Victoria Mejicanos
AFRO Staff Writer
vmejicanos@afro.com
Baltimore city officials released Mayor Brandon M. Scott’s 10-year financial plan Dec. 3, outlining three core priorities meant to stabilize the current budget, improve city services, and support Baltimore’s long term growth. The plan also aims to improve affordability for residents and businesses.
Credit: Photo courtesy of the Baltimore City Office of the Mayor
The plan seeks to address a $100 million deficit and generate $2.5 billion in savings, reinvesting $1.5 billion into three cornerstones with a total of 85 initiatives in service delivery, infrastructure development, and tax competitiveness.
Faith Leach, city administrator, expanded on the 10-year financial plan and the three cornerstones.
“While not only preserving but also improving the delivery of our essential services, we’re going to be leveraging technology, investing in our employees and right sizing and streamlining city operations,” said Leech.
The first cornerstone is service delivery. The city’s aim is to have a more efficient and better paid workforce to improve and streamline city services. There are 43 initiatives in service delivery which aim to save a projected $346.7 million over the 10 year period.
Some of these streamlined services include improving emergency response times, and investing in technology for traffic safety, cracking down on illegal dumping and making bills and services easier to pay online according to Leach.
“Our plan calls on the city to modernize our operations, improve customer service, eliminate waste, all as an effort to provide a better overall experience for our taxpayers,” said Bob Cenname, the deputy director of the department of finance.
Some of these streamlined services include improving emergency response times and investing in technology for traffic safety, cracking down on illegal dumping and making bills and services easier to pay online.
In addition to streamlined services, the second cornerstone will invest in infrastructure such as libraries, parks, roadways and recreation centers according to Leach.
Other initiatives include some that have already begun to take place, such as the remediation of vacant properties. Others are still taking shape, such as modernizing the Baltimore City Convention Center.
“A lot of our economy, especially in that downtown vicinity, is dependent on the visitors we get from the convention center,” said Cenname. “We do think there will be some revenue source needed to do that, likely a regional revenue source, but we don’t know what that will be quite yet.”
According to Cenname, the General Assembly has already tasked a work group to begin looking at options for financing the improvement of the convention center.
The city calls the plan ambitious yet achievable and subject to change. 14 of the 85 initiatives need state approval.
“We don’t shy away from the idea that this is an ambitious plan,” said Cenname. “We have to be aggressive about looking at all these options. It’s possible that we’ll fall short on some of these. It also is possible that other initiatives will come up over the 10 year period that we’ll discover and add to the plan. This could be a living document.”