The front cover of the 2012 budget book for Baltimore shows a night view of the Inner Harbor from Federal Hill. In the foreground are some rehabbed rowhouses, each one unlit except for a few outdoor security lanterns.

There’s not a person in sight, not even a pedestrian. Beyond this dark neighborhood is a skyline of office buildings and tourist pavilions that twinkle with a thousand rays of light.

It’s an apt illustration for a budget that cuts back on neighborhood recreation centers, swimming pools, public libraries, bulk trash and abandoned housing clean-up, while boosting spending for downtown tourism and promotion.

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake presented the spending plan yesterday and stressed that it pulls off a difficult feat, as the city and the country emerge from a severe recession.

“Lower revenues and rising costs have created $186 million in cumulative budget deficits over two fiscal years,” Rawlings-Blake said, as she presented a $2.29 billion budget that does not raise taxes and does not, as with last year’s “Doomsday Budget,” threaten widespread layoffs of city employees, including police officers and firefighters.

To come up with such a spending plan, Rawlings-Blake said, meant making “tough spending reductions that I will not sugarcoat.” Still, she said, the budget honors core priorities “by fully funding the city’s obligation to public schools, continuing an aggressive plan to hire hundreds of new police officers, providing funding for neighborhood street repair and blight elimination, and maintaining mission critical city services that our neighborhoods rely on.”

How well she managed to pull it off will be the subject of debate as the budget is discussed across the city and assailed, in an election year, by Rawlings-Blake’s political opponents. One of them attended yesterday’s briefing at the Board of Estimates and slammed the budget for, among other things, “draconian cuts” to city services.

“It’s an assault on the middle class and on the neighborhoods,” said former city planning director Otis Rolley, Rawlings-Blake’s likely challenger in the September mayoral primary, speaking to a gaggle of reporters.

The mayor said her budget will fully fund the city’s share of public school costs. The city will increase its direct payment to schools by 1% (from $199.5 million to $201.4 million). Retiree benefits will boost school costs by $9 million, offset by a $5 million reduction in debt service. Overall, the city will pay $3,076 per pupil next year, according to the mayor.

In another core program, public safety, the mayor said she plans to fill all police vacancies, fund 515 crime cameras and continue Operation Safe Kids and Operation Safe Streets, both youth violence prevention programs.

Tough, but targeted?

Among the $65 million in cuts singled out for criticism in the mayor’s budget was bulk trash. Starting January 1, the city would charge a fee for bulk-trash pick-ups, producing annual savings of $1.1 million.

“I think if we start charging citizens for (bulk) trash we’re going to see more illegal dumping throughout the city,” City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young said, following the budget presentation.

Young also said he was concerned about the plan to turn over at least half of the city’s 55 recreation centers to management by a private company. Rawlings-Blake says the changes will save $1.5 million but may result in as many as 10 rec centers closing after Jan. 1.

Public swimming pools under the mayor’s plan would be opened on a staggered schedule. The pools at Druid Hill and Patterson parks, for example, would operate only on weekends between Memorial Day through June 25. They would then be open for 10 weeks between June 26 and Labor Day. Other pools would be open on reduced schedules and splash pools not connected to bigger pools would be closed.

Public pool closures became a contentious issue last summer, when families were unable to use shuttered pools during a record-breaking heat wave.

Other proposed cuts include the hours for the city’s non-emergency 311 line and funding for the Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter (BARCS). Three Animal Control worker positions would be lost.

“We’re hoping BARCS can step up with their fundraising,” city budget chief Andrew Kleine said during his presentation yesterday.

The new budget would reduce funding for the Enoch Pratt Library system by $706,300, mostly by cutting back hours at the 21 neighborhood branches. Rawlings-Blake said she is hoping to obtain state aid to restore that cut before the legislative session closes.

Other neighborhood programs taking hits in the proposed budget include blight elimination (-$1.4 million from the current budget), emergency health services (-$880,527), vacant and abandoned property cleaning (-$692,369), youth summer job programs (-$686,845), waste removal and recycling (-$472,538), HIV treatment for the uninsured (-$1 million) and roadway landscaping and cleaning (-$2.4 million).

In several programs, however, there will be expected offsetting increases in revenue. For example, the city estimates that liens placed against property owners with abandoned or vacant properties will produce $1.5 million in revenues, which will be used for the vacant house cleaning program as well as rat control.

The rat control program, allocated nearly $592,855 in the current budget, will be merged into the abandoned property cleaning operation. City boarding crews will be trained to carry out rat baiting to supplement regular pest control workers. The city plans to eliminate one pest control position.

Firehouse Closings

Three firehouses a day (rather than the current two) would be closed under the budget proposal, a change that a spokesman for the union representing firefighters yesterday called “dangerous.”

“Every day the mayor and her staff will spin the roulette wheel with these closures,” said Bob Sledgeski, president of Baltimore Fire Fighters Local 734.

Fire and police unions are still smarting from the pension changes Rawlings-Blake proposed last year that are saving the city $80 million this year. Unions have filed a complaint now pending in federal court, challenging the pension reforms, which raise the number of years of service needed before retirement.

“The only way they can balance the budget is on the backs of the working people,” Sledgeski said.

Rawlings-Blake is also pushing employees to move to cheaper generic drugs, a change which could save the city millions, budget officials said.

Most city workers will receive a 2 percent cost of living increase, which Rawlings-Blake said is meant to offset the furlough days instituted this year.

Sledgeski said employees are not happy about the furloughs: “It’s easy when you make $100,000 a year to say, ‘What’s five furlough days?’ When you have just about enough to pay your bills and put food on the table, they’re a big deal.”

“Status Quo” Budget

While union leaders were decrying furloughs and other concessions, Rolley was saying he was “not impressed” by the Mayor’s cuts in her office staff (“laying off two overpaid employees”).

[Ian Brennan, a spokesman for the Mayor’s office, emailed The Brew to say Rolley’s assertion is false: “The positions held by Ms. Dagenais and Hutchins are vacant, but still funded.”]

But his main critique of the budget was that it doesn’t address the city’s bigger problems: population loss and lack of jobs.

“There was nothing about how she is going to deal with unemployment, helping small start-up businesses, green manufacturing, the Port,” Rolley said. “It’s cutting services. It doesn’t incentivize growth, it’s the status quo.”

Asked how he would generate the revenue to pay for such programs, he said they would be created by his long-term strategy to stimulate the city’s economy. Rolley has said he advocates lowering property taxes as a way of improving the city’s appeal to newcomers and stopping the mass exodus of residents from the city.

Touting Tourism

One winner in this year’s budget is tourist marketing. The 2012 budget allocates $540,000 more to Visit Baltimore, a nonprofit organization that attracts trade conventions and visitors to downtown hotels and restaurants.

Altogether, Visit Baltimore would receive $9.9 million from the city. The mayor says Visit Baltimore is expected to generate $450 million in visitor spending next year, a $45 return for each dollar the city invests in the program.

The Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts would also get a 5% boost next year (to $1.9 million) to support programming in support of the Grand Prix and War of 1812 commemoration.

“Tourism is our second-largest industry in Baltimore,” Rawlings-Blake noted yesterday.

In contrast, the “Main Street” program to promote retail districts beyond downtown will take a $85,000 (10%) hit in the new budget.

The mayor also noted that she is “increasing funds to the Emerging Technology Center to support 27 new companies.” Both Rolley and Rawlings-Blake have indicated they plan to release long-term plans to solve the city’s economic malaise.

$65 Million Shortfall

Rawlings-Blake said the $65 million budget gap she faced in 2012 was the result of $75 million in higher costs and only $10 million in net new revenue.

The key cost drivers were $21 million in added employee and retiree health care, $9 million in pension fund contributions by the city, and $11 million for the 2% cost-of-living adjustment.

On the revenue side, new speed camera fines and reduced Homestead Tax Credit costs will offset the impacts of negative growth in property assessments and expected cuts in state aid.