For years, Baltimore’s leaders gave overdoses little public attention, even as the death rate swelled to unprecedented levels. But for a few weeks this summer, it seemed that the city would respond to its drug epidemic with new urgency. The City Council was about to hold four hearings — planned after The New York Times and The Baltimore Banner reported that the overdose rate here was far higher than in any other major American city.

Two vacancies in the House of Delegates are closer to being filled. Teresa Saavedra Woorman (D) will be sworn in next Monday as the newest member of the House, representing Montgomery County, in an afternoon ceremony in the State House. And this past Monday evening, the Wicomico County Republican Central Committee unanimously nominated Salisbury businessman and county GOP Chair Barry Beauchamp, to replace former Del. Carl Anderton (R-Wicomico), who just went to work for Gov. Wes Moore’s administration.

When he’s breaking — sometimes called break dancing, by those who aren’t in-the-know — Coleman “Church” Caldwell, 32, feels a mix of anxiety and freedom. Dancing surrounded by a circle of fellow breakers, called B-boys and B-girls, in a formation named a cypher is “an opportunity to show yourself.” “It’s kind of like speaking a different language that everybody can understand,” said Caldwell, who lives in Anne Arundel County. “It is truly poetry in motion.”

Hagerstown Police Chief Paul Kifer acknowledged this week that the city had a “rough couple of weeks” recently with two homicides and even more shootings. One homicide or one shooting is too many, Kifer said. Kifer talked about the shootings and homicides that occurred in late July and early August during interviews with The Herald-Mail at National Night Out at Fairgrounds Park on Tuesday evening and in a phone interview on Wednesday.

 

Montgomery County’s recently appointed school Superintendent Thomas Taylor is excited about the coming school year. At the weekly briefing held by Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich, Taylor declared, “This is going to be a great school year!” Taylor said the school system’s goal has been to fill 900 positions for the new year. Currently, 160 full-time slots remain open and 100 part-time slots are unfilled. But he added, “that’s tremendous progress,” noting that a week ago, the full-time vacancies totaled “a little over 200.”

 

Today’s scheduled approval of $16 million in public funds to underwrite construction of an office building on West North Avenue proposed by P. David Bramble is just the start of what Mayor Brandon Scott has promised the developer of Harborplace. The complex deal involves more than 150 pages of lease agreements, ground rent contracts and rent schedules pertaining to Reservoir Square, Bramble’s townhouse and apartment project between the Bolton Hill and Reservoir Hill neighborhoods.

Initial claims for unemployment insurance totaled less than expected last week, countering other signs that the labor market is weakening. First-time filings for jobless benefits totaled 233,000 for the week, a decline of 17,000 from the previous week’s upwardly revised level and lower than the Dow Jones estimate for 240,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

The Maryland Board of Public Works retroactively approved a contract Wednesday that allowed the state to provide financial assistance payments to workers displaced by the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge. “That first morning when we were down there with the divers, when we asked them about what they could see, the answer we heard from almost all of the divers was ‘about nothing,’ because they couldn’t see a foot past in front of them because of the amount of debris that was in the water,” Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, said at Wednesday’s meeting in Annapolis.

Prince George’s County voters appear to have selected District 5 council member Jolene Ivey (D) and Michael Riker (R) to face off for the vacant at-large council seat, according to unofficial results. More than 18,000 people cast their votes, picking from a crowded field of Democrats and Republicans who were vying to fill the position left open by the departure of former council member Mel Franklin (D). Franklin resigned in June after nearly 14 years of service on the body.

Council Member Zeke Cohen emerged from this year’s Democratic primary for City Council president far ahead of the other two candidates, including incumbent Nick Mosby. Cohen was elected to the council in 2016 and serves District 1 in Southeast Baltimore, which includes neighborhoods like Fells Point, Canton, Highlandtown and O’Donnell Heights.