Mayor Rawlings-Blake, Council President Young and Budget Chairwoman Holton issue joint statement on Council passage of City’s Fiscal Year 2017 Ordinance of Estimates

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE        
Contact: Lester Davis

Monday, June 20, 2016       
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Mayor Rawlings-Blake, Council President Young and Budget Chairwoman Holton issue joint statement on Council passage of City’s Fiscal Year 2017 Ordinance of Estimates

BALTIMORE, MD – Today, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s Fiscal Year 2017 budget proposal moved a step closer to passage when members of the City Council overwhelmingly approved the city’s $3.2 billion Ordinance of Estimates.

The Council will meet again Thursday, June 23, at 5:30 p.m., to set the city’s property tax rate and finalize the budget prior to the charter-mandated deadline of June 25.

“This has been a challenging process that required tough choices to be made from all sides,” Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said. “I am happy that we as City leaders were able to reach a compromise on how to best serve the citizens of Baltimore. Although there may be some difficult decisions ahead, we all agree that making sound fiscal decisions at this time outweigh the risk of making poor financial choices that will impact future generations to come.”

Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young and Council Budget Chairwoman Helen L. Holton spent weeks negotiating with the administration to restore $4.2 million in funding for afterschool programming and thanked the mayor for her willingness to compromise.

“We recognized early on that the mayor’s budget was lean and didn’t offer many areas for trimming,” Council President Young said. “But my Council colleagues and I were determined to comb over the budget in the least disruptive way possible to find savings to help restore the $4.2 million in funding cuts.”

“The budget negotiations between the administration and the Council were some of the toughest of my 21-year career,” Councilwoman Holton said. “We worked in good faith with the administration, and as a result more than 3,000 young people will have access to quality before care, afterschool and out-of-school-time programming.”
For more information on the mayor’s budget proposal, please visit http://bbmr.baltimorecity.gov/budget-publications

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