Baltimore is expected to bring in millions of dollars of extra revenue in 2025 through parking enforcement, penalties and traffic cameras to help balance the budget, according to the city’s top budget officials.
Starting July 1, Baltimore will restart its parking ticket penalties for payments that are overdue.
“The penalties help enforce the collection on the original parking fines,” said Baltimore Deputy Finance Director Bob Cenname, “We think that'll generate additional $3.2 million.”
Baltimore paused late fees for parking tickets during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The city is also expecting to bring in another $2.6 million in revenue from a new residential parking permit enforcement program.
The city spent $650,000 on license plate readers that will expedite the process of identifying cars that are parked illegally in residential areas.
“We have a series of additional neighborhoods that will be added this year,” Cenname said. “We think that gives us the opportunity to use this license plate recognition technology with our parking enforcement agents to improve just make the function much more efficient.”
Baltimore will also add 24 new red-light cameras bringing the traffic light total in the city to 183. There are also 153 speed cameras.
All of this is paired with a new initiative from the Baltimore Police Department to focus more on traffic and parking violations through the middle of August.
Police Commissioner Richard Worley said late last month that he is concerned about motorists violating traffic laws and parking illegally.
Baltimore originally expected a $100 million budget shortfall for 2025, however, increased revenue through things like parking enforcement, along with trims to agencies brought the deficit to zero.
“Our operating budget proposal is $3.41 billion, that's down 3.4% versus fiscal 2024,” Cenname said.
That, added with the capital plan of about $650 million, leaves the total budget recommendation for Baltimore at about $4 billion.
Cenname said property tax revenue updates and a lower than expected funding formula for the schools were the largest factors in Baltimore ending up with a balanced budget for 2025.
