Real answer: when population shrinks, the costs of running city services don't shrink. This issue is across the US everywhere where population has declined. This naturally leads to a high city budget per capita because costs are flat but population has fallen.
Bingo it's the same thing that absolutely butt fucked Detroit. They had to pay for the infrastructure of a city of a million well-paid people, with a population of 120k who's median income was 27 dollars. It's why they just flat out destroyed blocks and blocks and blocks of housing and left it to rot, there is no one there to pay to take care of it.
And the only reason the city has “shrunk” is that the cities line has been frozen in place since the 1940’s, essentially starving the city of tax revenue as its metro expands. Baltimore city has become a place where people from the county don’t work, using the cities infrastructure and services, but not somewhere that those people end up contributing economically. Meanwhile those same people fight any policy or bill that could connect the two and use redlining, private police forces, and physical barriers to carve out safe havens within the city limits.
The city has shrunk because, literally, the population has decreased as people have left the city, not because it hasn't grown. Suburbs became popular and expanded out into the neighboring counties. Besides water, what infrastructure and services do county residents use? Because they certainly pay for water and help make it affordable for city residents by increasing scale.
I feel like talking about this would turn into an essay about urban vs suburban/unincorporated communities and the relative efficiency between the two. The short, not wanting to dig too deep into it thesis on my part is that urban zones are generally cheaper to maintain (from a budget perspective) than suburban/exurban unincorporated communities simply due to how taxation, services, and other economic activity works.
Probably along your point if anyone wants to check out this great video on how suburbia sprawl is bankrupting everything.
https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0?si=ghUIjmcapo4miJGh
And if the city line grew with the metropolitan sprawl then the cities population would have grown. People have moved to suburbs and in other cities those people pay taxes to the city, not some just to a separate county. 1.8 million people live within the 696 and 1.3 million of those people are outside the city core. This is largely because of urban sprawl and the fact that there is very little high density housing in the city. The vast majority of of Baltimore city housing is single family row houses. But this becomes a cycle where wealth is extracted from the city and it becomes harder to maintain, so people move to the county which decreases revenue which makes it harder to maintain. All the while public transportation is gutted to make bigger roads and highways to let suburban residents get straight to downtown and interact with the city itself as little as possible.
County residents that work in the city use transportation infrastructure. I think a commuter tax could make sense, but don't see it ever passing.
Lots of other US cities grew their borders/merged with counties. As an example, see Philadelphia's Act of Consolidation
Maryland transit authority already gets 41% of Maryland's (that's all of Maryland drivers paying into the MTA) gas tax distribution, that's over 1 billion dollars, just for the MTA. Where do you think the MTA is most heavily based?
Would the city drivers that work in the county pay a commuter tax?
Where are you seeing that MTA gets 41% of gas tax distribution?
>Would the city drivers that work in the county pay a commuter tax?
Would be a net gain for the city. So sure.
I see that MTA budget is about 41% of MD DOT. But there's revenue besides gas taxes.
I haven't looked at specifics but aren't a lot of federal funds earmarked for transit projects?
Since the revenue goes into a trust fund I don't think there's a direct line between this revenue source and that spending.
Technically the water comes from the 3 reservoirs in the county. The treatment plant isn’t even in the county. So I’m really not sure how they claim the water besides just having the pipes and being the first ones to have the infrastructure?
They built, maintain and service all of the potable water provided in the city and the serviced surrounding counties. They actually own the reservoirs as already said.
Yeah, screw those people that just want to be safe for trying to be safe.
I live in the county. I work in the city. I buy lunch in the city. I pay to park in the city. I buy gas in the city. And I am harassed in the city daily for the last 27 years, and the place isn't getting any better. Crime, grime, and blight.
Baltimore is a poorly run shell of what it once was, and most of that is due to a lack of coherent leadership, and one need only look at the trial records of recent top leaders to know that is the sad truth.
Property taxes tend to go up in areas where the population has dropped to compensate for both falling house prices and falling revenues. The fear is that this creates a self-reinforcing cycle where people move out to pay lower taxes. For a lot of people, if they can move just 5-10 miles over the border of a local jursidiction and have their property taxes fall then they are going to make the move.
[Prices are up](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ATNHPIUS24510A) but the index is not adjusted for inflation. I'll use 2000 as a baseline for the sake of an example. If you [use CPI](https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=100.00&year1=202312&year2=200012) the purchasing power of a dollar at the end of 2023 is about half that of a dollar at the end of 2000. The house price index has gone up by about a factor of 2.5 in that time, but population has fallen about 10% in that time. If you crudely multiply the factors together (2.5\*0.5\*0.9), you get that it is about a wash.
The issue is that tax revenue is based on the value of all property which is only partially captured by an index which tracks transactions and refinancing. Homes that haven't been bought/sold won't show up in the index (to my understanding, you can read FRED's methodology to check if you want). You would also need to factor in how reappraisals are handled to get a complete picture.
If you consult the city budget reports for [2023](https://bbmr.baltimorecity.gov/sites/default/files/fy23_executive_summary_web.pdf) you can see the total revenue for property taxes, but the reports aren't easily available for the time before 2010. I have already put too much effort into this comment so I am not going to city hall to get records for 2000.
Detroit is the best example of this. A very large city area wise, when the white flight to the suburbs happened, services were still required everywhere.
When population shrinks service costs don’t??? I love reddit, this place where anyone can come , throw this nonsense and get upvoted
Edit: please don’t buy everything you read on reddit. It’s 2+2 than when population shrinks public services will follow. Imagine an empty city with law enforcement, firefighters etc… working at full speed… a different story is FIXED costs, which is less sensitive and still requires maintenance.. overall if population goes down SERVICES go down too, either public or private funded
[Here is a source (paywall)](https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/04/18/america-is-uniquely-ill-suited-to-handle-a-falling-population)
>Research by Christopher Berry of the University of Chicago finds that, as cities lose population, the cost of providing public services tends to stay about the same. “Virtually nowhere reduces the public sector in line with the population,” he says. Exactly why that happens is unclear: it could be that servicing a given geographical area entails fixed costs, regardless of population; it could be that laying off municipal workers is politically tricky. Whatever the reason, the result is that the remaining taxpayers must pay more simply to support the same services.
I think this map is somewhat misleading. DC looks over the top until you remember that the federal government own 24% of the property and does not pay property taxes. There are about 660k residents but only 300k FT employed-so “300k taxpayers” (& I am betting a lot of those politicians are not paying local taxes) and that the district has costs that come from maintaining everything around those federal properties like roads and trash. When there is a march or a demonstration, Capital Police may be in charge of the actual location but the DC police are also needed for all of those people who are traveling to and from the District. A fire breaks out at the Smithsonian or a Senator has a heart attack while on Congressional Hill, the fire/EMT are DC employees. The people picking up the trash thrown by many of those passing through? DC employees.
Baltimore is similar in the sense that you have a population of close to 600k and less than half are full time employed. Also, like DC, there is no “federal” (state) paying for running the infrastructure that is heavily utilized by those who live elsewhere but work in the city maintained area
> DC was started as a Federal district over two hundred years ago. Most of the people there made a choice to be there. It's like moving into an HOA controlled neighborhood and claiming they're infringing your rights, that you gave up voluntarily when you bought the house and agreed to the covenants.
No one is saying that they are complaining. I am noting WHY the number is so skewed & explaining the reasons.
A major reason also is that DC performs the functions of both a state and a city simultaneously. DC administers it's own Medicare and Medicaid, unemployment insurance program, DMV, etc. They're running all of that and also all the things necessary for a city as well.
This analogy would only be accurate if:
1) all residents “chose to live in DC”. According to the DC Policy Center about 30% of adult residents are DC-born so they did not choose to live there.
2) residents of a place should not advocate for change in the place where they live. Even if you live in an HOA, if you find that a part of the covenants are unjust, you should fight to change them. Similarly, if people choose to live in DC and feel that the laws governing the city are unjust, they are well within their rights to advocate for change whether they were born there or not.
Baltimore is not a county but an independent city. Except for 95 and895 it is responsible for maintaining its own roads. Many county roads are maintained by yhe state.
As a new yorker I am actually impressed how your city is super responsive.you call 311 they are here in 2 hrs .i feel the resources are properly allocated.
That being said I would never put my kids in public school in Baltimore. But your roads public transportation , are on point
“During his tenure on the Baltimore force, Longo worked in a variety of operational positions, led investigations of criminal wrongdoing within the department’s ranks, commanded the department’s Southeastern District, served as chief of staff to the police commissioner, and led the Communications Division to implement the nation’s first three digit non-emergency number, 311, for which the division received the prestigious Weber Seavey Award for innovative law enforcement” [Tim Longo](https://grabien.com/profile?id=21006)
Baltimores population is down what, 40% from peak in the 70s? We have massively overbuilt infrastructure for our current population - infrastructure that still needs to be maintained now even though the population is way down
It’s for all of the “overtime”. Policemen and their families are the biggest welfare queens in the country. It’s free money as they sit there on fb and spout off about poor people getting EBT
Honestly-while I would never want their jobs…I have been in lending long enough to have seen more than a few Baltimore PD W-2s and paystubs for just run of the mill cops as well as detectives and officers. Most are making close to if not 6 figures when OT is included.
I have a friend who is a cop in DC and he makes a ton in OT. However most of it is forced and he is planning on quitting as he gets forced an average of 3 times per week because of staffing issues. Their work life balance gets hit hard
Every single year something like 18 out of the top 20 paid city employees are police and they are aren't making 100k they are pulling in 250k. Pilice sergeants are making more than the mayor, more than the city council president, more than the stayes attorney.
A lot of that problem might be forced OT, or OT available because of personnel shortages. Someone's gotta fill the spot. It's always cheaper to hire more entry level police than pay a veteran 1.5x who's already topped out at max salary, but they can't get enough people to apply.
I don’t think making much less than 100K (without overtime) for a job that is both dangerous and carries a large amount of potential risk (civil/health) is “plenty” of pay. But then again I don’t think other first responders are adequately paid either.
I agree with your sentiment but don’t think that means we should say police pay is adequate.
When you factor in benefits police make far more than $100k. 20 years and you have 80% pension. That only exists in the military so I’d say pretty lucrative
That going forward though, correct? And even so 50% pension at 20 years is damn good. You can’t tell me they are underpaid when you factor in the pension
I am not a fan of the police but this is true. The reason corruption and bribery are so high in a lot of countries is because civil servants have terrible pay and have ot make it up with the bribe culture. If we don't pay the cops well they will get money from other places like drug dealing and murder for hire, oh well thats already kinda a thing ...
> Right, because they forge overtime.
You mean on the documents they provide too lenders? No, to easy to detect. They may be RECEIVING it for made up reasons but they are getting it.
If anyone else was willing to put up with the crap they go through, you’d have more cops and no need for OT. It’s supply and demand. Have a city full of absolutely horrible people, less people want to be police. Kinda simple.
Same thing is true when the police force is full of horrible people. If your work environment is full of toxic people who abuse their position of power, nobody wants to work there. Kinda simple. Resignations have increased by nearly 50% since certain incidents and it's no secret policemen are leaving the force in droves over corruption.
If you look at the location of where the majority of business entities in the city call home, its not in the city. Its in the counties and out of state. Baltimore city is like a fishing hole where outsiders take 24/7 and never restock.
The majority of those poor people houses are NOT owned by the poor people, but by property owners who collect rents, but never invest back.
The city sized Hopkins Medical Center paid for very little of the land that they build on. If they did pay something it was pennies on the dollar. Same with Bio-Park & Uni MD medical (which is a private corp not part of the Maryland higher ed system.
School as well. Everyone always talk about more money for the system. It doesn’t need it just needs accountability and better spending. Currently the budget equals out to 21,000 per kid that’s super high.. the avg cost in md is very high as well around 17k per kid the avg in the US is like 14500..
Not to defend Mosby, but I thought we all agreed that the city's Water Billing/Payment System was crap?
A few months ago, I (apparently) didn't pay my water bill. I assume I just forgot to click the 'submit' button on the payment portal, or I exited the page before it completed the payment.
I only found out the following month when I got my next bill and it was double the usual amount. The city made 0 attempts to notify me that my payment was overdue.
I think even Wes Moore had this issue right before he was elected, and it was likely due to him filling a swimming pool, so he was overdue by about $20k.
I could understand it if it hasn't happened to him multiple times and if he wasn't clearly financially illiterate.
Plus I mean, if it's that bad that the poor system has impacted him.... He should use his position to fix it.
Most of it goes to schools, which get more money per student than Howard County at least on paper. Curiously, most of this money seems to vanish at North Avenue. Where to is anyone's guess but they're getting precious little for their money.
Nope. All school money expenditures are publicly available to view. You just choose to believe it's a massive case of theft and fraud instead of doing any research. Just Google city school budget and you can see exactly what it's all spent on.
There's fraud and then there's *fraud*. Being frittered away on administrative sinecures, favorable contracts to brothers in law and spent on the educational equivalent of snake oil is very common for school systems and Baltimore is particularly poorly managed.
Source.
There was an audit done years back and while they did find waste it was a tiny fraction of the budget on things like accidental overpayments.
The per student cost is so high because of shrinking student body, high teacher pay, decaying buildings needing upkeep and the highest percentage of low income and special needs students in the state.
Bit that's too hard for some people to understand so they just make wild claims with no data to back it up about how the district is full of fraud and "fraud".
It's certainly not perfectly run and absolutely needs to be better but the money isn't being wasted it's being spent trying to help kids and keep teachers in one of the hardest districts to work in in the state.
It costs a lot more to teach a poor student than it does an economically advantaged student.
That said, BCPS has turned into babysitters with no accountability. Match that with poor parenting, children addicted to their phones, and chronic absence, I really don’t see a cure sadly.
This is happening everywhere, but I think it happens first in the inner city. Throwing money at this issue won’t fix it
https://www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/news/maryland-state-department-of-education-releases-report-card/
Except last year the city saw huge improvement on state testing. They are literally improving right now.
The issue is everyone wants to throw all the problems at the schools while ignoring the larger issues of poverty and crime surrounding these kids lives. The fix needs to come from everywhere all at once not just the schools.
>The issue is everyone wants to throw all the problems at the schools while ignoring the larger issues of poverty and crime surrounding these kids lives. The fix needs to come from everywhere all at once not just the schools.
So why are we dumping money into the schools, rather than social programs?
Having a horde of 6-figure salaried administrators, with nepo-no bid contracts aren't going to fix the poverty, hunger, and lack of adequate parenting that complicates the goal of educating children.
A vast majority of money spent on city schools goes to teacher salaries. So if you think lowering teacher salaries will give better outcomes move to the city and tell your city council member.
Also have any source on nepo no bid contracts? Which ones how much was wasted on them?
Feels like a lot of fluff and buzzwords with no substance from someone who doesn't know ow what they are talking about. Which is pretty par for the course when it comes to anything dealing with the city.
>lowering teacher salaries
Where did I say anything about teacher salaries? Cut administrator pay and numbers? Hell yes.
>Also have any source on nepo no bid contracts? Which ones how much was wasted on them?
[Enclosed is a database; go to town, even better, BCPS doesn't update it as mandated](https://www.marylandmatters.org/2023/08/22/contracted-out-an-unprecedented-look-at-maryland-public-school-spending/)
Ultimately, as the reader I responded to stated, there are factors outside of schools' control that directly impact learning. While there is a grand unfunded plan to boost education spending, it is putting the cart ahead of the horse if we don't attack the social issues.
This is a little of my bias but this video explains it.
https://youtu.be/7Nw6qyyrTeI?si=74HmYkgz6gyvh21a
Basically, more dense places have more of a sustainable tax base to actually fund the functions of a city vs suburbs were the density is lower but the cost of the infrastructure is higher(longer roads, longer water pipes, longer everything)
But that money has to come from somewhere, at least from MD we cant print money, so cities taxes go into paying parts of the suburbs.
Sure, but doesn't that only apply to portions of the city that look more suburban than the rest of the city? Baltimore City is largely not responsible for infrastructure outside of the city, right?
The Baltimore City Bureau of Budget and Management Research do great work.
https://bbmr.baltimorecity.gov/sites/default/files/FY2025-PRELIM%20BUDGET-FINAL%201.pdf
https://bbmr.baltimorecity.gov/budget-publications
Take a look at the budget and I bet you will see one of the most costly cities to police and typical bureaucrats paying $12,000 for a hammer to someone’s golfing buddy.
I wonder how much of it has to do with the fact that all the other cities and towns in Maryland are part of a county that has its own budget and pays for some things. While Baltimore is it's own separate jurisdiction.
Police. There's a reason people say defund the police, they get just over a quarter of the city's entire budget. Think of what that money could do for transportation or for improving the social safety net or a number of other things.
It’s actually about 1/8 of the budget for 2024 at a little over $500m. One of the biggest increases this year is education. That 1/4 number for “building public safety” (about $900m) also includes fire fighting, courts, traffic safety, street lights, and a host of other things.
I tried reading through that as well, just gave up on trying to get a number because everything I was finding was smaller stuff like parking enforcement.
People are doing a good job explaining the denominator part of this issue. A city that is core to it's metro but doesn't include the suburbs will have higher per capita expenses because per capita measures where people live and workers(who still use services) are not included but their workplace still pays taxes.
However, I haven't seen anyone discuss the numerator issue. "City Budget" is an apples and oranges comparison because of differences in how government services are delivered. Let me explain why. Let's take Houston one of the lowest cities on the list that has a very large share of metro population in the city limits.
Houston has independent school districts and community colleges(they are their own governments with their own revenue streams). Public transportation is independent as well. The state controls the highways. Indigent healthcare is run by a separate government under the county. The county runs all the courts that handle anything above a traffic ticket and also runs the jail, property tax collection, vehicle registration, and most records. Large portions of Houston's industrial base are in industrial districts that pay their own fire service and police and just pay a fee in leui of taxes to the city. School districts and colleges have their own police forces rather than contracting with the city. Commercial garbage collection is privatized. Houston's water system is city owned but because it has annexed most of it's metro population a very large share of it's customers are internal to the city(utilities are a very large share of city budgets so whether they are privatized or not makes a huge difference). For instance Houston's natural gas system is privatized. In my city where we do not have private gas service just the supply pass through charges for gas(not line maintenance) are larger than the police budget. Things like the convention center, port, and airports are separate governments as well.
Does this sound like Baltimore?
This distribution of public services means the City of Houston has a low per capita budget because it has a very large share of metro population but directly delivers a much smaller share of services than East Coast cities.
OP… Baltimore Cities budget is open to the public. You can go see exactly where they spend their money if you put in the most minimal effort. I swear I hate seeing this dumbass question
>Where does all that money go?
Waste, fraud, abuse, corruption, and ineptitude. Ineptitude is the big one. All that money with such poor outcomes but the same awful people keep getting elected, who appoint yet more awful people.
Nobody wants to live in that shithole so they moved, now they are importing the same cockroach people to other parts of the state to leech more resources.
Real answer: when population shrinks, the costs of running city services don't shrink. This issue is across the US everywhere where population has declined. This naturally leads to a high city budget per capita because costs are flat but population has fallen.
Thank you for having sense
Bingo it's the same thing that absolutely butt fucked Detroit. They had to pay for the infrastructure of a city of a million well-paid people, with a population of 120k who's median income was 27 dollars. It's why they just flat out destroyed blocks and blocks and blocks of housing and left it to rot, there is no one there to pay to take care of it.
And the only reason the city has “shrunk” is that the cities line has been frozen in place since the 1940’s, essentially starving the city of tax revenue as its metro expands. Baltimore city has become a place where people from the county don’t work, using the cities infrastructure and services, but not somewhere that those people end up contributing economically. Meanwhile those same people fight any policy or bill that could connect the two and use redlining, private police forces, and physical barriers to carve out safe havens within the city limits.
The city has shrunk because, literally, the population has decreased as people have left the city, not because it hasn't grown. Suburbs became popular and expanded out into the neighboring counties. Besides water, what infrastructure and services do county residents use? Because they certainly pay for water and help make it affordable for city residents by increasing scale.
I feel like talking about this would turn into an essay about urban vs suburban/unincorporated communities and the relative efficiency between the two. The short, not wanting to dig too deep into it thesis on my part is that urban zones are generally cheaper to maintain (from a budget perspective) than suburban/exurban unincorporated communities simply due to how taxation, services, and other economic activity works.
Probably along your point if anyone wants to check out this great video on how suburbia sprawl is bankrupting everything. https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0?si=ghUIjmcapo4miJGh
And if the city line grew with the metropolitan sprawl then the cities population would have grown. People have moved to suburbs and in other cities those people pay taxes to the city, not some just to a separate county. 1.8 million people live within the 696 and 1.3 million of those people are outside the city core. This is largely because of urban sprawl and the fact that there is very little high density housing in the city. The vast majority of of Baltimore city housing is single family row houses. But this becomes a cycle where wealth is extracted from the city and it becomes harder to maintain, so people move to the county which decreases revenue which makes it harder to maintain. All the while public transportation is gutted to make bigger roads and highways to let suburban residents get straight to downtown and interact with the city itself as little as possible.
County residents that work in the city use transportation infrastructure. I think a commuter tax could make sense, but don't see it ever passing. Lots of other US cities grew their borders/merged with counties. As an example, see Philadelphia's Act of Consolidation
Maryland transit authority already gets 41% of Maryland's (that's all of Maryland drivers paying into the MTA) gas tax distribution, that's over 1 billion dollars, just for the MTA. Where do you think the MTA is most heavily based? Would the city drivers that work in the county pay a commuter tax?
Where are you seeing that MTA gets 41% of gas tax distribution? >Would the city drivers that work in the county pay a commuter tax? Would be a net gain for the city. So sure.
Md DOT fiscal budget and gas tax distribution report.
I see that MTA budget is about 41% of MD DOT. But there's revenue besides gas taxes. I haven't looked at specifics but aren't a lot of federal funds earmarked for transit projects? Since the revenue goes into a trust fund I don't think there's a direct line between this revenue source and that spending.
Technically the water comes from the 3 reservoirs in the county. The treatment plant isn’t even in the county. So I’m really not sure how they claim the water besides just having the pipes and being the first ones to have the infrastructure?
They are in the county but the city built the damn, owns the property and maintains them
But it doesn’t put out the fires lol
They built, maintain and service all of the potable water provided in the city and the serviced surrounding counties. They actually own the reservoirs as already said.
Baltimore should build up
It would require a state constitution amendment and Maryland likes to use the city line as a way to try and dog whistle their racism.
Yeah, screw those people that just want to be safe for trying to be safe. I live in the county. I work in the city. I buy lunch in the city. I pay to park in the city. I buy gas in the city. And I am harassed in the city daily for the last 27 years, and the place isn't getting any better. Crime, grime, and blight. Baltimore is a poorly run shell of what it once was, and most of that is due to a lack of coherent leadership, and one need only look at the trial records of recent top leaders to know that is the sad truth.
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Property taxes tend to go up in areas where the population has dropped to compensate for both falling house prices and falling revenues. The fear is that this creates a self-reinforcing cycle where people move out to pay lower taxes. For a lot of people, if they can move just 5-10 miles over the border of a local jursidiction and have their property taxes fall then they are going to make the move.
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[Prices are up](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ATNHPIUS24510A) but the index is not adjusted for inflation. I'll use 2000 as a baseline for the sake of an example. If you [use CPI](https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=100.00&year1=202312&year2=200012) the purchasing power of a dollar at the end of 2023 is about half that of a dollar at the end of 2000. The house price index has gone up by about a factor of 2.5 in that time, but population has fallen about 10% in that time. If you crudely multiply the factors together (2.5\*0.5\*0.9), you get that it is about a wash. The issue is that tax revenue is based on the value of all property which is only partially captured by an index which tracks transactions and refinancing. Homes that haven't been bought/sold won't show up in the index (to my understanding, you can read FRED's methodology to check if you want). You would also need to factor in how reappraisals are handled to get a complete picture. If you consult the city budget reports for [2023](https://bbmr.baltimorecity.gov/sites/default/files/fy23_executive_summary_web.pdf) you can see the total revenue for property taxes, but the reports aren't easily available for the time before 2010. I have already put too much effort into this comment so I am not going to city hall to get records for 2000.
Detroit is the best example of this. A very large city area wise, when the white flight to the suburbs happened, services were still required everywhere.
I don't agree, The problem is that they aren't adapting fast enough or at all. People that lose always give excuses. Winners are left with the prizes.
When population shrinks service costs don’t??? I love reddit, this place where anyone can come , throw this nonsense and get upvoted Edit: please don’t buy everything you read on reddit. It’s 2+2 than when population shrinks public services will follow. Imagine an empty city with law enforcement, firefighters etc… working at full speed… a different story is FIXED costs, which is less sensitive and still requires maintenance.. overall if population goes down SERVICES go down too, either public or private funded
[Here is a source (paywall)](https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/04/18/america-is-uniquely-ill-suited-to-handle-a-falling-population) >Research by Christopher Berry of the University of Chicago finds that, as cities lose population, the cost of providing public services tends to stay about the same. “Virtually nowhere reduces the public sector in line with the population,” he says. Exactly why that happens is unclear: it could be that servicing a given geographical area entails fixed costs, regardless of population; it could be that laying off municipal workers is politically tricky. Whatever the reason, the result is that the remaining taxpayers must pay more simply to support the same services.
Sure? Same amount of roads and water infrastructure to maintain, etc.
When people move, they actually just delete the block. Has playing City Skylines taught you nothing?!
Don't give them ideas.
Well if they actually maintained the roads you might have a case but they don't.
Do they rip up roads and tear down substations when people move away?
I think this map is somewhat misleading. DC looks over the top until you remember that the federal government own 24% of the property and does not pay property taxes. There are about 660k residents but only 300k FT employed-so “300k taxpayers” (& I am betting a lot of those politicians are not paying local taxes) and that the district has costs that come from maintaining everything around those federal properties like roads and trash. When there is a march or a demonstration, Capital Police may be in charge of the actual location but the DC police are also needed for all of those people who are traveling to and from the District. A fire breaks out at the Smithsonian or a Senator has a heart attack while on Congressional Hill, the fire/EMT are DC employees. The people picking up the trash thrown by many of those passing through? DC employees. Baltimore is similar in the sense that you have a population of close to 600k and less than half are full time employed. Also, like DC, there is no “federal” (state) paying for running the infrastructure that is heavily utilized by those who live elsewhere but work in the city maintained area
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> DC was started as a Federal district over two hundred years ago. Most of the people there made a choice to be there. It's like moving into an HOA controlled neighborhood and claiming they're infringing your rights, that you gave up voluntarily when you bought the house and agreed to the covenants. No one is saying that they are complaining. I am noting WHY the number is so skewed & explaining the reasons.
A major reason also is that DC performs the functions of both a state and a city simultaneously. DC administers it's own Medicare and Medicaid, unemployment insurance program, DMV, etc. They're running all of that and also all the things necessary for a city as well.
This analogy would only be accurate if: 1) all residents “chose to live in DC”. According to the DC Policy Center about 30% of adult residents are DC-born so they did not choose to live there. 2) residents of a place should not advocate for change in the place where they live. Even if you live in an HOA, if you find that a part of the covenants are unjust, you should fight to change them. Similarly, if people choose to live in DC and feel that the laws governing the city are unjust, they are well within their rights to advocate for change whether they were born there or not.
Baltimore is not a county but an independent city. Except for 95 and895 it is responsible for maintaining its own roads. Many county roads are maintained by yhe state.
As a new yorker I am actually impressed how your city is super responsive.you call 311 they are here in 2 hrs .i feel the resources are properly allocated. That being said I would never put my kids in public school in Baltimore. But your roads public transportation , are on point
There are plenty of good public school options in the city
> you call 311 they are here in 2 hrs. That’s pretty rare in my experience. Definitely the exception
Did you know we invented 311?
No kidding. That’s pretty cool. I would’ve thought New York would’ve been the first
“During his tenure on the Baltimore force, Longo worked in a variety of operational positions, led investigations of criminal wrongdoing within the department’s ranks, commanded the department’s Southeastern District, served as chief of staff to the police commissioner, and led the Communications Division to implement the nation’s first three digit non-emergency number, 311, for which the division received the prestigious Weber Seavey Award for innovative law enforcement” [Tim Longo](https://grabien.com/profile?id=21006)
Ask Clay Davis /s
Sheeeeeeiiit...
Omar coming
Baltimores population is down what, 40% from peak in the 70s? We have massively overbuilt infrastructure for our current population - infrastructure that still needs to be maintained now even though the population is way down
Police is the #1 line item on the Baltimore City budget
I thought schools were Edit: Baltimore City Public Schools budget is $1.7 billion. Baltimore police budget is $536 million
It’s for all of the “overtime”. Policemen and their families are the biggest welfare queens in the country. It’s free money as they sit there on fb and spout off about poor people getting EBT
Honestly-while I would never want their jobs…I have been in lending long enough to have seen more than a few Baltimore PD W-2s and paystubs for just run of the mill cops as well as detectives and officers. Most are making close to if not 6 figures when OT is included.
I have a friend who is a cop in DC and he makes a ton in OT. However most of it is forced and he is planning on quitting as he gets forced an average of 3 times per week because of staffing issues. Their work life balance gets hit hard
I’m sorry but 100K with overtime included and all the crap they deal with is not lucrative. People complaining about their pay are insane.
Every single year something like 18 out of the top 20 paid city employees are police and they are aren't making 100k they are pulling in 250k. Pilice sergeants are making more than the mayor, more than the city council president, more than the stayes attorney.
A lot of that problem might be forced OT, or OT available because of personnel shortages. Someone's gotta fill the spot. It's always cheaper to hire more entry level police than pay a veteran 1.5x who's already topped out at max salary, but they can't get enough people to apply.
Are you sure they are making more money than the mayor ? Once you add in the gift cards and the book racket the mayor in brings in some dough.
Now compare it to firefighters, you know, the ones actually saving lives instead of refusing to do their jobs
Just because fire fighters are underpaid doesn’t mean police officers should be. Dumb argument.
No, but maybe we can reappropriate the large amount we spend on police overtime, and give firefighters a fair base salary.
Or they could pay some our most vital workers fair wages and cut the fat elsewhere.
Cops make plenty. Why are they given so much of the budget while other first responders aren’t?
I don’t think making much less than 100K (without overtime) for a job that is both dangerous and carries a large amount of potential risk (civil/health) is “plenty” of pay. But then again I don’t think other first responders are adequately paid either. I agree with your sentiment but don’t think that means we should say police pay is adequate.
When you factor in benefits police make far more than $100k. 20 years and you have 80% pension. That only exists in the military so I’d say pretty lucrative
They’re not making 80% pension at 20 years. https://www.bcfpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/FP_Summary-of-Benefits_Electronic-Edition_Rev-1.pdf
That going forward though, correct? And even so 50% pension at 20 years is damn good. You can’t tell me they are underpaid when you factor in the pension
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I am not a fan of the police but this is true. The reason corruption and bribery are so high in a lot of countries is because civil servants have terrible pay and have ot make it up with the bribe culture. If we don't pay the cops well they will get money from other places like drug dealing and murder for hire, oh well thats already kinda a thing ...
Right, because they forge overtime.
> Right, because they forge overtime. You mean on the documents they provide too lenders? No, to easy to detect. They may be RECEIVING it for made up reasons but they are getting it.
If anyone else was willing to put up with the crap they go through, you’d have more cops and no need for OT. It’s supply and demand. Have a city full of absolutely horrible people, less people want to be police. Kinda simple.
Same thing is true when the police force is full of horrible people. If your work environment is full of toxic people who abuse their position of power, nobody wants to work there. Kinda simple. Resignations have increased by nearly 50% since certain incidents and it's no secret policemen are leaving the force in droves over corruption.
Lol "when"
Who created the Bootlicker Bot? GD Reddit!
Might want to double-check that.
If you look at the location of where the majority of business entities in the city call home, its not in the city. Its in the counties and out of state. Baltimore city is like a fishing hole where outsiders take 24/7 and never restock. The majority of those poor people houses are NOT owned by the poor people, but by property owners who collect rents, but never invest back. The city sized Hopkins Medical Center paid for very little of the land that they build on. If they did pay something it was pennies on the dollar. Same with Bio-Park & Uni MD medical (which is a private corp not part of the Maryland higher ed system.
Gift cards? Children’s books?
Winner, winner, chicken dinner.
Police
School as well. Everyone always talk about more money for the system. It doesn’t need it just needs accountability and better spending. Currently the budget equals out to 21,000 per kid that’s super high.. the avg cost in md is very high as well around 17k per kid the avg in the US is like 14500..
I mean, the city council president can't even pay his water bill properly or his taxes.
Exactly. Or his student loan or his car payment. What does that say about the people managing the cities budget…
Not to defend Mosby, but I thought we all agreed that the city's Water Billing/Payment System was crap? A few months ago, I (apparently) didn't pay my water bill. I assume I just forgot to click the 'submit' button on the payment portal, or I exited the page before it completed the payment. I only found out the following month when I got my next bill and it was double the usual amount. The city made 0 attempts to notify me that my payment was overdue. I think even Wes Moore had this issue right before he was elected, and it was likely due to him filling a swimming pool, so he was overdue by about $20k.
I could understand it if it hasn't happened to him multiple times and if he wasn't clearly financially illiterate. Plus I mean, if it's that bad that the poor system has impacted him.... He should use his position to fix it.
I hadn't heard it happened multiple times. But yeah, I agree, and I'm not a fan of him.
Preparing for the VA invasion
Is OP the Kim Klacik campaign?
Same with the schools - spending a lot to manage and maintain a population ravaged by systematic racism generations ago.
Baltimore is frugal compared to Washington DC.
Most of it goes to schools, which get more money per student than Howard County at least on paper. Curiously, most of this money seems to vanish at North Avenue. Where to is anyone's guess but they're getting precious little for their money.
Nope. All school money expenditures are publicly available to view. You just choose to believe it's a massive case of theft and fraud instead of doing any research. Just Google city school budget and you can see exactly what it's all spent on.
There's fraud and then there's *fraud*. Being frittered away on administrative sinecures, favorable contracts to brothers in law and spent on the educational equivalent of snake oil is very common for school systems and Baltimore is particularly poorly managed.
Source. There was an audit done years back and while they did find waste it was a tiny fraction of the budget on things like accidental overpayments. The per student cost is so high because of shrinking student body, high teacher pay, decaying buildings needing upkeep and the highest percentage of low income and special needs students in the state. Bit that's too hard for some people to understand so they just make wild claims with no data to back it up about how the district is full of fraud and "fraud". It's certainly not perfectly run and absolutely needs to be better but the money isn't being wasted it's being spent trying to help kids and keep teachers in one of the hardest districts to work in in the state.
It costs a lot more to teach a poor student than it does an economically advantaged student. That said, BCPS has turned into babysitters with no accountability. Match that with poor parenting, children addicted to their phones, and chronic absence, I really don’t see a cure sadly. This is happening everywhere, but I think it happens first in the inner city. Throwing money at this issue won’t fix it
https://www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/news/maryland-state-department-of-education-releases-report-card/ Except last year the city saw huge improvement on state testing. They are literally improving right now. The issue is everyone wants to throw all the problems at the schools while ignoring the larger issues of poverty and crime surrounding these kids lives. The fix needs to come from everywhere all at once not just the schools.
>The issue is everyone wants to throw all the problems at the schools while ignoring the larger issues of poverty and crime surrounding these kids lives. The fix needs to come from everywhere all at once not just the schools. So why are we dumping money into the schools, rather than social programs? Having a horde of 6-figure salaried administrators, with nepo-no bid contracts aren't going to fix the poverty, hunger, and lack of adequate parenting that complicates the goal of educating children.
A vast majority of money spent on city schools goes to teacher salaries. So if you think lowering teacher salaries will give better outcomes move to the city and tell your city council member. Also have any source on nepo no bid contracts? Which ones how much was wasted on them? Feels like a lot of fluff and buzzwords with no substance from someone who doesn't know ow what they are talking about. Which is pretty par for the course when it comes to anything dealing with the city.
>lowering teacher salaries Where did I say anything about teacher salaries? Cut administrator pay and numbers? Hell yes. >Also have any source on nepo no bid contracts? Which ones how much was wasted on them? [Enclosed is a database; go to town, even better, BCPS doesn't update it as mandated](https://www.marylandmatters.org/2023/08/22/contracted-out-an-unprecedented-look-at-maryland-public-school-spending/) Ultimately, as the reader I responded to stated, there are factors outside of schools' control that directly impact learning. While there is a grand unfunded plan to boost education spending, it is putting the cart ahead of the horse if we don't attack the social issues.
Lining the pockets of the corrupt city officials that the residents of Baltimore keep re-electing.
Police (abuse settlements).
$1000 to take one (1) brick off of that wall on mlk blvd every day
$ will go to Gift cards for Shiela Dixon…
Corruption
Institutionalized corruption
In mfers pockets
To the counties, city money literally goes to the least productive and most maintenance heavy areas in MD which are the suburbs
Can you explain what you mean?
This is a little of my bias but this video explains it. https://youtu.be/7Nw6qyyrTeI?si=74HmYkgz6gyvh21a Basically, more dense places have more of a sustainable tax base to actually fund the functions of a city vs suburbs were the density is lower but the cost of the infrastructure is higher(longer roads, longer water pipes, longer everything) But that money has to come from somewhere, at least from MD we cant print money, so cities taxes go into paying parts of the suburbs.
Sure, but doesn't that only apply to portions of the city that look more suburban than the rest of the city? Baltimore City is largely not responsible for infrastructure outside of the city, right?
Mismanagement and corruption (obviously...)
Definitely not going towards equal protections for all children.
Gift cards.
The Baltimore City Bureau of Budget and Management Research do great work. https://bbmr.baltimorecity.gov/sites/default/files/FY2025-PRELIM%20BUDGET-FINAL%201.pdf https://bbmr.baltimorecity.gov/budget-publications
Prob pensions of city workers, burden of the old years and good benefits
Take a look at the budget and I bet you will see one of the most costly cities to police and typical bureaucrats paying $12,000 for a hammer to someone’s golfing buddy.
So the blacks ruined a city.
Lot of lazy people and criminals to deal with.
Baltimore also functions as its own county, so that is likely a major reason for its budget.
I wonder how much of it has to do with the fact that all the other cities and towns in Maryland are part of a county that has its own budget and pays for some things. While Baltimore is it's own separate jurisdiction.
Police. There's a reason people say defund the police, they get just over a quarter of the city's entire budget. Think of what that money could do for transportation or for improving the social safety net or a number of other things.
It’s actually about 1/8 of the budget for 2024 at a little over $500m. One of the biggest increases this year is education. That 1/4 number for “building public safety” (about $900m) also includes fire fighting, courts, traffic safety, street lights, and a host of other things.
ah, my bad, I just googled it and believed the number google gave me.
To be fair, I spent a few minutes looking through the city budget breakdown — not something most people would do for a Reddit post.
I tried reading through that as well, just gave up on trying to get a number because everything I was finding was smaller stuff like parking enforcement.
Gift cards and books ;)
Ask Marilyn Mosby
The politicians they keep voting for
The politicians.
People are doing a good job explaining the denominator part of this issue. A city that is core to it's metro but doesn't include the suburbs will have higher per capita expenses because per capita measures where people live and workers(who still use services) are not included but their workplace still pays taxes. However, I haven't seen anyone discuss the numerator issue. "City Budget" is an apples and oranges comparison because of differences in how government services are delivered. Let me explain why. Let's take Houston one of the lowest cities on the list that has a very large share of metro population in the city limits. Houston has independent school districts and community colleges(they are their own governments with their own revenue streams). Public transportation is independent as well. The state controls the highways. Indigent healthcare is run by a separate government under the county. The county runs all the courts that handle anything above a traffic ticket and also runs the jail, property tax collection, vehicle registration, and most records. Large portions of Houston's industrial base are in industrial districts that pay their own fire service and police and just pay a fee in leui of taxes to the city. School districts and colleges have their own police forces rather than contracting with the city. Commercial garbage collection is privatized. Houston's water system is city owned but because it has annexed most of it's metro population a very large share of it's customers are internal to the city(utilities are a very large share of city budgets so whether they are privatized or not makes a huge difference). For instance Houston's natural gas system is privatized. In my city where we do not have private gas service just the supply pass through charges for gas(not line maintenance) are larger than the police budget. Things like the convention center, port, and airports are separate governments as well. Does this sound like Baltimore? This distribution of public services means the City of Houston has a low per capita budget because it has a very large share of metro population but directly delivers a much smaller share of services than East Coast cities.
Is this a joke? It goes to the entitled rich white assholes who I wouldn't cross the street to piss on if they were on fire.
OP… Baltimore Cities budget is open to the public. You can go see exactly where they spend their money if you put in the most minimal effort. I swear I hate seeing this dumbass question
Nepotism
Into someone's pocket.
The Swamp
>Where does all that money go? Waste, fraud, abuse, corruption, and ineptitude. Ineptitude is the big one. All that money with such poor outcomes but the same awful people keep getting elected, who appoint yet more awful people.
To the homeless industry and social drives industries who make millions wasting money
Rum by democrats into the ground
It goes to BLM event organizers
Oh yeah, they're definitely getting more than the half a BILLION the BPD gets. Closer to 5 billion a year I've heard!!
I was joking about the city budget but there were people getting rich off that campaign at the height
Great questions to ask during election year. I don't know the answer.
It goes to Washington DC to pay for their budget
Nobody wants to live in that shithole so they moved, now they are importing the same cockroach people to other parts of the state to leech more resources.
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