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Baltimore City Council Approves 2014 Budget

P. Kenneth Burns
/
WYPR

The Baltimore City Council approved Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s $2.4 billion operating budget Monday.

The budget, which closes a $30 million shortfall and cuts property taxes, increases city funding for school construction in order to help finance a $1.1 billion effort to build 15 new schools and renovate 30 buildings.

The budget will also provide a boost towards the demolition of vacant houses, repair roads and provide funds to hire new police officers.

Rawlings-Blake described this year’s budget process as a balancing act: “When you have scarce resources and priorities that must be dealt with you have to do a balancing act; the same balancing act families have to do across the city and our country.”

The budget, which goes into effect July 1, is part of the mayor’s ten-year financial plan to eliminate a $750 million structural deficit and attract 10,000 families to the city.

In remarks before the Board of Estimates, Rawlings-Blake says the plan “requires tough trade-offs and major changes to past practices.”