Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott will unveil an ambitious $3 billion plan Monday to attack the city’s thousands of vacant properties, promising to address a decades-old problem with funding from a newly created Tax Increment Financing zone and a yet-to-be-secured state investment.
The proposal, which Scott plans to announce Monday evening alongside officials from the Greater Baltimore Committee and Baltimoreans United In Leadership Development, calls for a mix of public and private financing that would be used over 15 years to broaden the city’s existing approach to rehabilitating vacant properties. Scott hopes the plan can address 35,000 city properties during that span.
“This is not a problem of ‘Can it be done?’ ‘Does the city have the tools to do this?’” Scott said. “This is: ‘Do we have the capital to do it at scale?’”
Of the $3 billion investment proposed, $300 million would come directly from Baltimore — half from borrowing via a revived industrial development authority and the rest from the sale of Tax Increment Financing or TIF bonds. The TIF structure, typically used in Baltimore for new, high-profile development, would allow the city to borrow millions of dollars to help fund the acquisition, remediation and sale of vacant properties. The debt would be paid off with new tax revenue expected to be generated by the improved properties.
Click here to read the rest of the article written by Emily Opilo over at The Baltimore Sun
