Around Maryland

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into Silver Spring International Middle School for a back-to-school night last fall, she was stunned by the building’s outdated conditions.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.

The Johns Hopkins University named Branville Bard Jr., who currently serves as the school’s vice president of public safety, as the inaugural chief of the university’s police department. Bar, who has worked with Hopkins since August 2021, will lead efforts to establish JHPD policies and procedures, as well as oversee staffing of the armed police force.

Only one Maryland jurisdiction ranked favorably on a new report into pollution. One in four Americans live in an area with air pollution that’s harmful to their health and can even shorten their lives, according to the American Lung Association’s “State of the Air” report. The report focuses on ozone and particle pollution. Although the Clean Air Act is credited with improving air quality, pollution remains a big problem for much of the country.