The millennial bigwigs of Baltimore are optimistic about continuing the city’s revival in 2025 — a year that will begin with an unusual climate of political stability.

Brandon Scott, 40, became the first mayor to win a second term at City Hall since Martin O’Malley in 2004. Less than two months off his reelection high, Scott insists his focus remains on the city’s decreasing crime rate — beyond just offenses like homicides and shootings.

“If we were having this conversation last year, the interviewer would be talking about [how] homicides are down, shootings are down but robberies are up,” Scott told The Baltimore Sun. “Robberies are also down, carjackings are down again this year in Baltimore. All of them, which were up significantly last year, are down 40-plus percent this year.”

Scott credits the city’s progress on crime to his administration’s efforts to get illegal guns off the streets — he says more than 2,000 guns were confiscated in 2024 — and aggressively arrest repeat offenders.

“No one’s more frustrated than me, my police officers and my police commissioner about us seemingly having to arrest the same people for crimes over and over again,” Scott said. “But we’re going to continue to make those arrests and continue to work with our partners on the state [level] to fix any administrative issue that allows these folks to be put back out on the street.”

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, has authorized state funding to address Baltimore’s vacant housing issue — the city has nearly 13,000 vacant buildings. While praising Moore, Scott said he wants the state to continue financially supporting the acquisition of vacant properties as a budget crisis looms in Annapolis.

Evaluating the perception of the city under his leadership, Scott said it can take years to change attitudes about urban blight. The mayor expressed a desire to revitalize the downtown area, particularly pointing to his support for upgrading the Baltimore Convention Center — which has not been renovated since 1996 — as well as the new development coming to Inner Harbor.

On the legislative side, Scott is joined by new City Council President Zeke Cohen, who represented Southeast Baltimore on the council for eight years before assuming the gavel on Dec. 5.

Cohen, also 40, looks to 2025 as the year for a Baltimore “renaissance” as the city moves toward becoming a “great American comeback story.” He says his priorities as city council president will include education, public safety and city services.

Cohen believes Baltimore’s city charter and past city councils have enabled Scott’s mayoral predecessors to become too powerful at the expense of the people, and he repeatedly vowed to focus on oversight of the mayor’s administration during his tenure.

“We pay double the property tax rate as our friends in Baltimore County, and we are not getting double the city services,” Cohen said. “You are going to see a heightened degree of oversight from the city council.”

Cohen stopped short of explicitly backing a long-proposed amendment to shrink the size of Baltimore’s Board of Estimates, on which three of the five voting members are Scott or the mayor’s appointees. The city council president maintained he is “open to” restructuring such authorities in accordance with similar proposals adopted by other cities.

For his part, Scott dismissed the idea of any riff between himself and Cohen, emphasizing their personal relationship while acknowledging the two may not always agree.

“The councilman’s always been collaborative,” the mayor said of Cohen. “I think that what folks should stop attempting to do is create division where there is none.”

Cohen expressed confidence in Scott’s ability to foster collaboration between the public and private sectors, pointing to a November 2022 initiative encouraging Baltimore’s infamous “squeegee kids” to pursue other money-making opportunities.

“They didn’t just lock up the kids and throw away the key,” Cohen said of the squeegee crackdown. “They sort-of took a ‘both ends’ strategy by saying … we’re going to get you jobs, and we’re going to get you mental health support.”

Cohen — a former schoolteacher and father of two — noted that the issue of chronic absenteeism is personal to him. While he says a once-size-fits-all approach is unlikely to succeed, Cohen believes tackling the “stressors” faced by chronically absent children — such as physical/emotional trauma or being limited economically by a single-parent household — is a good place to start.

Cohen concluded by saying he is “impressed by the caliber” of his city council colleagues, claiming his own success as president is contingent on the members’ success.

“We have some really, really sharp folks in leadership roles in the city right now,” Cohen said. “Getting to be part of the 74th council … is just an honor and a privilege.”

Have a news tip? Contact Carson Swick at cswick@baltsun.com.