Around Maryland

As federal deadlines to spend Baltimore’s windfall of pandemic aid creep closer, a pivotal question hangs in the balance: Will the city, with its notoriously slow gears and occasional troubles with federal funds, be able to land its broad and flashy slate of new projects? The city’s plans to deploy $641 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding to tackle an array of entrenched problems — from vacant homes to violent crime to helping low-income residents access internet — have chugged along gradually.

After a 17-year stint in prison for attempted murder, Brandon Wilson joined the Mayor’s Office of African American Male Engagement in 2019 to help young Baltimore men find resources that could help them avoid the mistakes he made. Later that year, he joined the nonprofit group We Our Us, where he now is one of five men who answer phone calls for the nonprofit’s Stop the Beef Hotline.

Baltimore County’s director of corrections defended conditions at the Baltimore County Detention Center on Friday, refuting allegations by the Maryland Office of the Public Defender of poor treatment of youth inmates at the adult facility. However, the corrections director, Walt Pesterfield, also acknowledged in a publicly released letter that the county “shares concerns regarding appropriate placement for juvenile offenders at a facility that was not designed to house juveniles.”

Carroll County wants to continue helping its most needy residents with help from grants from the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development’s Homelessness Solutions Program. Staff in the county’s Department of Citizen Services requested permission to apply for a grant in the amount of $617,997. That funding, along with an additional county match of $544,507, will give the Human Services Programs of Carroll County, Inc., a total of $1,162,504 to continue services such as homeless prevention, rental assistance, and outreach to those living without shelter.

When Vanessa Hiemenz walked her children into Silver Spring International Middle School for a back-to-school night last fall, she was stunned by the building’s outdated conditions. The third floor had no working central air conditioning, so there were loud portable units in the middle of the rooms, said Hiemenz, who has a sixth- and eighth-grader at the middle school.

Union leaders representing Maryland’s correctional officers on Thursday urged the state to hire more than 3,400 officers to address shortages at the state’s correctional institutions, which have endangered officers and inmates alike. In 2022, the state hired about 400 correctional officers, according to the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. The department has about 5,100 total positions.

When speaking with WBAL’s C4 and Bryan Nehman, Mosby said violence among kids has become a crisis the city currently faces. “This juvenile retaliatory violence has to be the utmost critical issue right now facing our city,” Mosby said. “I mean, we are not seeing it only in school, after school, before school, in the neighborhoods, during the weekends – it’s like everywhere.” Mosby’s appearance with C4 and Nehman comes one day after a 16-year-old was critically injured after being shot in the head Wednesday night in Cherry Hill.

You might not realize this but there are tons of great hiking opportunities right here in Charm City! I just moved from what I considered a hiker’s mecca, Los Angeles. But this returning Marylander has been visiting the many area trails — and loving it! I need to my give props the dozens of locations because I didn’t know they existed here.