“Harbor Wetland,” a National Aquarium floating exhibit that re-creates a salt marsh habitat, will be open to the public Aug. 9, near the date of the aquarium’s 43rd anniversary. The exhibit, including a walkable floating dock, spans 10,000 feet. Admission will be free, and it will operate the same hours as the aquarium, which is open between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. from Sunday through Thursday and until 9 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

Whether it’s electrified music or someone with a microphone and amplifier spreading their message, Montgomery County said it will begin cracking down on loud noises next month in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland. And now, there are new signs saying just that. Montgomery County Assistant Chief Administrative Officer Earl Stoddard told NBC Washington that enforcement will focus on the worst of the violators.

 

Leadership positions in Howard’s public school system will be reorganized in the coming months, including the creation of six new positions to oversee significant divisions of the school system, acting Superintendent Bill Barnes announced at a county Board of Education meeting on June 6. Barnes will become permanent superintendent July 1 and has served as acting superintendent since Jan. 10, after previous superintendent Michael Martirano announced his retirement Nov. 17 despite having almost three years left in a four-year contract.

When Eugenia Young became principal at Excel Academy at Francis M. Wood High School in the fall of 2019, the attendance and graduation rates for her small alternative high school on Saratoga Street were atrocious. Excel is a place where students are sent when they’re so far behind that they are in danger of never being able to catch up and graduate. It’s a last-chance school. When the pandemic hit, she was suddenly facing a crisis as she tried to try to keep her roughly 300 students connected to school. (Photo: Eric Thompson/The Baltimore Banner)

One of the great obstacles to developing political will for more mass transit is that politicians, particularly those who represent the suburbs and rural areas, never take a bus. They have little personal experience with public transportation and represent people who want nothing to do with it and live happily in places where it does not exist.

Over the past several decades, the presiding officers in the Maryland General Assembly have either been lawyers, business owners or longtime local government employees. So it seems significant that Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) has just taken a job as general counsel and senior vice president with a renewable energy company.

Does it seem as if all that new construction and redevelopment in the county has been going on a long time? Well, get ready. Because many of those projects are headed for the finish line. Last fall, we kicked off a series of articles about new development by checking in with Jonathan Horowitz, the county’s business and economic development director, and Jill Thompson, director of community and economic development for Hagerstown, for an overview of all that activity.

 

Run your hand across a window sill in Curtis Bay, and you’re likely to come up with a dark film coating your fingers. For decades, residents of the industrialized South Baltimore neighborhood have said this dust is coal that wafts off the property from CSX piers next door, where millions of tons of coal pass through each year. Residents have said this dust is harming them; some describe routinely hosing down their homes and report stories of respiratory problems and childhood asthma.

Local officials, Metro, and members of the public in Prince George’s, Alexandria, and Fairfax have raised serious concerns about the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT)’s 495 Southside Express Lanes study. These include a major new traffic bottleneck on the Maryland side of the river, plans for future Metrorail across the Woodrow Wilson Bridge blocked, and VDOT’s failure to fairly examine other alternatives to widening and private toll lanes, among other issues. (Photo: Author/GGW)

We are encouraged that the overdose crisis in Baltimore is receiving national attention through a series of articles published in The Baltimore Banner and The New York Times. The series describes in detail what those who work on overdose prevention in Baltimore have long known: This crisis has escalated locally during the past decade with widespread impact.