More than 400 people spent Nov. 5 at Oriole Park at Camden Yards sampling some of the area’s best chili recipes as the event raised more than $77,000 to support The Baltimore Station, a residential and community-based treatment program supporting veterans and others transitioning from homelessness and substance use disorder to self-sufficiency.  Teams participating in the chili competition represented the area’s business and nonprofit community. Emerging as the judges’ pick for “Best Chili” was Mt. Hebron High School from Ellicott City for its “Viking Chili” and the Maryland Multi-Housing Association (MMHA) once again took home the “People’s Choice” award for its Godfather inspired chili “The Good Chili.” The “Best Booth” award went to Fuchs North America for its Harry Potter-themed booth.

The Baltimore City Health Department (BCHD) was recently awarded a 5-year $8.4 million grant that will support the people, services, and systems of the public health infrastructure. Awarded by the CDC, the funding is part of a $3.2 billion effort by the federal government to help strengthen public health on the state and local levels. “This grant supports direct spending on much-needed resources that invest in our depleted workforce following the aftermath of the pandemic,” Baltimore City Health Commissioner Letitia Dzirasa said in a statement. “We will use this important funding for public health infrastructure allowing us to establish more resilient internal systems, processes, and protocols.” According to city officials, BCHD was one of the few agencies in Baltimore that continued work during the pandemic, causing employee burnout.

As a 50-year-old Jew in America, I never would have imagined that a former president of the United States would openly dine with individuals who are leading voices of antisemitism, white nationalism and hate. Nor would I imagine that the Fourth of July parade in the heavily Jewish Chicago suburb where I grew up would be terrorized by a barrage of gunfire. Or that reasonable disputes over public policy would disintegrate into social media brawls with memes depicting devil horns and other antisemitic tropes on a local leader who is Jewish. That’s just a glimpse of a year in which our Jewish communities are experiencing an unprecedented surge in antisemitism.

Even though they have the financial resources from the federal government to help non-fluent English speakers receive interpretation services, many Maryland mental health providers choose not to, a study released last week found. The study, published by Centro SOL, an agency affiliated with Johns Hopkins University that focuses on health equity for Latinos, and the Public Justice Center, a civil rights legal aid organization in the city, cites three specific real-life examples of young adults and children not being able to receive mental health services because of their preferred languages.

Eight years ago, a week before Election Day, I published a column on Center Maryland speculating about who might be getting cabinet positions and other prominent roles in the anticipated administration of Anthony Brown, the Democratic nominee for governor (don’t bother looking for it on Center Maryland’s archives — most of the pieces from that era have vanished). The day after that column appeared, I ran into Ken Ulman, the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor, at the Montgomery Business Hall of Fame annual luncheon, greeting people as they came in. Ulman praised my column and said I had gotten just about everything right, with one or two notable exceptions. I was feeling pretty good about myself. But standing just a few feet from Ulman, also pressing the flesh, was the Republican nominee for governor, Larry Hogan. “I’m going to win,” Hogan told me confidently.

Businesses are using contractors more now than any point in recent memory, and a tight labor market means that’s likely to continue — despite increased scrutiny from regulators. The latest data, from payroll and benefits provider Gusto Inc., found payments to contractors have increased 23% over the last two years, and the ratio of contractors to full-time employees has grown 63% since 2019 — from about one in 10 to nearly one in five. “In this moment, particularly in the environment of talent tightness we have seen over the last two years an increase in contractors that small businesses are using,” said Gusto Senior Economist Liz Wilkie. “Businesses are having to get really creative about where their talent comes from, and they are acting in an agile and resourceful way to pull in this pool of talent.”

Northrop Grumman Corp. is expanding its ability to produce hypersonic weapons for the U.S. government with the help of an $8.8 million contract to improve technology at a plant in Elkton. Funding through a division of the Air Force Research Laboratory will enable the aerospace and defense giant to shorten manufacturing time and boost affordability for hypersonic weapons in production, Northrop Grumman said Tuesday. Hypersonic weapons travel at between 5 and 25 times the speed of sound and are highly maneuverable either as hypersonic cruise missiles, which use air-breathing engines called scramjets to reach high speed, or hypersonic glide vehicles, missiles that are launched.

 In Baltimore, the Maryland community with the highest numbers of needy students and the most demand for experienced teachers, the salaries of teachers with a master’s degree decreased from 2010 to 2020 to the lowest in the state, according to data from the Maryland State Department of Education. The average salaries for Baltimore teachers with a master’s degree declined from $72,758 in 2010, when it was among the middle of pay for such teachers in the state, to $64,405 in 2020, the data shows. The salary was more than $8,000 lower than what teachers with master’s degrees were paid in Garrett County, the next lowest pay for a Maryland school district.

Maryland’s public defenders on Tuesday voted to join the largest union for state government employees, more than two years after launching a unionization push. The state’s Office of the Public Defender employs some 600 lawyers, paralegals, social workers and administrative assistants, with outposts in every Maryland county and Baltimore, to represent marginalized people accused of crimes. Tuesday’s landslide vote means the office’s attorneys and support staff will be represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and immediately reap the protections of AFSCME’s contract with the Maryland.