Around Maryland

Would you rather be wet from rain or wet from sweat? If you chose the latter, you’re in luck: Artscape is scheduled for August in 2024. The annual free arts festival will take place Aug. 2 through Aug. 4, according to Barbara Hauck, communications manager of Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts. During a press conference Monday about a bill requiring procurement of electric vehicles in Baltimore, Mayor Brandon Scott spoke about the news.

At any given time, the emergency department at the Johns Hopkins Howard County Medical Center is treating an average of 11 patients with mental health or substance use crises — in a unit equipped for just six of them. Behavioral health patients at the emergency room often wait 24 hours to be transferred to a facility with an open bed, said Dr. Shafeeq Ahmed, the hospital’s president.

It’s the time of year for giving — and for some, that includes swinging by a local food pantry to drop off a grocery bag of kitchen essentials. “The main thing that pantries need during the holiday season is support from their communities in any way, shape or form,” said Eileen Compton-Little, executive director of the Community Crisis Center, a Reisterstown food pantry founded in 1982. “Just because the pandemic’s over, doesn’t mean that we still don’t need help.”

Paramedic response times have become faster countywide as the Frederick County Division of Fire and Rescue Services has increased staffing and changed its strategies, officials said. Advanced life support (ALS) response times, involving paramedics, have decreased 24 seconds, according to Frederick County Fire Chief Tom Coe. https://www.fredericknewspost.com/news/politics_and_government/public_safety/paramedic-response-times-faster-as-fire-and-rescue-rolls-out-plan/article_a565c26c-ad11-59cc-83fe-6e0b1e062813.htmlBetween January and September, the average time from dispatch of a medic unit to the patient’s side was 8 minutes, 10 seconds.

If You Go Where: 12428 Fingerboard Road, Monrovia When: Monday and Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Contact: Call or text 240-388-6514 Helping Hands and Caring Hearts, a nonprofit organization based in the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area, recently opened a food pantry in Monrovia to serve individuals in rural parts of Frederick County. The pantry offers non-perishable foods, as well as other necessities, like blankets and hygiene supplies, according to the group’s executive director, Jenifer Zimmer.

Officials from around Frederick County scrambled Saturday to determine how anticipated state transportation funding cuts could affect the fate of a project to widen U.S. 15 through the city of Frederick. The $121 million project to add one lane in each direction from Interstate 70 to Md. 26 has been expected to begin construction in 2026. But with the state’s Department of Transportation facing budget shortfalls and billions of dollars in cuts, the project — which has been the county’s top transportation priority for years —suddenly appeared in jeopardy Saturday.

On the eighth floor of a northern Baltimore apartment building that has lost a good bit of its luster since its ornate 1920s revival heyday, things haven’t been going well for the Razie family. Samim, 23, had his car stolen at 8 in the morning in Mount Vernon. He was delivering a package as part of a job with Amazon Flex, which provided a badly needed income stream for this family of nine, when he stepped out of the doorway and saw an empty space where his car used to be.

Reclaim the Records, a nonprofit organization focused on using the law to acquire vital records, began the work to file a Maryland Public Information Act request in October 2022. Their goal was to obtain and digitize over a 100 years of Maryland birth, marriage, death and naturalization documents, a project they dubbed The Maryland Motherlode. The records can now be viewed on the Internet Archive.

Ahead of a much anticipated match-up next week that both sides were girding for, the Zoning Board hearing on a proposed Royal Farms store and gas station in northeast Baltimore has been postponed. Residents got word today that a lawyer for the convenience store chain asked for the postponement because a sign advertising the time and place of the December 5 hearing was never posted on the property, at 5901-21 Harford Road.