Around Maryland

Running the fire and rescue agency in Maryland’s most populous jurisdiction is an enormous job. Montgomery County yields an average of 300 emergency medical calls a day plus another dozen for fires. The agency employs about 1,250 career firefighters and medics, has a large volunteer force and runs dozens of stations across 500 square miles of land. Now, with the retirement this year of Chief Scott Goldstein, who’d served since 2015, County Executive Marc Elrich has nominated another agency veteran to take his place: Division Chief Charles Bailey.

After a Stoneleigh Elementary School student was hit by a vehicle this week, residents renewed calls for speed bumps and cameras to be added to Regester Avenue to force drivers to slow down. Officers responded to the intersection of Regester and Kenleigh Avenues where they found a 10-year-old boy who had been hit while crossing the street. A preliminary investigation determined that a 2014 Ford Fusion struck the boy while traveling westbound and was not speeding at the time of the crash, Baltimore County Police said Friday.

Frederick County is helping 28 households work with a state commission to investigate claims that those using housing vouchers were charged more than other tenants in the same complex. The county’s Human Relations Department is working with the 28 households to file complaints with the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights, the county said in a press release Friday. The county Human Relations Department did an initial investigation in the case, but the state’s process requires that individual tenants file complaints with the state commission, county spokeswoman Vivian Laxton said in an interview Friday.

Budget cuts recently announced by state officials totaling $3.3 billion in Maryland’s 2024-2029 Consolidated Transportation Program may not have as devastating an impact on local projects as first thought, according to local officials. One of the largest cuts felt locally is $26 million in the effort to upgrade U.S. Route 219 from Old Salisbury Road to the Pennsylvania line in Garrett County.

The Howard County Public School System promoted the district’s chief academic officer, William Barnes, on Thursday to be the acting superintendent of the school system. Barnes has been with HCPSS for 15 years and served as the academic officer since July 2017. In that role, he oversaw curriculum and instruction, special education and student services. Barnes was previously director of secondary and pre-K–12 curricular programs, and coordinator of secondary mathematics. Before moving to Howard County schools, he was a team leader and teacher in Baltimore County. He graduated from Towson University in 1995 and earned a bachelor’s degree in math.

Frederick will receive $1 million from the state to help develop and design the proposed site of a hotel and conference center along Carroll Creek. The grant from the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development was announced Thursday as part of more than $63 million in funds for revitalization. The money will be used for site planning, engineering, grading, and necessary demolition for the hotel site at the corner of East Patrick and Carroll streets downtown, Richard Griffin, the city’s economic development director, said in an interview Thursday.

Kennedy Holland, a trans woman, spent about five years in Maryland-run jails and prisons. Despite having begun her gender transition at 13 years old, Holland was housed in male facilities or isolated. The experience terrified Holland. She recounted a time when an incarcerated man pulled her into a prison cell and told her he and his cellmate could rape her if they wanted to. “I could go nowhere. I could do nothing,” Holland said in an interview with The Baltimore Sun.

As justices consider whether a Baltimore zoning board was correct in deciding a crematory could be built at a York Road funeral home, lawyers were asked Wednesday to determine when they can argue before Maryland’s intermediate appellate court. The notice stating that oral arguments were slated for March came ahead of a Wednesday evening update from state environmental regulators, who have been waiting over the past three years to review whether to issue a construction permit to Vaughn Greene Funeral Services for the planned crematory.