Around Maryland

High-speed Maglev trains could one day whiz underneath South Baltimore’s Westport community under a recent legal settlement, but planning documents show the proposed passenger rail tunnel would be much more extensive than just one neighborhood. Baltimore-Washington Rapid Rail — the private company pushing for a high-speed magnetic levitation train connecting New York and Washington, D.C., via Baltimore — recently reached an out-of-court settlement with Westport Capital Development that allows for construction of a rail tunnel underneath housing and mixed-use developments planned for the South Baltimore waterfront, as reported by the Baltimore Business Journal.

Bowie State University’s LGBTQIA Resource Center, which has been operating for over a decade, is set to get a face-lift paid for with a grant won by Paige Hoskins, a junior at the school. House of Bowie, previously known as the Gay-Straight Alliance, is a student-run organization with a mission to “defend, protect, celebrate and educate” queer students and allies through programming like book clubs, bingo and soirees, Hoskins said.

Giving Tuesday is just 11 years old, but the tradition that encourages people to donate to charitable organizations large and small can have a big impact — especially in years when giving trends downward. According to the Giving USA annual report on philanthropy issued in June of this year, total giving decreased in 2022, with individual donations down by 13.4% when adjusted for inflation.

Increasingly, Americans of all generations are suffering from climate anxiety. There are, of course, a growing number of people who are directly impacted by climate disasters — severe weather, extreme heat, wildfires, even sunny-day flooding. But there are also an increasing number of people who are simply prone to worry — and in some cases, outright panic — over the freakish images and disturbing forecasts about the long-term impact of climate change that are now unavoidable.

Rockville, in partnership with VisArts, a non-profit visual arts hub based in the city, was awarded $25,000 in November to develop an arts-based pedestrian safety project. The initiative aims to improve street safety and revitalize public space – bringing color and character to Beall Avenue with a mural, according to a VisArts press release.

Frederick County Public Schools last week announced a new position: executive director of systemwide operations. Daniel Lippy, currently the district’s director of school management and charter schools, will take over the role on Jan. 1, FCPS wrote in a news release. Lippy has worked for FCPS since 1995, the release said, serving as a social studies teacher, assistant principal and principal.

On a given day, the roughly 15,000 people in Maryland prison facilities might encounter trouble in a variety of forms: shoddy medical care, fears of violence, confrontations with correctional officers or unhygienic food, to name a few examples. And yet, while prisoners frequently file formal grievances with their facilities, they say those complaints are not always taken seriously.Lawmakers and advocates are increasingly optimistic those prisoners will soon have somewhere else to turn: an ombudsman’s office, which would operate as an independent wing of the Maryland Office of the Attorney General, outside the confines of the prison system.

Romel Williams has been contemplating a career change. The financial services salesman always has had a penchant for numbers and figured that accounting would be a good fit. But with $70,000 of student loans from his master’s in public finance, going back to school and taking on more debt seemed untenable. His outlook changed recently after he watched a news conference on Facebook heralding a scholarship for residents of Prince George’s County who are in a similar situation.