The City of Baltimore unveiled its budget proposal this Wednesday morning, amid uncertainty at both the state and federal levels.
"There are still a number of items that are pending," said budget office officials.
State lawmakers are still finalizing the state budget.
DOGE worker cuts could also have an impact, though it's not clear just how much it will impact Charm City.
While the City boasts a relatively small number of federal jobs (around 12k), the number of federal workers who live in the City and commute elsewhere is fuzzier.
Grants for the City and other industries that rely heavily on federal grants could also be heavily impacted, though exactly how that might play out remains to be seen.
When budget officials started to look at the budget, they found a shortfall of around $85 million for FY25.
While revenues were on track to grow by a little more than 5%, expenditures were on track to grow more by nearly 9%.
One major factor of the increased expenditures is the personnel costs.
Inflation and changes to Blueprint spending were other drivers of rising expenditures.
Officials are looking to drive down costs across the City to help balance the budget.
While they didn't get into specifics on the types of cuts, officials were looking to find "ways that we can achieve savings through efficiencies."
In an effort to raise revenues, the City will raise the landfill tipping fee, the EMS transport fee, raise specific fines and fees, increase the taxi tax, redeploy several speed cameras and change the revenue distribution from the grocery bag tax.
Specifically on the fines, the City is looking to update old fine structures that haven't been updated in several years and target quality of life issues, such as illegal dumping and other sanitation-related fines.
