Baltimore City presents $4.68 billion preliminary fiscal 2026 budget; proposes fee increases, savings to close $85 million gap

Laura Larson, the city's budget director, briefed the Baltimore City Board of Estimates on the Administration’s preliminary fiscal 2026 spending plan, a proposal Larson said totals about $4,680,000,000 and would close an $85,000,000 shortfall without raising broad-based property or income tax rates.

Larson said the city expects revenue growth of roughly 5.1% against expenditure growth of about 8.7%, and described a balancing strategy built from three approaches: new targeted revenue proposals, citywide cost optimizations and agency savings.

The proposal avoids a general property- or income-tax rate increase. Instead, Larson recommended a set of narrower revenue changes projected to produce about $26,400,000: raising the landfill tipping fee from $65 to $135 per ton (estimated $8,900,000), a 20% increase to the city EMS transport fee (about $5,500,000), a package of citywide fine-and-fee adjustments informed by a pending fee study (about $6,500,000), redeploying and annualizing traffic-camera revenue (about $3,400,000) and increasing the city’s taxi tax from $0.25 to $0.38 per ride (about $1,950,000). Larson said the fee study covers the city’s roughly 2,000 fees and groups about 300 fees for early review in areas such as fire, housing code enforcement and right-of-way permits.

On the savings side, Larson said the budget identifies roughly $43,700,000 in citywide savings driven by personnel and benefit adjustments ($20,900,000), reduced outside legal counsel ($3,000,000), efficiencies in agency charges (telephone, hardware and software: $2,300,000), one-time funding swaps for real estate projects ($11,600,000) and…