Around Maryland

A Maryland State Highway Administration contractor has started an $8.9 million project to improve the U.S. 40 bridge decks over Interstate 70 east of Hagerstown. Weather permitting, the project is expected to be finished next year, according to a state highway release. The project involves detours while barriers are put in place and closing a lane in each direction so crews can work safely.

A bill from state Del. Kris Fair (D-3) would enable Maryland's 23 counties and the city of Baltimore to establish special tax rates for different categories of real property. Under the current state law, county jurisdictions are authorized to set a single tax rate for all real property. For fiscal year 2024, Frederick County's property tax rate was set at $1.06 per $100 of assessed value. If enacted, HB919 would grant county jurisdictions the authority to set a special tax rate of up to 12.5 cents per $100 of assessed value for six different categories of real property, including:

Dr. Elizabeth Clayborne is beating the odds. Since she started fundraising in 2021, Clayborne said she’s raised $3.25 million for her medical device company, NasaClip. As a biracial Black woman, the numbers aren’t necessarily always on Clayborne’s side — in 2021, startups founded by Black women received just 0.34% of venture capital funds nationally — but she wants to be more than the exception.

Senior living homes across Maryland are making efforts to go green. A 2022 study found that seniors in wealthy countries were on track to become the highest contributors of greenhouse gas emissions as compared to other age groups. The study found that in countries like the U.S. where many seniors live in older single-family homes, consumption of energy increases. But there are ways to mitigate that, and many senior communities in Maryland are taking steps to become more sustainable and climate-friendly.

Tucked into an unassuming corner in southwestern Columbia sits a historic Black church with roots dating back before the Civil War, including connections to the Underground Railroad. Now after receiving $233,500 in state funding, the 150-person congregation is hoping it will be better able to preserve that history. Marion Esterling, the pastor of Locust United Methodist Church, said that he felt humbled to be one of 24 Maryland groups to get the funding and that the congregation looked forward to using it to carry on the church’s legacy “for another 155 years.”

If you read a book about Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library, you might learn about the emergence of ebooks and disruptions during the beginning of the pandemic. But there’s one plot twist you might not see coming — book checkouts are way up. The library system set a 12-year high with 1.9 million first-time borrows, the equivalent of about 3.4 per resident, based on census estimates. The count reflects all checkouts of physical books, excluding renewals.

For the men’s and women’s basketball players and coaches participating in this week’s Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association Tournament in Baltimore, the six-day event is the culmination of a year-long quest to capture a coveted prize that includes an automatic entry into the NCAA Division II postseason. For the pep band members and directors who will also descend upon CFG Bank Arena, there’s a loftier comparison.

Speaking to lawmakers on a budgetary subcommittee, Ibukun Jegede laid out the stakes of the Maryland prison staffing shortages in stark terms. “In the yard, we’re supposed to have nine officers when recreation is going on, but we barely have two, watching over 200 incarcerated individuals,” Jegede, a correctional sergeant at the Maryland Correctional Institution in Jessup, said last week in Annapolis.