The Baltimore City Council passed a $4.4 billion budget for Fiscal Year 2024 on Wednesday afternoon to cover all of the city’s operating and spending needs. That agreement comes after a weekend of negotiations among the council and the mayor’s staff, as for the first time in 125 years, council could cut and add from the budget proposal.

“I think we exercised that in a very responsible way to meet the demands of our citizens,” said Councilmember Eric Costello, who chairs the Ways and Means Committee and oversaw the budgetary negotiations.

The council added $10 million to Democratic Mayor Brandon Scott’s proposed budget. About half of that is split between new firetrucks and surveillance cameras under the CitiWatch program. The rest includes upgrades to DPW facilities, like showers for workers, and youth recreational programs.

“One of the things that we really went after aggressively was looking at the vacant positions,” said Mosby. That extra $10 million in large part comes from looking at positions that have been vacant for upwards of two and three years, the president said. Additionally the council trimmed from administrative budgets, like in the Department of Public Works.

The essentials of Scott’s budget are unchanged. The operating budget, which includes the costs used to pay staff and keep the city services running, is $3.5 billion. Capital expenditures are $188 million.

Baltimore City will be spending an extra $79 million funding city schools as required by the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the state’s education spending plan and initiative. Property taxes remain stagnant. The policing budget is also largely untouched, despite repeated requests by citizens during both taxpayers nights to move funding from the police budget to other services. The city is paying a $524.9 million contribution from the general fund for BPD — essentially flat compared to the $525.1 million the city spent in FY 2023.

The council made one significant cut — they eliminated $1.7 million from the Baltimore Office for Promotion and the Arts after a budget hearing earlier this month that laid out what President Mosby called a “significant laundry list of issues with governance and administration issues.”

The organization is run with city money but governed by a private board. It is responsible for staging festivals, grant distribution, and other artistic endeavors around the city. Councilmembers were critical of how the agency spends its money during its hearing and were surprised to learn BOPA tried to trademark the name “Artscape.”

Mosby and Costello stressed that no positions for BOPA staff would be eliminated and $300,000 in grants reserved for local artists remain untouched. Costello said the funding would be restored if BOPA makes “demonstrable progress”.

In a statement, issued before the budget passed, the organization wrote they were “dismayed” to learn of the cuts but “committed to working collaboratively with the Council and Office of the Mayor to address their concerns”.

The council added $5.4 million to improve the city’s fleet of fire trucks after they heard during budget hearings that the fleet is aging; the fire department reported using trucks for an average of 11.4 years when the National Fire Protection Association calls for a 10-year cap on front-line vehicles.

Also added was $1 million to buy more surveillance cameras for the CitiWatch system and another $1 million for improvements to that system.

Additional amendments included $800,000 for youth recreational programming and $150,000 for the Lillian Jones Recreation Center Renovation.

Councilmember Odette Ramos, a Democrat representing the 14th district, introduced a resolution that would have taken $5 million in police patrolling costs and moved that towards eliminating vacant houses– specifically it would have raised the salaries for lawyers and hired more of them to work on that issue.

That resolution did not get the second vote needed to move it through the Ways and Means Committee. Ramos did not introduce it to the council because she said she was in conversations with the mayor’s office looking at potential options.

Reducing vacants is a crime reduction strategy, said Ramos. “If we're not investing in the things that actually prevent crime from happening in the first place, then it's literally a hamster wheel.”

The budget passed 13-1 with Councilmember Zeke Cohen voting against it and Councilmember Ryan Dorsey was absent.

“Through negotiations and public hearings, we’ve reached a consensus that reflects our values, invests in historically disenfranchised parts of our city, and helps strengthen city government’s ability to deliver for residents,” wrote Mayor Scott in an emailed statement.