The attitude of downtown property owners that they have such a vested interest in the health of the city's business core that they should effectively raise their own taxes to fund continued safety and aesthetic improvements is heartening. At a time when everyone seems to want more services and lower taxes, it's nice to see people recognize that sometimes our own good is served by sacrificing for the collective interest.
Critics will surely note that it's easy for the property owners to push for an increase of 7 cents per $100 in property value in the Downtown Partnership's assessment; after all, they can just pass the costs on to their tenants. And it is certainly true that tenants may be finding it harder to stay downtown, especially since one of the responses Mayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake has proposed to the city's budget crisis is to increase parking taxes.
Even if the property owners pass all of the cost on to their tenants in the form of higher rent, the impact is likely to be minimal. For a large, Class A office building, the increased fee would amount to about 19 cents per square foot. According to the Baltimore Business Journal, the going rate for such office space is $39.44 per square foot, so the increase would amount to less than half of 1 percent.
But the potential benefits are substantial, not just for the businesses but for the city as a whole. The projects the Downtown Partnership has in mind (if the assessment increase is approved by the Board of Estimates) include more lighting and surveillance cameras to improve security and creating or improving parks and public spaces downtown. Baltimore can't afford to let downtown, the part of the city most visible to the world, deteriorate, but the city can't afford to make the kind of investments now that will make sure that doesn't happen. The members of the Downtown Partnership deserve credit for showing how a small collective sacrifice can make a big difference.