BALTIMORE — Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott is preparing for his second term — a rare accomplishment for recent chief executives in his city — and focusing on what Baltimore is losing: middle-class Black residents and tax revenue.

It’s a loss the 40-year-old Democrat says Baltimore can’t afford. That’s why Scott is prioritizing the city’s growth through housing and crime reduction in his upcoming second term. He’s also determined to have Baltimore keep a portion of the local sales tax and lower property taxes — a goal he knows will be fulfilled only after a tough fight.

“We have to grow the city, (by) tackling vacant housing, making sure that we’re increasing home ownership, making sure that, in particular … we’re going directly after middle-class Black residents and stopping them from leaving because that’s the folks that we’re losing in this city,” Scott said during a town hall at the Baltimore Together Summit in mid-November.

According to the Baltimore City Department of Housing and Community Development Key Stats Dashboard, there were 13,031 vacant building notices listed in the city as of 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 27 — down 522 from the beginning of the year. The Key Stats Dashboard is updated three times daily.

“I think it’s a key thing that we start here,” Scott said of addressing the city’s vacant houses during an interview Wednesday with The Baltimore Sun.

According to the mayor, there has been a 17% decline in vacant housing since he entered office in 2020.

“Even that decline — that steep decline — I knew that would take too long, and what we did is we went and looked and saw that it would it would take us 300 years in the way that, collectively, the city, the state, and our private partners are doing now,” Scott said.

Last year, the Scott administration announced a $3 billion plan to acquire and repurpose thousands of vacant homes across the city — one that Gov. Wes Moore has signed onto as a partner with an annual $75 million pledge through state funding.

“We’re talking about accelerating that work that has been happening in neighborhoods across the city,” Scott said.

Moore, a Democrat, signed an executive order on Oct. 1 to create Reinvest Baltimore, a public-private partnership to eliminate concentrations of vacant housing and enhance the quality of life for Baltimore residents.

“Baltimore’s vacant property crisis is an issue that cannot wait — because in order to have a strong state, you must have a strong housing market, where people own more than they owe,” Moore said in a statement after the executive order was signed in Scott’s presence in Baltimore.

The order also establishes the Baltimore Vacants Reinvestment Council, which will coordinate with community, government and philanthropic leaders to secure investments to convert 5,000 vacant properties into homeownership or other positive outcomes over the next five years.

Understanding the scope of the battle before him, Scott is under no illusion that the city’s vacant housing problems will be solved in the next four years.

“But, now that we’re growing this plan and we have the state fully on board with the governor and his team, you’re talking about allowing us to turn neighborhoods around — turn what was blight into things that benefit the community — and that’s the work that we’re going to do,” he said Wednesday.

Scott also said that city leadership needs to address Baltimore’s property tax.

Property taxes make up a large portion of the city’s budget. Cutting property taxes, with no other revenue stream coming in, would drastically slash the services the city provides to its residents.

The city’s property tax rate is $2.248 per $100 of assessed value — much higher than in surrounding jurisdictions. Scott said a solution could be found by allowing the city to keep a portion of its local sales tax.

According to the mayor, when people were fleeing urban areas in the 1970s, cities and states around the country created local sales tax as a mechanism to maintain revenue to pay for services. He said that 80% of cities with a population greater than 200,000 residents operate this way.

“There’s only one real big city that doesn’t have that,” said Scott. “It’s Baltimore.”

In Maryland, the state takes all 6% of the city’s local sales tax. Scott’s proposal is to allow Baltimore to keep 1%, which he said would enable him “today” to shave $1,000 off residents’ property taxes, making it more in line with what is seen in surrounding counties.

“We want to be bullish on growing the city and doing it the right way, but we believe this is a responsible way — and a way that is proven around the country — to help the city do just that,” he said.

Scott knows he is in for a fight for that 1%, which he called “relatively inexpensive” when looking at the whole state budget, but he said that “anything worth having is not easy.”

“If I didn’t start this fight to have the city control its own local police department when I first came to the council in 2011 … we wouldn’t have local control,” he said. “That’s the importance of leadership. You just have to make tough decisions and take on tough fights.”

Unprecedented circumstances marked Scott’s first term: a global pandemic, the city’s largest mass shooting, and the massive infrastructural collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

“I think he thrives in a crisis,” said Council President-Elect Zeke Cohen, a Democrat. “He’s someone you want on your side when things are not going well, and I watched him really project confidence and manage the city’s part extremely well.”

In light of the tragedy and in partnership with state and congressional leaders, the city is in steady recovery. It is poised to remain that way as Scott prepares for his second term, which he said he is “humbled” that residents allowed him to take on “after over a decade of having instability in City Hall.”

“Public Safety, vacant housing, equitable development, getting city government to be modernized is something that doesn’t happen overnight, and you couldn’t do in one term or less,” he said. “It takes time. It takes a deep commitment and consistency, and that’s the opportunity that we have now as we go into term two, as we say.”

The reelected mayor foresees other tough roads ahead: a 10-year financial plan for the city, opioid restitution and driving down usage among residents, enhancing city services and continuing to tackle gun violence are all on his mind.

Cohen, who served on the city council with Scott before he became the mayor, told The Baltimore Sun Tuesday, Nov. 26, that they have a good relationship and their priorities for the next four years are aligned. However, Cohen was clear that his job is to provide oversight of agencies in Scott’s administration, and said that the city council will be “absolutely relentless” in holding them accountable when needed.

“I think, for me, it’s really important to model that we can disagree and still respect each other, and I think that’s something that we’re just lacking in our political discourse, generally,” said Cohen. “I think that, here in Baltimore, we have an opportunity to model what it looks like to govern and to treat everyone with respect.”

First on Scott’s agenda is a non-pandemic inauguration ceremony on Dec. 3 at Morgan State University — something that Scott didn’t experience when he was sworn in four years ago.

“It won’t be just me, my mom, my dad,” Scott said at the Baltimore Together Summit in mid-November. “I won’t have to just come out — come right outside City Hall after getting sworn in — and say, ‘Everybody go home and don’t come back ’til I tell you to.’”

At his Dec. 8, 2020, inauguration, Scott pledged to tackle the dual public health crises wrought by the coronavirus pandemic and record-high levels of gun violence.

Since he took office, Baltimore has seen a rapid decline in gun violence. Until 2023, which saw 262 killings, homicides in the city had not dipped below 300 annually in nine years. Scott said at the summit that, as of Nov. 12, there had been a 24% reduction in homicides and a 34% reduction in non-fatal shootings from last year.

According to The Baltimore Sun homicide database, 182 people have been killed in Baltimore since January.

“The Body Politic,” an emotional documentary depicting Scott’s tactics for tackling violent crime during his first year in office, aired on Maryland Public Television Monday night. Viewers watched a newly elected Scott attend news conferences after fatal shootings, read the names of dead gun violence victims by age, and tear up when former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted for murdering George Floyd, whose death marked the tenor of the 2020 election cycle.

As he approaches his second term, Scott said at the summit that reducing violence is his top priority because “we know when you lose sight of that, the city can go off track very easily,” adding that he plans to “institutionalize” violence reduction efforts such as the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, or MONSE, and the Group Violence Reduction Strategy, or GVRS.

In partnership with the Baltimore Police Department and the city’s state’s attorney’s office, GVRS works to provide services to Baltimoreans most at risk of involvement in gun violence. Earlier this year, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania’s Crime and Justice Policy Lab found it was “highly likely” that the program caused the decline in violence.

In November, Baltimore City Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming released a report finding that MONSE employees had sent multiple emails to program contractors encouraging the use of fake names for contracts awarded funding by the city’s Board of Estimates, which Scott sits on with the City Council president and Baltimore Comptroller. Cumming turned the information over to law enforcement for further investigation.

Outgoing Baltimore City Councilman Eric Costello, who endorsed former Mayor Sheila Dixon in the 2024 mayoral primary election, has been dubious about Scott’s approach to crime reduction. Instead, he has previously credited the recent decline to U.S. Attorney Erek Barron, who Costello said has been very aggressive in his crackdown on organized crime, and Baltimore City State’s Attorney Ivan Bates. Costello declined to comment for this story.

Bates, a Democrat who endorsed Dixon for mayor in 2024, has also been an outward critic of Scott, citing philosophical differences on combating violent crime.

In a statement to The Baltimore Sun Tuesday, Bates said he would work closely with the mayor’s office to “double down on proven effective strategies,” including addressing quality-of-life offenses, investing in youth outreach, and targeting the drivers of violent crime.

“Baltimore’s strength lies in its people, and collaboration with the Mayor, law enforcement, community leaders, and local organizations will be vital as we continue working to reduce gun violence, protect victims, and provide opportunities that deter individuals from entering the justice system in the first place,” Bates said. “Together, we can build on our progress and create a safer, stronger Baltimore for all.”

Scott said that, politics aside, Bates’ public statements did not and will not hamper their respective offices from working with each other to achieve their shared goal of reducing violence in the city.

“But the other reality is, is that the chief executive sets the plan,” he said. “My strategy is the strategy for the city, period, and we know that we’ll be able to work with them as we have been, just like we did this this week, just like we do every single day.”

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