Around Maryland

On the side of every Baltimore firehouse, a white sign adorned with flames presents a stark record: 10 people dead in fires already in 2023. The count serves as a reminder of how lethal fires can be, a reality that city and state officials seek to emphasize since Maryland experienced more deaths in the first quarter of this year than in the same period each year for the past two decades.

The Department of Transportation is increasing patrols around the city after an uptick in bike lane citations. Bikers around common in Baltimore. Louisa Benatovich likes to ride her bike around the city when it gets warm. “I like that you can feel very connected to your surroundings and that you’re not using your vehicle and it’s a little extra workout,” she said.

On Tuesday, the council in Montgomery County, Maryland, voted 9-2 to pass legislation requiring safety plans from businesses that stay open late. The bill applies to businesses open between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. that allow, or provide “on-site consumption of tobacco, alcohol, food or cannabis.” The new rules also apply to businesses open between midnight and 2 a.m. that have had two or more police service calls in response to serious incidents.

The Baltimore County Department of Corrections is working on an agreement with the state to send children under 18 who are charged with committing crimes as adults to a youth detention center in Baltimore City. Director of Corrections Walt Pesterfield told the Baltimore County Council during a Tuesday budget hearing that his department was working with the state Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services to establish a memorandum of agreement that would divert child inmates from the Baltimore County Detention Center in Towson.

The fight between the two Baltimore fourth graders — a boy and a girl — started with a crude text message the boy sent about the girl’s parents. Before long, the spat escalated into homeroom, with the girl saying the boy lived with bedbugs and cockroaches. Pulled from class, the two kids attempted to resolve their dispute with a conflict resolution technique called a “restorative circle,” where they try to talk through the disagreement.

Members of the Howard County Board of Education expressed opposition Wednesday to schools Superintendent Michael Martirano’s proposal to increase class sizes and cut more than 101 full-time equivalent staff positions to balance the public school system’s fiscal 2024 budget. The board is expected to vote on a final budget-balancing scenario next Tuesday, the day before the County Council is scheduled to adopt its fiscal 2024 capital and operating budget.

A Prince George’s County circuit judge is heading to Kenya, where he will become the first American to serve full time on a United Nations tribunal that handles employment issues for the intergovernmental organization. Judge Sean D. Wallace, who has served on the county’s circuit court since 2002, will move to Nairobi for his seven-year term on the United Nations Dispute Tribunal.

The pandemic changed the way the Greater Washington Community Foundation thought about its purpose. The 50-year-old nonprofit philanthropic organization has historically focused on meeting crises — it raised more than $10 million for a Covid-19 Emergency Response Fund and has deployed funds over the years for people in the region affected by such events as the 2008 economic crisis and federal government shutdowns.

AlphaStruxure, an Energy as a Service (EaaS) company, and Montgomery County Thursday announced an integrated microgrid infrastructure project featuring electric bus charging and on-site green hydrogen production powered by solar and battery energy storage for the county’s Equipment Maintenance and Transit Operation Center (EMTOC).