Around Maryland

Candidates in Baltimore City and County’s closely watched school board races are anxiously awaiting mail-in ballot counts this week even as some worried the races did not generate enough voter interest. Eight candidates are running in Baltimore City’s first-ever school board race this year to fill two newlycreated seats. Baltimore’s 10 school board commissioners were appointed previously by the mayor until the Maryland General Assembly voted in 2016 added two elected seats beginning in 2022.

The Enoch Pratt Free Library’s aging and tiny Pigtown branch will be the system’s first with a residential component under new expansion and redevelopment plans for the site. Local developer Ernst Valery will purchase the city-owned property for $1 and develop a larger library space and add apartments above at no cost to the city, according to a description of the sale in Wednesday’s Board of Estimates agenda. The city spending panel will vote on the sale to Valery — operating under Library Flats LLC — during Wednesday morning’s meeting.

Anne Arundel County will purchase two properties in Pasadena for $8.5 million to build a fire equipment maintenance facility. The County Council voted unanimously Monday to approve the purchase, which includes a two-and-a-half-acre parcel at 8300 Ritchie Highway and a 12-acre plot nearby, owned by Dynasplint Holdings. The county has been seeking a location for a fire equipment maintenance facility for several years and had explored building it on a mostly vacant property in Glen Burnie owned by the county. That location will instead become a housing and retail development.

More than two decades after getting a demolition notice from the city of Baltimore, Sonia Eaddy has won the fight to save her home in Poppleton. The city had wanted to demolish Eaddy’s home to make way for a long-delayed development west of downtown, but Mayor Brandon Scott announced Monday that a deal has been reached to preserve her home.

A city health building that was cited last year by the Baltimore Office of the Inspector General for unsanitary and substandard working conditions still has problems that workers say could be inhibiting patient care. Photos obtained by The Baltimore Banner taken earlier this month of the Druid Sexual Health Clinic facility in West Baltimore’s Druid Heights neighborhood show holes in the ceiling, trash accumulation outside the building, and used needles scattered around the property.

Since the US and its allies began to shun Russia’s oil, there’s been little sign that the measures are inflicting the kind of pain that might force President Vladimir Putin to rethink his war in Ukraine. Other countries including China and India are still buying Russian energy, and a surge in prices has softened the blow from the sanctions. So Putin’s adversaries were weighing a new idea: make Russia sell its oil so cheaply that it can no longer afford to wage war. The move, while hard to execute, would also help a global economy struggling with higher energy prices that have fueled inflation.