Baltimore’s mayor-controlled spending board voted to increase the city’s water and sewer rates by as much as 15% Wednesday after hearing the objections of more than a dozen city residents.

The vote, which was 4-0 with one abstention, capped a hearing where residents pleaded for city officials to reconsider their plan to increase the city’s sewer rate by 15% and the water rate by 3% as of Feb. 1.

The increases, which are part of a three-year schedule, will escalate to 9% for water and sewer rates in the two following fiscal years. Stormwater rates will increase by 3% each of those years.

Residents, who testified virtually, via written testimony and in person during a City Hall meeting Wednesday, argued the hikes would further strain budgets that are already stretched thin and burden the city’s low income residents who can least afford it.

“Do I have to choose between food and medicine to afford this?” resident Shelley Krowe wrote in a statement submitted to the board. “It is getting to that point.”

For many residents, sewer bills will increase a few dollars a month in the first year of the increase, but higher-volume residential customers could pay an additional $20 or more monthly.

“Baltimore city residents cannot afford even a $12 rate hike,” said Nneka Nnamdi, executive director of SOS Fund, an advocacy group that helps homeowners struggling to keep their homes. “We understand there are issues within the infrastructure in DPW [Department of Public Works] that need to be addressed. We should not be held accountable for mismanagement in DPW over the last 40 years.”

City DPW officials argued the latest proposed increases are needed to cover escalating costs from two federal consent decrees, a growing number of projects needed to enhance the system, and inflation.

Since 2002, Baltimore has been under a consent decree from the federal government mandating the city make improvements to stop overflows from its sanitary sewer system. In 2023, the city entered into another consent decree for operations at its Back River and Patapsco wastewater treatment plants.

Some residents suggested negotiating agreements with the city’s tax-exempt nonprofits to make payments to the city in lieu of taxes. Members of the spending board said the city’s water and sewer funds are enterprise funds, meaning they are funded by water and sewer revenues, rather than taxes. Tax money is dedicated to many other services that are also priorities, said Comptroller Bill Henry, a member of the board.

Some residents questioned those priorities.

“The city has money for BPD [Baltimore Police Department] lawsuits, to consistently hire outside law firms and for new helicopters for BPD,” wrote resident Suzanne Bailey. “Let’s find ways to not put extra burdens on our already overburdened city residents.”

Council President Zeke Cohen, chairman of the five-member Board of Estimates, abstained from Wednesday’s vote, saying the city has more work to do collecting on outstanding balances owed for water and sewer bills. Baltimore has recently stepped up those efforts, collecting $56 million toward the unpaid bills of commercial customers, but millions more remain to be paid.

Cohen noted that the city’s overall collection rate, about 92%, is below the industry standard. Khalil Zaied, director of DPW and a member of the board, said the industry standard accounts for cities with private ownership or management of their utility systems who collect using more Draconian measures. Baltimore does not send properties to its annual tax sale for unpaid water bills, and it has not done water shutoffs in about a decade, officials said.

“That’s how they get to those standards,” Zaied said of other cities. “We can’t and we won’t do that type of a policy.”

Cohen said he appreciated the city’s “humane, balanced approach” to collections, but knowing there are unpaid bills makes a rate increase harder for residents to swallow.

“When we’re asking our taxpayers to raise their water bills, it’s difficult to not be there [at the industry rate standard],” he said.

Henry, who cast a vote in favor of the increases, said the situation was the result of generations of city leaders kicking the can down the road.

“We can’t put it off just because it’s awful,” he said. “It just has to be done.”

Wednesday’s vote ends a short reprieve for city residents from years of substantial increases. From 2016 to 2021, residents were slapped with 9% annual increases to water, sewer and eventually stormwater. In the intervening years, water and stormwater increased by 3% annually, while sewage rates increased by 3.5% each year.

The increases, which were anticipated when the city filed financial documents nearly a year ago, were not made public until December just days after Mayor Brandon Scott secured a second term in office.