City Council Bill Proposes Having Vacant Property Owners Pay for Fire Services
One Community Update
March 12, 2024
Source: foxbaltimore.com
With 13,550 vacant homes in Baltimore, the city council is looking for ways to hold the owners of vacants accountable.
A bill on the table proposes charging the owner of a vacant home for fire services.
According to the bill, it could cost the vacant owner hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.
Councilwoman Odette Ramos says the likelihood of someone actually paying the fee is low, and others agreed.
In a letter Fire Chief James Wallace says the bill would create a serious administrative burden for the department, which is currently understaffed, saying they simply wouldn’t have the resources to take care of such invoices.
The department also says it’d be “very difficult to calculate the costs associated with an individual incident to determine a fee.”
“We have approximately 600 plus fires a day and our system does not determine in the moment whether a structure is at a vacant or occupied property so the administrative burden of going through 600 plus fires a day to determine if they occurred at a vacant structure would create a burden on us administratively,” said Kim Washington.
There’s another proposal from the housing department on the table to allow city-owned vacant homes to be sold for just $1.
Private buyers would be able to purchase city-owned vacants in certain neighborhoods.
The idea is to stabilize communities with the most vacants and make them look better, but there’s concern about gentrification.
The proposal was to be voted on last week by the Board of Estimates, but the vote was postponed.
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