Baltimore has a laundry list of issues and the new City Council has decided the best way to address some of them is to get back to the basics.

That means hearings, studies and, when warranted, demanding accountability. Council President Zeke Cohen said repeatedly in interviews and public settings before his December inauguration that the council would be “laser-focused” on oversight.

On Monday, Cohen and a host of other council members laid out some of their 2025 priorities in a news conference ahead of their first meeting of the year.

Truancy and absenteeism in Baltimore schools

It’s no secret Baltimore’s public schools struggle with keeping kids in class. In the 2022-23 school year, more than half of city students were considered chronically absent, which means more than half of the student body missed at least 10% of school days that year. That was the highest rate of chronic absenteeism of any school district in the state.

Councilman Mark Conway introduced a bill Monday to require the school system to study the root causes of chronic absenteeism — widely considered to be related to poverty, housing stability, bullying and transit — and to propose solutions.

“Addressing absenteeism is not just about keeping our students in school, it’s about investing in our potential, and by extension, the future,” Conway said.

The council has little power in regulating the school system, but Cohen said the study is meant in part to signal to lawmakers in Annapolis that Baltimore is taking school attendance seriously. With Maryland facing a $3 billion budget deficit, there is talk of reducing state education expenditures.

Delays and roadblocks in city permits

Hopefully you’ve heard by now about Mayor Brandon Scott’s $3 billion plan to reduce the number of vacant houses in the city over 15 years. Through a special financing mechanism, the Scott administration foresees great demand for people to snap up vacants and rehabilitate them, growing Baltimore’s population and revitalizing long-neglected neighborhoods.

Rehabbing properties means pulling permits, which in Baltimore can feel like walking a mile through deep mud.

“Unless we have a high-functioning permit system, it’s not gonna happen,” Cohen said.

Councilwoman Odette Ramos, a veritable housing wonk, is leading the oversight charge on this topic and is calling for hearings with the Department of Housing and Community Development, the city administrator’s office and the Fire Department to figure out what the issues are.

The city is switching to a new permitting system next month.

“There should be no reason that I have more complaints about the permit office than the water bills,” Ramos said. “That has to change.”

Cleaning up sewage backups

The things we flush down toilets we almost universally never want to see again. But in Baltimore, those items have a habit of coming back from beyond.

City residents reported about 1,500 sewage backups to the Department of Public Works in the 2023-24 fiscal year, Councilman Paris Gray said. That number is down from roughly 2,200 in the fiscal year before, but is still too many, Gray said.

Gray introduced a resolution calling on Scott to expand DPW’s Sewage Onsite Support, or SOS, program. That program, which is onerous to qualify for, provided cleanup assistance to seven households during the last budget year, Gray said.

“DPW maintains the cost of expanding the program is too high, but by not expanding, you’re shifting the expense unfairly from the city to our residents,” Gray said. “The price of professional cleanup is a burden for families who shouldn’t have to pay the cost of DPW infrastructure failures.”

Baltimore’s sewer system is subject to enhanced federal oversight because of its poor condition.

Regulating city businesses

When a business or contractor rips you off in Baltimore it can be hard to figure out where to turn. Councilman Ryan Dorsey hopes to change that with the creation of a city Department of Consumer Protection and Business Licensing.

Neighboring cities of Philadelphia and Washington have similar departments and establishing one here would give the city a mechanism to hold bad businesses accountable. Baltimore has a hodgepodge of laws on the books already, but the responsibility for enforcing them falls across multiple departments which makes doing so an unwieldy task, Dorsey said.

“We reinvent the wheel, creating a new standalone entity dedicated to just one form of business every time a new type of business needs to be regulated in any way,” Dorsey said.

Cohen called the city’s need for a consumer protection agency “profound” and seemed bullish on the council’s ability to get a bill passed. It’s unclear where Scott’s office stands on the issue.