Around Maryland

The scaffolding has come off much of Pennsylvania Station, revealing the finely articulated facade that now shines in the March sunlight. It was not always like this. For decades the station’s big windows seemed to be falling apart and the 1911 stone work needed strengthening and repointing. It’s worth a trip to the Station North neighborhood just to take in this visual change that was more than two years in the making.

A disputed affordable housing development in East Towson that has for years divided neighbors over its legality received additional approval this week from a panel of appellate judges to move forward. Developer Red Maple Place Limited, which acquired two parcels of Baltimore County land in 2018 and proposed using one of them to build a four-story, 56-unit affordable housing apartment complex, had its plans affirmed by the three-judge panel of the Appellate Court of Maryland in a decision handed down Thursday.

Two men, holding seemingly identical Glock handguns, stand side-by-side in front of a silhouette-shaped target at an indoor shooting range. They aim their guns and open fire. The man on the left squeezes the trigger 15 times, emptying his clip in a few seconds. The person on the right was able to empty one clip, reload, and empty another in the time it took the other to finish shooting. He only had to squeeze the trigger twice, one time for each magazine. The gun fired so rapidly it sounded like it was jet-fueled.

The Frederick Center hosted a panel on queer history in Frederick Sunday afternoon, with panelists moving a packed room in the C. Burr Artz Public Library to tears. “Thank you for creating the world we have today that [children] can come out at the age of 13, and have their whole teenage years and adolescence ahead of them,” one mom in the audience, who said her child is queer, told the panelists.

The University of Maryland College Park on Friday lifted a blanket suspension on most fraternities and sororities and a ban on their social activities involving alcohol and new recruitment. The campus update came as many students left for Spring Break and as the school faced a new lawsuit over the suspension. The university has not detailed exact allegations, but said five chapters remain under investigation.

The former superintendent of public schools in Montgomery County, Maryland, is receiving $1.3 million as part of her separation agreement with the school board. Monifa McKnight also agreed not to sue the school board over anything that occurred before she signed the deal. Last month, McKnight said she was stepping down from her post after she “mutually agreed to separate” with the school board.

Frederick County and the city of Frederick should look at how to make existing homes cheaper to buy, to help ease the problem of affordable housing in the county, a city alderwoman said Wednesday. Alderwoman Donna Kuzemchak said during a meeting between the aldermen and the Frederick County Council that making it easier for people to buy current houses would help more than for the county or municipalities to waive fees on new construction.

For the first time this year, the county budget includes the value of “in-kind” sponsorships to various agencies that receive county funding. In-kind transactions are not cash payments; they represent material or services the county provides to an agency. In these cases, the in-kind transactions are for the use of county-owned buildings, said Washington County CFO Kelcee Mace. They’re being included in Washington County’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget per Governmental Accounting Standards Board and Generally Accepted Accounting Principles requirements, according to budget document notes.