Mayor Rawlings-Blake Launches Citizen Budget-Balancing Website

 

Stephanie Rawlings-Blake

Mayor,

Baltimore City

250 City Hall « Baltimore Maryland 21202 « 410-396-3835 « Fax: 410-576-9425

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Friday, January 6, 2012

 

Ryan O’Doherty

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ryan.odoherty@baltimorecity.gov 

 

 

 

Mayor Rawlings-Blake Launches Citizen Budget-Balancing Website

Residents are offered the opportunity to balance the City’s budget with combination of spending cuts and revenue enhancement.
 

BALTIMORE, MD. (January 6, 2012) – Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is soliciting insight from residents to develop the budget for Fiscal Year 2013. This week, Mayor Rawlings-Blake launched a website that allows citizens to review options for spending cuts, revenue enhancements, and spending increases to close the estimated $52 million budget shortfall for the coming fiscal year.

“Hearing citizen input is a vital component as I draft the budget,” said Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. “I encourage citizens to share their priorities through this exercise. By doing so, residents can step into my shoes and help develop a responsible budget that will help our city grow.”

Citizens can access the budget exercise by visiting http://balancedbudget.baltimorecity.gov. The site will be available to citizens through January 31, 2011. For additional information regarding the budget exercise, residents can contact the Bureau of Budget Management and Research at 410-396-5944.

Mayor Rawlings-Blake has made fiscal responsibility a hallmark of her administration by balancing $180 million in deficits over the past two years without raising property taxes, implementing tough pension reforms, cutting her own office budget by 19%, and by making Baltimore one of a few major American cities to use the Outcome Budgeting process to demand greater efficiency. The City’s Outcome Budgeting effort was recently praised nationally in Governing Magazine saying Baltimore's solution to an historic budget crisis “was not the norm.” Mayor Rawlings-Blake is also developing a 10-Year Financial Plan to address the City’s longer-term fiscal challenges. 

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