City tax sale on schedule
Spending board gives OK by one vote; comptroller calls it predatory amid pandemic
By a one-vote margin, Baltimore’s spending board voted to effectively proceed the city’s spring tax sale Wednesday despite pleas from City Council members to postpone the sale.
Two items related to the sale were before the Board of Estimates, including the advertisement of the sale in The Baltimore Sun, a process that city officials said must get underway next week for the sale to be held on schedule May 17.
The city typically holds a tax lien certificate sale in May to collect on pastdue property taxes or other delinquent charges. Investors purchase the liens from the city during an online auction, giving them authority to collect the debts — with interest. The buyers eventually could foreclose on the properties.
Democratic Council President Nick Mosby, also the chair of the estimates board, argued Wednesday in favor of postponing a vote on the advertising purchase. That effectively would have delayed the sale. He, along with Democratic Comptroller
Bill Henry, who is also a board member, argued the tax sale is predatory and inevitably will cost city residents money or their homes in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
Henry Raymond, the city’s finance director, said Baltimore expects to receive $14 million to $15 million on the day of the tax sale, money the city “desperately needs.” Without it, the city will end the fiscal year in June with a deficit, Raymond said.
Baltimore already has accumulated a substantial deficit in fiscal year 2021 through spending on coronavirus-related items while revenue that has fallen well short of expectations.
As of February, the city was $59 million in the hole for the year, a portion of which city officials hope to make up with reimbursements for COVID-related expenses from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
If a deficit remains in June, city officials will have to draw down the balance from the city’s rainy day fund. It took $8 million from the fund to close out the budget in fiscal year 2020.
Still, arguments have been made repeatedly to delay the annual tax sale during the pandemic. Democratic Councilwoman Odette Ramos introduced a bill earlier this year to postpone the sale, but was told by the city law department that such a decision was not within council’s powers. Since then, Ramos and nine of her colleagues signed a letter to Democratic Mayor Brandon Scott and Raymond, urging them to delay the sale or, as a compromise, remove homeowners’ properties from the auction.
The tax sale was postponed once during the pandemic in 2020 when then-Democratic Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young was in office, but it ultimately proceeded last July.
Scott, a member of the spending board who controls three of its five seats, said Wednesday that he continues to look at “every option” regarding the tax sale. But he pushed for the advertisement to proceed.
Raymond said the city has a “short time frame” to go forward.
Mosby noted City Council has been pushing for “some time” to delay the sale.
“Why put anxiety on the homeowners?” he asked.
A motion made by Mosby to defer a vote on the tax sale-related items failed. Scott, along with City Solicitor Jim Shea and acting Director of Public Works Matthew Garbark, voted in favor of the two measures to advance the sale. Mosby and Henry dissented.
Ask old Bullets fans the highlights of Baltimore’s onetime pro basketball team and they’ll reel off some lulus, like the night rookie Earl “The Pearl” Monroe scored 56 points, or the times Gus Johnson’s windmill dunks shattered backboards in three different cities.
Truth be told, though, nothing can match the Bullets’ white-knuckled victory over the rival New York Knicks in the 1971 NBA playoffs.
Fifty years ago, in April, the teams met in the bestof-seven Eastern Conference finals. Odds favored a rout. The defending champion Knicks finished the regular season 22 games over .500; the Bullets barely broke even.
Four of the champs’ starters were future Hall of Famers (Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, Bill Bradley and Dave DeBusschere). The Bullets were a fast-breaking and undersized bunch — though a beast on the boards, center Wes Unseld stood just 6-foot-6 — and seemed to draw their strength from the crowd.
“The Knicks had a championship aura; we were less disciplined, the upstarts,” forward Jack Marin said.
New York seemed a cinch to boot the Bullets from the playoffs for the third straight year, adding yet another Baltimore sports team to the city’s list of patsies. (Two years earlier, the Jets upset the Colts in Super Bowl III and the Mets stunned the Orioles in the 1969 World Series.) That weighed on the underdogs.
“It was very important that we beat the Knicks, not only for us, but for the city,” guard Kevin Loughery remembered. Not that the pressure showed.
Before the series opener, Monroe said, “Gus drove up [to Madison Square Garden] in a brand new Lincoln Continental Mark III, charcoal gray, the same color as the leather suit he was wearing. He did it just fortheKnicks.”
And Monroe, the double-pumping, triple-spinning maestro?
“I wore a black suit with a black hat that had a red band around it,” he said. “That told folks I meant business.”
In the opener, Monroe scored 29 points but the Bullets lost.
They lost the next one, too, a game that left Monroe with a twisted ankle and Loughery, a bruised heel. Meanwhile Johnson, the highflying All-Star forward, sat on the bench in a mauve jumpsuit, nursing an injured knee.
New York and its fans foresaw a fourgame sweep; the Bullets disagreed.
On Easter Sunday, with just eight healthy players, the home team romped, 114-88, rocking the Civic Center (now Royal Farms Arena). Unseld, the rebounding savant, led the winners with 18 points (shooting 8 of 9 from the floor), 26 rebounds and 9 assists.
The following day the Bullets won again, 101-80, behind a stifling defense and a big game from Marin, who scored 27 points despite being hounded by Bradley, who kept stepping on his toes and tugging at his shorts.
New York won Game 5 and the Bullets won the next, setting up a Game 7 showdown on the road. The atmosphere was like none other.
“The circus was playing the Garden then, and you could smell the animals during the game,” Loughery said.
In a seesaw contest, 68 seconds remained when Fred Carter, a second-year-guard from Mount St. Mary’s, hit a 20-footer to give the Bullets a 93-89 lead.
Years later, Carter remembered the shot — and its aftermath:
“In the last minute, during a timeout, [coach] Gene Shue looked into the heavens and said, ‘Please, let us win this one.’ ”
The Knicks scored again, then got the ball back with a chance to tie.
Three seconds remained when Bradley arched a jumper, but Unseld brushed the ball aside. For the first time in their nineyear history, the Bullets were conference champs.
In the locker room, champagne flowed as Bullets’ owner Abe Pollin shook the hands and slapped the backs of his tuckered-out team.
“All the frustration of losing out all those years, particularly to New York, is gone now,” he said. “We had guys who played with pain nobody knows about. But they gave their all.”
Apparently, so did the owner. “Beforehand, [Pollin] gave the greatest pregame speech we’d ever heard,” Loughery said. “He said, ‘Boys, if we win this one, you can have my share of the gate.’ ”
Pollin kept his word. Never mind that the weary Bullets were swept in the NBA Finals by the Milwaukee Bucks and their megastar, Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr. (now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar).
“We still got way more money for the playoffs than the Bucks did,” Loughery said.