"We've never seen anything like these times."

By Daniel Leaderman
with Catherine Krikstan

Harborplace’s owners are bankrupt. The opera company is closed. Foreclosure filings are up, as is unemployment.  Unsold cargo is stacked at the ports.   The Orioles have had to roll out their own stimulus plan. Trash will be collected less often, swimming pools will close, and in the city's parks, the grass will grow a quarter-inch longer.

This is Baltimore in recession. 

The past few fiscal years have been good ones, said Edward J. Gallagher, the city’s director of finance. “We’re a poor city, in terms of our wealth,” but due to a strong economy and booming housing market – which spun off more tax revenue, “we’ve had a reasonable level of resources.”  Now, Gallagher said, “the good time is over with.”

“We’ve never seen anything like these times,” said Richard Burnham, who owns a printing shop in Charles Village.  “You always see fluctuations in business, but never to this degree.”

Our Daily Bread, a charity that provides hot meals to Baltimore’s hungry, has been host to a greater number of guests lately, including more families.  “We’re serving different types of people,” said Aaron Kennedy, the organization’s volunteer coordinator.  “Suddenly there’s a very acute need.”

As the city completes work on the fiscal 2010 budget, its services and jobs will have to be cut, Gallagher said.  He’s been reluctant to tap into the city’s rainy-day fund, which was established “in ’05 and ’06, when revenues were flowing like crazy.”  Gallagher sees the fund as a last resort, to be used only if the city’s budget can’t cover spending by the end of the fiscal year. Some on the city council have a different view of what constitutes a rainy day.

“We have a thunderstorm,” said Councilman Bernard “Jack” Young (District 12) in February, at the beginning of the city’s budget process.  “We have a volcano!” Click for full story