“You hope property owners start to comply immediately. We’re just recognizing the fiscal impact. I don’t think they want to dilly-dally.”
~ County spokesman Don Mohler, expressing his belief that area rental property owners won’t need more than a year to install carbon monoxide detectors.
People who can, do — and those who can’t, teach. Or so goes the old adage. But what happens to those who give up teaching?
Apparently, they become farmers.
Or so goes the story as told by Don Mohler, who briefly spoke Thursday about Councilman Joseph Bartenfelder’s brief tenure as a teacher.
Bartenfelder taught from 1979 to 1981. The last year was spent as a long-term substitute at Chesapeake High School, in Essex, where he taught drafting and business (he was also involved in the family farm at the time). (more…)
Yesterday Steve Bailey filed an ethics complaint against County Executive Jim Smith.
Today, Bailey may find himself on the receiving end.
Bailey and the organization he co-chairs, the Baltimore County Chapter of Americans for Prosperity, may have run afoul of the law when they issued a press release yesterday naming Smith as the target of an ethics complaint. (more…)
The County Council is poised to vote tonight on legislation that would enable the county to use speed cameras in up to 12 school zones around the county.
Police and traffic safety officials are still working on a list of potential locations. Some officials, including Police Chief Jim Johnson and Don Mohler, a spokesman for County Executive Jim Smith, are now giving indications that statistics won’t be the only factor that determines where the cameras are placed. (more…)
Howard County Executive Ken Ulman has announced a new public safety campaign urging residents of our neighbor to the west to come in out of the rain. (more…)
A week into the official start of the 2010 campaign season and already we’ve had our first surprise announcement: that Baltimore County Executive Jim Smith isn’t running for an office for which he never officially said he was a candidate.
Maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise that some criticism in the blogosphere and in political circles has surfaced on where Smith’s announcement originated, rather than the fact that he will not run for state comptroller.
The question centers around how the announcement was made as part of a county press release — and not a campaign release. Smith first e-mailed the announcement to the media on Monday afternoon from his county communications office. That same announcement was also put up on the county Web site. (more…)
Long-time community activist Donna Spicer doesn’t see the withdrawal of a bill that would have changed the county’s Planned Unit Development law as a win for communities.
County Executive Jim Smith had hoped to add language to the law that would allow the county hearing officer to remand a failed PUD back to the 15-member county Planning Board. County officials said the change was needed because of two recent Board of Appeals decisions that effectively struck down two such developments in the Bowleys Quarters and Millers Island areas. (more…)
Budgets are the guiding star for local governments. The playbook for what an administration has in mind for the coming 12 months.
But getting them done is often as challenging as it is for many of us to get our taxes done by the April 15 deadline. This is especially true this year for Baltimore County, but procrastination is not the issue.
The budget for county, and other jurisdictions in the state, is tied into what happens in Annapolis during the 90-day session that ends April 13. (more…)
Republican State Sen. Andy Harris has been leading the charge against the screening of a triple-X rated movie on the campus of the University of Maryland, College Park but he’s not the only county elected official who is concerned.
County Executive Jim Smith issued a brief statement April 2 via Twitter condemning the screening of Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge. (more…)