Baltimore City Council

Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake, the three-term Baltimore City Council veteran who was the youngest person ever elected to the body, will formally announce her intention to run for council president today - solidifying the field in what has become one of the city's most animated races. Rawlings-Blake, who has served as president of the council since Sheila Dixon became mayor in January, has the backing of the state's top-ranking Democrat, Gov. Martin O'Malley, and has recently used her position to push for more aggressive police recruitment and the ability to padlock homes with noisy neighbors.

TODAY BALTIMORE CITY COUNCIL -- Baltimore City Council will meet at 5 p.m. in the council chambers in City Hall, 100 N. Holliday St. A new council president and vice president are to be elected. HARFORD SCHOOLS -- Harford County Board of Education will hold a business meeting at 7:15 p.m. at 102 S. Hickory Ave., Bel Air. The agenda includes action on the 2008 budget and on charter school applications. TOMORROW BALTIMORE CITY SCHOOLS -- The Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners will meet at 6 p.m. at 200 E. North Ave. It is expected to receive school closure recommendations.

On most Monday nights for 27 years, Melvin S. Laszczynski, the Baltimore City Council's sergeant-at-arms, unfastened the council chamber's red velvet rope to admit members to their seats.After fastening his rope and counting heads, Mr. Laszczynski would bellow to the council president: "We have a quorum, Mr. President." Then the council meeting would begin.Mr. Laszczynski, a retired fuel tanker driver who joined the council as a part-time clerk in 1971, died Saturday of a massive heart attack at his Highlandtown residence.

The Baltimore City Council gave preliminary approval last night to a proposal to convert a Charles Street apartment building into a senior citizens' home, displacing its 150 occupants.Under the proposal, which will be up for final approval next week, the Northway Apartments at 3700 N. Charles St. would become a home for the elderly that would offer assisted living.Tenants are protesting the change, saying it will push middle-income residents out of the city and that nursing homes in the area are not fully occupied.

Fannie Price, who operated a popular coffee shop and restaurant for 35 years, died Friday in her sleep at Genesis Eldercare in Randallstown. She was 89 and previously had lived on Fulton Avenue in West Baltimore.Until she retired in the 1970s, Mrs. Price was the chef and waitress at Fannie's Coffee Shop, which she established in the 1940s at Woodbrook Avenue and Whitelock Street. The counter seated 15 people.Customers called her Miss Fannie. They included workers in the neighborhood -- employees at the old Baltimore Transit Co.'s Retreat Street car barn and Parks Sausage Co."

The Baltimore City Council unanimously voted last night to restore the one-year residency requirement for mayoral candidates, reversing a state law approved in April by Gov. Parris N. Glendening that trimmed the term to six months.Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said last week that he would sign the measure. The state law, introduced by some Baltimore legislators, was intended to entice Kweisi Mfume, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, to run for mayor. Mfume announced last week that he would not be a candidate.

It could have been a scene from a period movie: people arriving at Baltimore's historic Senator Theatre, dressed in fringe, feathers and raccoon coats. However, this was a birthday party, celebrating Homeland's 75th anniversary in roaring '20s fashion."Isn't this fun?" exclaimed "Homeland 75" co-chair Barbara Stevens. She was in full flapper fringe and feather boa, while her husband and co-chair, Jim, 23-skidooed in red suspenders and a bowler.Many of the 250 guests were Homeland residents, including Nancy O'Donnell, who's lived there 60 years, and Barbara Steinmann, who wore her mother's 1929 wedding dress.

NAACP President Kweisi Mfume may be saying publicly that he will not be a candidate for mayor of Baltimore, but he told several Democratic officials in Annapolis yesterday that he is still considering a run.Although he stopped short of saying he plans to jump into the wide-open mayoral race, Mfume left the clear impression that he is leaning that way, according to sources who discussed it with him yesterday."

Despite public opposition by NAACP President Kweisi Mfume, state lawmakers introduced bills this week to reduce the residency requirement for Baltimore's mayoral candidates from one year to six months, which would allow the civil rights leader to move to the city and run for office this year.Lawmakers are pushing Mfume to run in this year's mayoral race, but the head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has said he will not.Mfume lives in Baltimore County and could not run for mayor without an amendment to the city charter.

Trying to guess just how Larry Young, the fallen Maryland senator, could stage a comeback has become a popular political parlor game in Baltimore.Even Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke has been caught up in the swirl of speculation since the Maryland Senate expelled Young last week for ethics transgressions.Immediately after his ouster, the West Baltimore Democrat vowed to return to elected office as quickly as possible.Some Baltimore political leaders think he will try to reclaim his Senate seat; others suggest he will attempt to switch into the House of Delegates.

Motorcyclist dies, another injured 4 One motorcyclist was killed and another was seriously injured Saturday afternoon when their cycles collided with cars in Annapolis, Anne Arundel County police said. John S. Vansickler, 51, of La Plata and Teresa A. Stecker, 48, of Mechanicsville were riding their Harley-Davidson motorcycles north on Solomons Island Road about 3:15 p.m. when they failed to stop for a red light and crashed into separate cars at Aris T. Allen Boulevard, according to an initial police investigation.

The Baltimore City Council approved a new plan to reduce trash collection to once a week, passing one of the mayor's top legislative priorities on an 8-to-5 vote. "It is really a mind-set; people have to change," Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon said after the vote. The legislation also increases recycling pickup to once a week, from once every other week, a move that fits with the mayor's goal to promote a "greener" city. The new plan goes into effect July 14 and coincides with a broader shift in collection routes, which will mean almost every neighborhood will have a new trash day. Those dates will be unveiled in coming weeks.

Four days into a marathon session of hearings on the 2010 budget, the Baltimore City Council members were still steamed. East Baltimore's normally silent councilman, Warren Branch, hollered at the head of the city's largest department, demanding to know why public works has kept four public information officers while another department cut services for children. "I've never seen these folks," Branch yelled, referring to three of the spokesmen. "I have rec centers closing in my district.

Having overcome a momentary fit of Powerball fever, the Baltimore City Council has decided it will seek a proper accounting of how $39.7 million in tax revenue was lost for a decade before it figures out how it can spend the newfound money. Questions from the public about the accounting error also prompted the April 30 oversight hearing. Whatever the council's motivation, city residents deserve to hear for themselves how the mix-up occurred. During a Monday luncheon meeting with city Finance Director Edward J. Gallagher, several council members were as eager to find out how they could legally spend the money as discover the reasons for the embarrassing bookkeeping mistake recently made public in a city audit.

Local students up for award Two local high school students were selected as finalists in a nationwide epidemiology contest, and both will learn Monday whether they will receive a $50,000 college scholarship. Jason Bishai, Hannah Bands and 10 others are competing for the grand prize in the Young Epidemiology Scholars competition, sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The students have already won $15,000 scholarships for becoming finalists. They could win further scholarships of $35,000 and $20,000.

Margaret A. Vondersmith, a retired Social Security Administration administrative assistant and a former Northeast Baltimore neighborhood activist, died Sunday of congestive heart failure at Stella Maris Hospice. She was 92. Margaret Audrey Ritmiller, the daughter of a city firefighter and a homemaker, was born at home on Carswell Street in Northeast Baltimore. She was later raised on Gorsuch Avenue and graduated in 1935 from Seton High School. Mrs. Vondersmith worked as a secretary for Flynn & Emrich Co., a Baltimore cast-iron foundry, before her marriage in 1937 to Thomas Lee Vondersmith Sr. Mr. Vondersmith, a Social Security Administration computer operations manager, died in 1993.

The Baltimore City Council president and the chair of the council's public safety committee say that a new police policy to withhold the names of officers who shoot or kill citizens "could undermine the hard-earned, sacred trust between our police officers and the public they serve." In a letter sent yesterday to Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III, Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake and Councilman Bernard C. "Jack" Young said they were troubled that they were not informed of the "major policy shift" and asked for clarification on the reason for the change and how it will be implemented.

The killers of former Baltimore Councilman Kenneth N. Harris Sr. have shattered the hope that Baltimore is safer because there are fewer homicides. The trio of robbers who hid behind scary masks and guns has shown again that anyone can be a target of violence, including a man who worked hard to make this city a better place for men and women of all walks of life. Raised by a single mother, Mr. Harris worked four jobs to get himself through Morgan State University. He began his community work in his neighborhood and he understood the importance of respect, whereas the thugs who killed him had no respect for human life; they were only too willing to end one in the brief moment it takes to fire a gun. Confronted as he left a popular jazz club in Northeast Baltimore, Mr. Harris ran to his car. His assailants murdered a husband and father of two who had spent the past decade working to change things that he thought were wrong or unjust or unfair.

Alexander Ovechkin, one of the greatest hockey player in the game today, and certainly the best paid, decided to get spruced up the day he signed a 13-year, $124 million deal with the Washington Capitals. He swung by Hair Cuttery for a $14 cut. And so, an endorsement deal was born. The NHL superstar began shooting ads for the discount salon yesterday in Baltimore. The campaign - "What he is to hockey, we are to hair" and "Most Valuable Hair" will appear on Washington-area billboards and bus shelters - is the work of TBC, a Fells Point agency that represents Hair Cuttery.

Comedian Lonnie Shorr, who would go on to appear on the Merv Griffin, Dean Martin and Tonight shows, was bitten by the acting bug while a 1950s City College student. He made his Baltimore debut when he landed a role in the student play Remains to be Seen, presented on his high school's 33rd Street stage. "I was always the class clown," he said. He was born in 1939 in Zebulon, N.C., and he likes to tell his audiences where he came from. "It's just a word and it's funnier than Baltimore.