Around Maryland

The newly renovated and reopened National Cryptologic Museum, run by the National Security Agency and located near the spy agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, deals a fatal blow to one of the most enduring myths of the Cold War: There is no “red phone” linking the Oval Office to the Kremlin. Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin do indeed communicate, but there is no crimson handset that the two leaders can pick up during a global crisis to be immediately connected. “The red phone? That’s Hollywood,” museum director Vincent Houghton said. What’s actually on display might be even better. Most of the artifacts — 85% says Houghton — are either the first of their kind, were used by a key person or are the only ones left.

For nearly 90 years as temperatures dropped, crews have worked in shifts around the clock to feed coal into and remove ashes from boilers at Fort Hill High School. As Maryland’s last public school heated by coal, new boilers at Fort Hill will mark the end of an era to make way for needed change. Jay Marley, a mechanical engineer, is supervisor of maintenance and construction at Allegany County Public Schools. Earlier this month, the Board of Education gave him approval to award a roughly $4.7 million bid to Carl Belt, Inc. of Cumberland to replace one dated natural gas and two coal boilers with state-of-the-art natural gas systems, and provide new HVAC in the school’s gymnasiums, and locker, weight and wrestling rooms.

Devin Allen admits that he occasionally behaved like a knucklehead, growing up in Baltimore. But he was not so irreverent as a tenth grader that he could see an image of Emmett Till’s open casket and not find it arresting. The story of the 14-year-old Black boy who was lynched in Mississippi became widely known because his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, asked a press photographer to document Emmett’s funeral. The horrifying 1955 photographs depicted tangible evidence of how violent racial hatred was plaguing the U.S., catalyzing the civil rights movement. “Back then, I was like, ‘Wow, that happened so long ago. It would never happen now,’” Allen said, recalling the first time a high school history teacher showed him the images.

A new audit found multiple problems with how the Maryland Department of Human Services distributed public benefits, including that the agency gave tens of thousands of recipients benefits during the pandemic who didn’t qualify for the programs. The fiscal compliance audit spanned four years ending in May of 2021, which included the period during the pandemic when federal and state governments raised income thresholds and eased requirements to allow more people access to federal funding.

For the fourth straight year, juvenile rockfish numbers in Maryland waters were well below the historical average, according to a survey conducted by the state Department of Natural Resources. Researchers, who visited 22 different spawning areas in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries this year, caught an average of 3.6 recently hatched rockfish per sample, slightly more than last year’s 3.2.

How to relieve crowding at Freedom Elementary School in Sykesville has been on the minds of Carroll County Public Schools staff and the Board of Education for years. A redistricting plan was initiated in September 2019, in response to recommendations in the school system’s 2019-2028 Educational Facilities Master Plan. At that time a Freedom Elementary Redistricting Committee was convened to address overcrowding at that school.

The inaugural Maryland Italian Festival is coming to Bel Air next fall. Organized by the Harford County-based organization the Society of Italian American Businessmen, the three-day festival will take place at the Harford County Equestrian Center over the weekend of Sept. 29 through Oct. 1, 2023. “There’s gonna be something for everybody,” said Elio Scaccio, one of SIAB’s founders and one of the festival’s organizers.

The Montgomery County Council unanimously passed a comprehensive General Plan overhaul Tuesday, just ahead of the appointment of a new planning board and the election of a new council, the political bodies that’ll implement anticipated consequent policy or zoning changes. The overhauled plan, dubbed Thrive Montgomery 2050, provides long-term, strategic guidance for how the county should develop over the coming decades.