Around Maryland

Planning on traveling through downtown this upcoming week? Make sure you plan ahead because traffic is expected to be much heavier due to the CIAA tournament at the CFG Bank Arena. The tournament will be held Monday, February 26 through Sunday, March 3. Games will take place at various times each day, so if you're traveling downtown you should prepare for possible traffic congestion and delays.

Many Maryland colleges have adjusted their enrollment deadlines because of issues around delayed financial aid notifications. For affected students, the excitement of being accepted into their first-choice college is being tempered this year by a troublesome uncertainty over whether they’ll get the financial aid they need to attend. The financial aid decisions that usually go out with acceptance letters are being delayed because of a later-than-expected rollout of a revised Free Application for Federal Student Aid, the form commonly known as FAFSA that schools use to compute financial aid.

On Friday, the Baltimore City Fire Department held its first recruit graduation ceremony of the year. The department added nearly forty EMT/Firefighter and EMT/Paramedics to the ranks of the department. As many as two-hundred fifty family members, friends, colleagues and well wishers attended the graduation ceremony to offer expressions of encouragement and support the members who were graduating at the Baltimore City Fire Academy.

The Frederick Community College Board of Trustees on Wednesday voted to approve a $72.4 million draft operating budget for fiscal year 2025. The $72.4 million operating budget would be an increase of $5.6 million, or 8.4%, over fiscal year 2024. Included in the budget discussion was a proposal to increase tuition rates and scale back a planned renovation to save costs. The proposed tuition adjustment would raise costs for students by about 2%.

Excitement and cheers rang through the front lobby of the new Silver Spring Recreation and Aquatic Center on Saturday as the facility finally opened to the public nearly five years after construction on the 120,000-square-foot building began. “I have not been this excited since the Washington Nationals won the World Series,” County Councilmember Gabe Albornoz told an eager crowd during the morning’s grand opening ceremony at the center at 1315 Apple Ave. in downtown Silver Spring.

Despite their name, ghost guns are very much real and solid, and sightings of them are common and verifiable. Not exactly legal, and not exactly illegal, they have quickly entered our state’s and our nation’s debate on gun violence and gun control. They are a particular problem in Baltimore and the subject of a recent legal settlement. Because they are easy to procure, they often find their way into the hands of teenagers who are too young to purchase firearms legally.

Other developers failed at restoring the old Carlton Apartments, a Reservoir Hill corner landmark that seemed to defy an easy redemption. You wouldn’t know its tortured past today, however. This grand, circa 1900, Roman brick, V-shaped home to 12 new units is an example of what good intentions and hard work can accomplish. Enter Alex Aaron, a developer born in Northern Virginia and a Howard University graduate.