Around Maryland

When the Charles P. Crane Generating Station was demolished two years ago, the implosion could be heard for miles. People gathered to watch its towers, long part of the Bowleys Quarters skyline in Middle River, come crashing down. Baltimore County announced Monday it plans to on acquire most of the 153-acre site and turn it into a county park. Forsite Development, which currently owns the property, will keep some of it for what’s being called “low impact uses.” The details of what Forsite might do with the land were not clear, though the county said it could “support the resiliency of the regional power grid.”

Baltimore is poised to consider a $2.1 million contract for the gunshot detection technology known as ShotSpotter, which has come under fire in cities across the country and was recently ended by Chicago’s skeptical mayor. The surveillance technology uses acoustic sensors to detect and locate gunfire, and alerts police of the incident. The company, now known as SoundThinking Inc., contends the system allows police to respond to more gunfire incidents, improve response times and collect key evidence from a scene.

Baltimore County’s School Board has approved it’s budget for fiscal year 2025. The $2.58 billion budget, comes in at just 0.04 percent less than last fiscal year. Made up of various different funds, the passed budget includes a $42.3 million increase to the system’s general fund equating to about two percent. Some of that comes from the state’s Blue Print education law.

For patients with cardiovascular disease — who experience a range of problems affecting their heart and blood vessels — getting around is no easy feat. It can be challenging to trek across a hospital parking lot for a doctor’s appointment, and then to venture to different floors to meet with specialists. Starting Wednesday, cardiovascular patients at Baltimore’s MedStar Union Memorial Hospital will be spared some exertion on the day of their tests, checkups and procedures with the opening of the hospital’s integrated heart services center.

Twenty-one fraternities and 16 sororities on the University of Maryland’s College Park campus will not be allowed to hold any social events involving alcohol or recruiting of new members. On Friday, the university took action for what they believe are activities by multiple chapters that have “threatened the safety and well-being of members of the University community.”

The vast majority of citations issued by Baltimore’s automated speed cameras aren’t going to residents of the neighborhoods where they are located, a new analysis has found. Excluding two cameras located on Interstate 83, the study by planning, architecture and engineering firm Mead & Hunt looked at the nearly 268,000 citations issued in the city from 164 cameras between January and June of last year.

The Maryland Transit Administration will seek approval next month for as much as $425 million in “relief payments” related to delays in the Purple Line light rail project. Officials announced the extra payments along with a roughly 234-day delay that will push the line’s completion back from spring of 2027 to December of that year. “The MTA team has been working incredibly hard and over the past year,” Holly Arnold, administrator of the Maryland Transit Administration, said in an interview Friday.

A few hours before the Maryland State House went on lockdown Thursday, after someone phoned in a threat to Annapolis police, the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on legislation to create a Center for Firearm Violence Prevention and Intervention. Senate Bill 475 is part of a package released in January by Gov. Wes Moore (D) and led by the legislature’s presiding officers. The center, to be housed within the Maryland Department of Health, would focus on a data-driven public health approach to prevent gun violence and on collaboration between state and local government agencies, hospitals and community-based violence intervention programs.