Air Conditioning

State officials approved more than $161 million in school construction funding Wednesday that will allow school systems in the Baltimore area to undertake renovation projects, tackling problems that include sweltering and overcrowded classrooms and dilapidated buildings and amenities. The Maryland Board of Public Works approved the last round of construction dollars being doled out to schools for fiscal year 2013. The state approved $187.5 million in funding in January, bringing the total amount for school construction projects to nearly $350 million, a more than $85 million increase from fiscal year 2012.

State officials approved more than $161 million in school construction funding Wednesday that will allow school systems in the Baltimore area to undertake renovation projects, tackling problems that include sweltering and overcrowded classrooms and dilapidated buildings and amenities. The Maryland Board of Public Works approved the last round of construction dollars being doled out to schools for fiscal year 2013. The state approved $187.5 million in funding in January, bringing the total amount for school construction projects to nearly $350 million, a more than $85 million increase from fiscal year 2012.

As consumer advocates called for a review of BGE's PeakRewards program, the utility said Monday that more than 3,800 customers have dropped or modified their participation after seeing air conditioners cycled off for hours Friday — the hottest day in 75 years. Advocates for seniors and consumers, while praising the program's goals, said they and Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. must do a better job counseling customers who sign up for the voluntary program. Hank Greenberg, state director of AARP Maryland, said PeakRewards is a good program, but "these last few days showed there's a need for some review and some better communication.

The parent company of Harborside Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Baltimore, which faced state sanctions for air-conditioning failures more than two years ago, has filed for reorganization under Chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to court documents. Ravenwood Healthcare Inc., based in Baton Rouge, La., listed $10 million to $50 million in liabilities and the same amount of assets, according to documents filed late last week with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Middle District of Louisiana.

  When he delivered his budget proposal last week, Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz announced that his plan would include money for air conditioning at a dozen schools.  The County Auditor's office has prepared a chart for the County Council showing the proportion of schools with and without air conditioning in each councilmanic district.  The chart ( https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AsRDIs5LxYeQdFVjREdOVENLZU5RV2c2UU0yaTRKM1E )  shows that under Kamenetz's plan, the councilmanic district with the highest proportion of air conditioned schools would be Councilman Ken Oliver's 4 th District, with 82 percent of buildings air conditioned.

The Broadway Court Senior Life building in East Baltimore advertises being "in the heart of Baltimore. " Residents who had been without air conditioning from Friday through Monday afternoon said that it was like living "in the heat of Baltimore. " According to Armerlous Givens, the air conditioning was fixed "while the media was here" and came back on "around 2 or 3 [p.m.]. Givens, 66, said that it had been fixed last week as well and stopped working within a few hours. "We have all had a terrible time," Givens said Monday night.

It is no surprise that the corporate-owned Ravenwood Nursing and Rehabilitation Center ("Heat forces relocation of dozens at nursing home," July 7), located in Baltimore City, was reported to be "plagued with air conditioning problems." The truth is that Ravenwood has long been plagued with numerous other problems as well, most of which violate the civil and human rights of residents there. As someone who has volunteered at the facility and as a disability rights advocate, I witnessed multiple inequities and maltreatment: people left in their beds for days, weeks or months on end; people not taken outside to see the sun except for bi-annual doctors' visits; people denied $14 a month when the corporation is paid an estimated $3500 a month for their "services;" and residents told that they do not have the right to choose where they live.

Since riding the Howard Transit buses for quite some time, I have noticed that once the summer months come around, the buses start breaking down. Although it is a common occurrence during the summer, I do not think that the county's bus company is doing a good job keeping up with maintenance. If Howard Transit can afford to buy new buses, I would think they would have the money to keep these vehicles maintained. The main noticeable problem is the lack of air conditioning. During code orange or code red days, senior citizens and other residents with cardiac or breathing conditions are put in danger of their health. However, if you factor in the excessively hot environment on buses with no air conditioning, it puts them at twice the risk for a serious medical emergency.  Just recently, I was on two buses with no air conditioning. At one point, several ladies became concerned when they took notice that I might pass out from heat exhaustion. Because of no A/C on a code red day, I was put at a serious health risk because of a breathing condition.

MARC train 538 from Washington shut down Monday evening, leaving passengers stranded in the train for about two hours. MTA spokesman Terry Owens said the train, which leaves Washington at 6:13 p.m., "basically shut down." "We don't know why it shut down," Owens said. "We assume it's weather related, but we don't know." The train stopped just shy of New Carrolton on its way to Perryville. He said that train officials gave out water on some cars. "We carry water on trains in the summer and if there is an issue we had water out."

Keshia Webb couldn't understand why her utility bill was nearly $250 a month for her small Columbia townhouse. "I was always asking why my utility bill is so high," said Webb, 39, who has lived in the Columbia Housing Corp. unit off Harper's Farm Road since 2005. Her home, which she shares with her 9-year-old daughter, has a living room and kitchen on the first floor, and two bedrooms and a small bathroom on the second. A new furnace, water heater, air conditioning unit and newly sealed cracks and crevices in her attic, part of a weatherization makeover, are likely to help.

  When he delivered his budget proposal last week, Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz announced that his plan would include money for air conditioning at a dozen schools.  The County Auditor's office has prepared a chart for the County Council showing the proportion of schools with and without air conditioning in each councilmanic district.  The chart ( https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AsRDIs5LxYeQdFVjREdOVENLZU5RV2c2UU0yaTRKM1E )  shows that under Kamenetz's plan, the councilmanic district with the highest proportion of air conditioned schools would be Councilman Ken Oliver's 4 th District, with 82 percent of buildings air conditioned.

Laurel police report felonies, arrests and property crimes. Prince George's County police report violent crimes and property crimes. Howard County police report major crimes, break-ins and car thefts. City of Laurel Washington Boulevard, 500 block, March 27. Bicycle and speed meter stolen from pickup truck. Lafayette Avenue, 100 block, March 26. Copper pipes stolen from air conditioning units outside building. Montrose Avenue, 300 block, March 26. Lockers broken into at LA Fitness.

Your recent editorial "Repairing city schools" (Feb. 18) can only have been written by someone who hasn't spent much time in the city's public schools recently. I have, and I can tell you that there are students who avoid going to the bathroom all day because the toilets won't flush or the stall doors are missing, and there are teachers who have lost a decade's worth of materials to flooding caused by leaking roofs. If you were to set foot inside their schools, would you tell them that certain "details" need to be worked out before we can start raising the money to fix their buildings?

State Comptroller Peter Franchot plans to post an online petition on his agency's web site Thursday to help Baltimore County parents put pressure on the county school administration to take action to put air-conditioning into schools that now offer no relief to sweltering students. Franchot vowed to post the "Cool Schools" petition after hearing a presentation Wednesday  from the school administration on school construction priorities during the annual Board of Public Works ritual that Gov. Martin O'Malley calls the "Hope-a-Thon" but that virtually everyone else knows as the "Beg-a-Thon.

State Comptroller Peter Franchot criticized Baltimore County leaders Wednesday for failing to use $7 million in school construction funds to air-condition schools. Franchot, who welcomed a group of Middleborough Elementary children and their parents to Annapolis to testify before the Board of Public Works, asked the board to force the county to spend at least half of the money, which has come from the state alcohol tax, on air-conditioning. But Gov. Martin O'Malley and Treasurer Nancy K. Kopp, the other board members, said that while they were sympathetic to the pleas from children and parents, they would not interfere with local decisions on school construction spending.

Benjamin W. "Ben" Cumming III, who had worked as a heating and air conditioning installer, died Tuesday from complications of pneumonia at his Glen Rock, Pa., home. He was 45. The son of an Air Force officer and a dental assistant, Mr. Cumming was born in Aurora, Colo., and moved with his family to Kingsville in 1967. He was a 1983 graduate of Perry Hall High School and began working as a heating and air conditioning installer. He had worked for Ridge Heating and Air Conditioning as a teenager and later for Martin J. Braun before starting his own heating and air conditioning business.

With Baltimore sweating through a second straight day of triple-digit temperatures, state officials ordered the Ravenwood Nursing and Rehabilitation Center to relocate all 150 patients because of problems with its air- conditioning system and began a comprehensive investigation of the facility. Throughout the day, residents in wheelchairs and on stretchers were loaded into vans and ambulances, as the West Franklin Street nursing home — where temperatures had climbed as high as 93 amid this week's heat wave — was gradually emptied.

Sykesville Middle School might be at the top of the list of Carroll schools slated for air conditioning, but it could be bumped. The county has set aside $2 million for heating and air-conditioning projects for the school system. Westminster Elementary has a failing heating system, which takes priority over air conditioning. "We promised Sykesville it would be next on the list, but we don't have enough money to do both projects," Susan Krebs, school board president, said in a meeting with Carroll commissioners yesterday.

Thursday night the temperature on our thermometer said 76 degrees. We turned off the air-conditioning, raised the windows and turned on the small box fan that sat, facing out, in a third-floor window. That little fan drew cool air through the house all night long.   Having windows open felt different. The air currents were different. I keep a fan running in my bedroom for circulation even when the air-conditioning runs. The added breeze from the front window cooled me down, so I slept under a cotton blanket for the first night in more than a month.

On Friday when temperatures soared into the 100's, some with air conditioning lost it for more than eight hours.  They had enrolled in BGE's PeakRewards program and thought they were doing a good thing for the environment and for their pocketbooks.   By having a special switch on the air-conditioning compressor, the homeowner allows the utility company to cut off the unit when demand is very high. This happened on Friday and a snafu in the electronics made it so that many customers could not override the cutoff.