Around Maryland

Montgomery County, Maryland, council members began going over a $6.8 billion budget plan submitted by County Executive Marc Elrich. In a briefing with reporters Monday, Council President Evan Glass said, “There’s a lot in this budget. There’s a lot of good,” but there are also a lot of questions. Among those questions, Glass said, is whether the county can use one-time revenues to pay for recurring expenses.

Despite an ongoing lifeguard shortage, officials say they will make any necessary changes to ensure the beach is covered ahead of the summer season. On Monday, Emergency Services Director Joe Theobald presented the Ocean City Police Commission with an update on lifeguard recruitment. While staffing challenges remain, he said the Ocean City Beach Patrol would have two more testing dates before the summer season starts.

After multiple discussions spanning several months, the Frederick County Board of Education has determined it would be impossible to expand school bus service in the fiscal 2024 budget, its vice president said. Board Vice President Dean Rose said in an interview last week that he wasn’t giving up on the overall idea, though.

While race, sexual orientation and religion are the most likely sources of bias incidents in the state, almost three-quarters of the verified events from the 2021 Maryland Hate Bias Report were based on race, with 61 of the 101 statewide verified incidents being anti-Black or anti-African American. The next most likely group to be targeted in Maryland was gay males with 11 incidents.

When parents of Carroll Manor Elementary School learned their kids could be redistricted to a different middle school — one they said would split up their community in northeastern Baltimore County — they took action. They organized and created a website, shirts and signs to make clear that sending their children to Pine Grove Middle School in Carney was a nonstarter. They wanted their children to go to middle school with students from Jacksonville Elementary, feeding into Cockeysville or Ridgely middle.

In a closed work session Tuesday, the mayor and City Council reportedly received legal advice for the Rolling Mill project. Under the Maryland Open Meetings Act, government officials may close a meeting according to certain statutory exceptions, such as to gain expertise from their lawyer, in which case the reason that permits the private session must be disclosed to the public.

Two years after becoming sober, Westminster resident Kirstin Haga now helps others deal with the effects of substance abuse. “I never would have believed that’s where I would be,” said Haga, 29, a medical office coordinator at Nimel Mental Health, which serves clients throughout the Baltimore-Washington region. “But I relate to it. … It’s not just a job.” On Thursday, Haga and eight classmates officially graduated from Carroll County’s Adult Drug Treatment Court in a ceremony at Carroll Community College in Westminster.