It was a Sunday at 9 p.m., but no one was resting.

“For this budget to move forward tomorrow, I’m gonna need a call from the mayor,” Council President Zeke Cohen abruptly texted Chief of Staff Calvin Young.

The text came mere hours before the City Council was scheduled to take a vote on Mayor Brandon Scott’s $4.6 billion spending plan. One day earlier, a tentative agreement had been hammered out between parties, but things were shifting.

Cohen’s hardball was perhaps predictable. In the four years since his sometimes-ally, sometimes-frenemy Scott became mayor, Cohen had already cast the lone vote against one of his spending plans.

Now, Cohen was setting the tone in negotiating his first spending plan as City Council president. By his side was Danielle McCray, a six-year council member who was also navigating a new role: chairwoman of the Budget and Appropriations Committee.

On the other side of the bargaining table was another new face: Young. A longtime friend of the mayor who knew him first as Brandon as they ran alongside each other in summer track and field, Young slid into the role of the mayor’s top adviser just months before. The budget presented an early test.

Looming over the talks were circumstances bigger than all the players. The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown was increasingly visible in Baltimore, and pressure from advocates to support the vulnerable population was mounting.

The final 13-2 vote was a comfortable win for Scott, maintaining his plan to plug an $85 million hole by increasing numerous fines and fees for the budget year beginning July 1.

But the road there was contentious. Negotiations were heated, stalled at times and stretched on longer than in past years.

“I think the tone of these hearings was respectful, but I also think that we wanted to make sure every agency understood that the council is not going to be steamrolled,” Cohen said. “We are to be taken seriously, and I think that’s what you saw throughout these last couple weeks.”

Keeping a tight grip on the budget story

A battle to control the budget narrative began before hearings got started.

In late May, the City Council called a hearing to scrutinize Baltimore’s hundreds of long-vacant positions. When staff shortages persist, city agencies use overtime to pay employees to cover shifts. That drives overtime costs over budget, a situation that must be rectified by moving unspent money from vacant jobs at the end of each budget year.

Questions from council members during the hearing were pointed and organized. Cohen and others pushed the city to budget more “honestly,” allocating greater overtime costs up front and stop saving money for jobs that may never be filled.

The administration was initially caught off guard by the tone of the hearing. One official likened it to a “punch in the face.” Days later when budget hearings began, they had regrouped.

“Some folks have asked us why don’t we just eliminate those vacancies and put more money toward overtime up front,” City Administrator Faith Leach said in a rare appearance on the mayor’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts, parroting the concerns of the council. “It’s a good question.”

“As much as we like things to go exactly as we planned in the budget, things do happen,” she countered.

The administration’s direct appeals to the public continued. Each day of the hearings, a different city agency head appeared on Scott’s social media, breaking down numbers, making a plea for funding and justifying their work.

Young said the videos, a tactic designed by a communications team newly imported from Washington, D.C., were necessary to combat false “narratives” the mayor anticipated from the news media.

“Folks can make up their own mind on what they believe is good governance or not,” Young said.

If the budget proceedings had a drinking game, “narrative” might have been the buzz word.

It spilled from Young’s mouth as he sparred with Councilman Isaac “Yitzy” Schleifer over whether there are tax increases in the budget. (There are, although property taxes will remain flat.)

Young also hurled the word at Councilwoman Odette Ramos in response to an emotional hearing in which she and the city’s head of immigrant affairs, Catalina Rodriguez-Lima, were moved to tears as they spoke about families ripped apart by deportations. Young called the hearing a “public spectacle” in an interview, a remark for which he later apologized.

The final budget deal included $2 million in extra funds to provide legal assistance and other services to immigrants, more than Rodriguez-Lima and Ramos initially asked for. Ramos called it a show of good faith, accepting Young’s apology.

“There’s too much work to do to not be getting along,” she said. “We deal with our issues and move on.”

Winners, losers and unlikely allies

Ramos, who has been known to butt heads with the administration, her fellow council members and powerful institutions, proved an ally for Scott. As Cohen delayed a final deal, pressing for more concessions from the administration, Ramos hopped on board.

The councilwoman orchestrated a clever amendment that pitted two allies, Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming and State’s Attorney Ivan Bates, against one another. The amendment — approved reluctantly by some on the council and greeted with amusement by the administration — moved $112,000 from a vacant position in Bates’ budget to fund a new investigator in Cumming’s.

Cumming, who posted a photo of herself with Bates on social media the morning after the budget vote saying the pair will “always stand together,” said the amendment “made no sense.” There are vacant positions that could be cut from all sorts of city agencies, she said.

Still, she’s keeping the money.

“I’m absolutely accepting the money,” she said. “We’re going to be able to make this happen right away.”

McCray, outwardly stern with her fellow council members during budget hearings, was instrumental behind the scenes in making sure most got something out of the final deal.

Close enough to have been invited to Scott’s intimate surprise wedding last year, McCray raised eyebrows when she did not initially align with the mayor. Instead, those involved reported, she ran effective interference among multiple factions.

McCray did not respond to a request for comment.

“Her temperament is calm, and she’s a woman of few words,” Young said. “She kept things from getting too political.”

Ramos praised McCray.

“We’re all very challenging personalities. I know I can be challenging,” she said. “[McCray] let us in on the topics we were familiar with and champions on. She would make sure our questions got answered.”

Cohen tossed McCray a purple basketball — the “game ball” — during Monday’s council meeting when the final budget passed.

Not everyone walked away as happy.

The Scott administration has a history of rewarding allies and punishing opponents, and his swap of so called “wartime” chief of staff Marvin James for the “peacetime” Young didn’t preclude the mayor from wielding the stick.

The final budget deal includes $2.9 million in funds redirected to the City Council from a miscellaneous fund in the mayor’s budget. That money, which council members can award to community organizations in their districts, will be divided among members, city officials said, but not evenly.

Councilman Mark Conway, one of two members who voted against the budget, said he would not be getting any. Conway tangled with the administration earlier this year over his attempts to hold hearings on the city’s opioid crisis.

“There’s some politicking on who gets the pork and who starves,” Conway said. “Unfortunately, it’s the voters, it’s the children, it’s the people who go to those playgrounds, it’s the neighborhoods that suffer, not me.”

Schleifer, who also opposed the budget, accused the mayor’s office of focusing more on the “narrative” than the contents of the spending plan. The mayor’s office was not forthcoming with information requested by the council, and took the step of having a junior member of the mayor’s team listen in on members’ interviews with media, Schleifer said.

“It just wasn’t as much of a priority to get the council the information and transparency that they need as it has been in past years,” Schleifer said.

Still, the primary players walked away feeling like winners. Scott didn’t budge on his budget-balancing fine and fee increases over the objections of Cohen and others during budget hearings.

Cohen claimed victories in increased funding for immigration, a composting initiative, the state’s attorney and the inspector general. Equally important, Cohen contended, the council took a stand.

“This council is going to continue to push to make sure residents’ pocketbooks are not constantly being used as a piggy bank,” he said. “We are going to continue to make sure every dollar spent is a good dollar spent.”