laura Larsen explained that the department suffered a difficult staffing gap when the pandemic paused hiring paired alongside retirements. While staffing remains an issue, sworn firefighters are often sent to cover emergency first-response in other areas of the city– creating a situation where even though recruitment is now ongoing, BCFD staffing struggles to keep apace.

Council President Zeke Cohen acknowledged the strides that BCFD and Mayor Brandon Scott’s administration have made to address the issue of firefighter overtime, which has been a discussion in the council now for years.

But during the hearing, he acknowledged concerns with the way the city adds supplemental funding to its budget and said more needs to happen to mitigate these unexpected costs or the budget process is essentially “meaningless”

“Within our fire department, within any of our agencies, we need to make sure that folks are not overdoing it on overtime costs, and that means having the right amount of pins. That means paying people appropriately, and that means also not contracting out core services,” said the council President after Monday night’s regular meeting.

Also on Monday night, the council passed a resolution in support of two laws in the Maryland General Assembly aimed at protecting immigrants’ rights.