Politics

As the end of her 2020 mayoral campaign neared, Sheila Dixon said she wouldn’t run for mayor again if she lost the race. Three years later, however, the former Baltimore mayor may be staging another potential comeback. First there was a June appearance in which Fox 45 host Armstrong Williams referred to Dixon as a candidate for mayor. She didn’t correct him.

At the tail-end of a Baltimore summer marked by occasional scorching heat, several shuttered swimming pools and kids sneaking into locked facilities, City Council members urged parks officials to ensure that repairs don’t interrupt swim season next year. Officials from Baltimore City Recreation and Parks gathered Wednesday before City Council for questioning over closures at three popular spots this summer: Clifton Park’s pool experienced sporadic maintenance issues; Cherry Hill’s outdoor pool remains under renovation; and persistent flooding overwhelmed Patterson Park’s pool in early July, preventing it from opening.

It was around midday that Dallis Glover walked along North Eutaw Street, just past Lexington Market in downtown Baltimore, carrying a 25-ounce can of Natural Ice beer in late June. Glover, 59, was a block from his home in the Paca House Apartments, which provides supportive housing for residents with low incomes. He had quit his job while grieving the recent deaths of his mother and fiancee, and found himself relying on alcohol to dull his pain.

After backing out of a proposed project near Quiet Waters Park in Annapolis, the Chesapeake Conservancy has purchased a property in downtown Annapolis to serve as its new office. The office space at 1212 West St., formerly the Maryland Municipal League building, was purchased for $2.5 million by the conservancy via a donation from local philanthropists James and Sylvia Earl.

An investigative report from the Maryland Attorney General’s Office offers new information on what led up to a September 2022 fatal police shooting in Anne Arundel County. The county police department at the time said officers killed 48-year-old Anthony Hopkins Sr. on Sept. 17 after he raised a gun toward them outside his home in Harwood. The report from the attorney general’s office, released nearly a year later, largely tracks with that narrative and contains additional details.

Baltimore’s bid is in, and now the waiting begins. The region, led by a consortium of business and technology leaders, is competing a federal designation as a national tech hub that comes with hundreds of millions in funding. A group of area businesses, colleges and universities, workforce development experts and state and local government officials officially unveiled plans Thursday at Morgan State University to develop such a hub.

The federal judge overseeing the Baltimore Police Department’s consent decree urged the agency’s leadership to push harder for progress on several fronts, including producing long-awaited reports about officers’ pedestrian stops and the resulting searches. The comments came in the first quarterly review of the department’s progress with its consent decree since the abrupt departure of former Police Commissioner Michael Harrison, who continues to be credited with ushering the agency through the process at a quicker and more efficient clip, and more than 6 1/2 years after BPD first entered court supervision.