City Limits

SEVEN YEARS ago, members of the Family Life Committee of Community United Methodist Church of Crofton were trying to think of programs they could arrange to help local families find wholesome, inexpensive entertainment in this area. Several members had young children, making them well aware that the costs of baby sitters, restaurants and movie theaters could make an evening out prohibitively expensive. After thinking about all kinds of possibilities, the group came up with an idea that has been a smashing success: Crofton City Limits, which on the second Friday of each month presents an open-microphone coffeehouse in the church's Fellowship Hall at Route 424 and Reidel Road.

Baltimore's spending panel Wednesday approved a contract extension that gives a Dallas-based speed camera company a higher percentage of revenue from some tickets. The five-month deal with Xerox State and Local Solutions Inc. - formerly known as ACS State and Local Solutions - will permit the company to continue giving out speed camera tickets within the city limits through the end of 2012. The company's current contract was set to expire on July 31. The company first contracted with the city in 2003, when it began providing red light cameras.

The Annapolis Elks Lodge, a fixture on Rowe Boulevard since 1960, has a contract to purchase a piece of property outside the city limits and move there, possibly within the next year.Vernon J. "Joe" Dorr, exalted ruler of the lodge, said yesterday that members have been looking to move for several years and that a Maryland Court of Appeals decision last week threatening their liquor license spurred them to act.The 1,360 members of Lodge No. 622 voted Wednesday to sell their 6.9 acre property on Rowe Boulevard to the state for $3.6 million.

The Dixon administration introduced legislation Monday that would halt future cost-of-living increases for Baltimore's retired police officers and firefighters, the latest turn in an ongoing effort to reform the city's ailing $1.6 billion public safety pension fund. City officials stressed that the new legislation is a "stopgap" measure intended only to prevent the already depleted fund from plummeting further while they fashion a broader fix that will ultimately include post-retirement increases.

Annapolis is trying to get bigger -- and richer -- by snatching up property.City planners are attempting to annex several expensive parcels of land worth more than $100 million that sit just outside city boundaries near the Chesapeake Bay. The properties, from a proposed waterfront retirement home to a new luxury-home community, would be a significant addition to the $950 million in assessed property now in the city limits."

Washington.--Forty percent of America's cities are programmed to fail. Gary, Camden, East St. Louis are already clinically dead. Bridgeport, Newark, Hartford, Cleveland, Detroit are on life-support systems. New York, Baltimore, Chicago, St. Louis, Philadelphia are sinking. Though seemingly healthy, Boston, Minneapolis, Atlanta are already infected.These cities, and a hundred more like them, will fail because they are programmed to be their own suburbs' poorhouses. The burden of black and Latino poverty is crushing these ''inelastic'' cities, which, for many reasons -- bad annexation laws, hostile neighbors, myopic city politics, anti-black prejudice -- have remained trapped within their city limits.

1896: BANNING HOGS IN CITY On Oct. 7, 1895, the mayor and Common Council of Westminster listened as Carroll County's health officer, Dr. J. Howell Billingslea, presented evidence for the prohibition of keeping hogs within city limits. Dr. Billingslea stated that no matter how clean the hog pens are kept, they are still a breeding ground for disease and thus a public health hazard. Officials were impressed with Billingslea's report and decided to take up the issue at a future meeting. The anticipated date for the prohibition of hogs within city limits was Jan. 1, 1896.

Hey amigos, beisbol is only a game. The arena in which to fight Cuba is the U.S. Capitol. If the NRA is not welcome in Denver, it should convene in Medellin or Pristina, where guns are respected. If we must look outside city limits for a mayor, get Ed Rendell, the best mayor Philadelphia ever had. The Block must go. Prostitution is no longer the highest and best use for the properties.

Baltimore's spending panel Wednesday approved a contract extension that gives a Dallas-based speed camera company a higher percentage of revenue from some tickets. The five-month deal with Xerox State and Local Solutions Inc. - formerly known as ACS State and Local Solutions - will permit the company to continue giving out speed camera tickets within the city limits through the end of 2012. The company's current contract was set to expire on July 31. The company first contracted with the city in 2003, when it began providing red light cameras.

Responding to more than 100 residents who filled City Hall about a potential development that they said could clog major traffic arteries, deplete limited water resources and overwhelm nearby schools, Westminster council members said annexing the property into the city is up in the air. "This is a question of resources, not zoning," council President Damian L. Halstad told the developers and investors who want the city to annex the 146-acre Hoff/Naganna property,...

Sometimes, in small ways, this Getting There gig is downright gratifying. Particularly when it can help a reader get something fixed. One example is an e-mail that came Feb. 16 from Crossan McDonald of Baltimore. For me one of the most hazardous stretches of road that I travel is Keith Avenue, the connector between Interstate 95 [the first exit after the Fort McHenry toll booth] and Broening Highway. To properly appreciate the problems, one has to travel this road at night. On any given evening, over half of the street lights are out of service, and the white paint lane markers are so faint that they are barely visible.

Starting April 10, Baltimore's 311 Call Center will take only urgent requests for service between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., saving the city $500,000, officials announced Thursday. Urgent requests such as animal control, water service interruptions, water main breaks, overflowing sewers or flooding basements, traffic signal outages or debris in roadways will be directly routed through a telephone tree to radio dispatchers for appropriate departments, such as Public Works or Transportation. Shrinking the hours eliminates 11 positions, but no one is expected to lose their jobs because operators are expected to transfer to other openings.

By all rights, Deon Queen should have been afraid Thursday. Queen and his Long Reach boys basketball teammates were facing top-ranked Lake Clifton in a state tournament matchup of schools from Baltimore City, where high quality high school basketball is considered a birthright, and Howard County, where the game is a speed bump between soccer and lacrosse. Yet there was the Lightning making up a 10-point fourth quarter deficit to beat the mighty Lakers and advance to the Class 3A championship game.

After raising the possibility of postponing Aberdeen's Nov. 6 election, a Harford County judge gave the parties involved in a dispute over a disqualified City Council candidate two days yesterday to resolve the matter at the city level. Steven C. Johnson was ruled ineligible by the city's election board. State property tax records show that his principal residence is not within the city limits. Johnson maintains that he is a city resident, filing to run using an address in the 100 block of Post Road, and sought a court order to get his name on the ballot.

Good news, Baltimore. You're hip and healthy. Cooking Light magazine, due on newsstands this week, lists our charming city among the top 20 that are both food-forward and lifestyle-light. The magazine, celebrating its 20th year, used a variety of measures and statistics to rate the cities, but editor Mary Kay Culpepper said the city's crab cakes are a gift to the world. "Baltimore has so much going for it," she said. "I think you know it if you live there, but I think many of our readers will be surprised.

City officials have narrowed the field to four teams in the contest to redesign Baltimore's Pratt Street. Teams that made the cut from an original field of 10 applicants, officials announced yesterday, are Ayers Saint Gross of Baltimore; EDSA of Columbia; Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn Architects of Washington; and Hargreaves Associates of Cambridge, Mass. Each of the four finalists has won $25,000. Baltimore Development Corp., Downtown Partnership and the city's planning and transportation departments announced this fall that they were sponsoring a design contest to reinvigorate a 16-block stretch of Pratt from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard east to President Street.

Carroll County commissioners said yesterday they probably would not support Westminster's plans to annex about 146 acres for a new housing development because adding up to 300 homes would drain resources and bring increased traffic to a mostly rural area. The commissioners said that annexing the unincorporated area of the county into Westminster hinged on a questionable assumption - that a single connecting road was enough to declare the property contiguous to the city limits. "We're talking about a significant increase in the density of the city of Westminster without being contiguous to the city of Westminster," Commissioner Dean L. Minnich said.

After 37 years of working for the city, Westminster City Clerk John D. Dudderar is retiring. Dudderar, 65, submitted his resignation Thursday. It will be effective Feb. 1. "This wasn't a surprise to anybody," he said Friday. "I've been hinting about this for some time." Dudderar, who lives just outside Westminster city limits, started working for the city as a water meter reader in 1964. He was promoted to assistant city clerk/zoning administrator in 1969 and to city clerk/zoning administrator in 1972.

The number of steel road-plates covering construction sites -- and adding to a jarring drive in Baltimore -- has been cut in half to about 100 after a recent crackdown, a city Department of Public Works official said. In 2001, the city began tracking the steel plates, used to temporarily cover work on underground utility conduits, and started pressing contractors to remove them within 30 days. Contractors that do not report installation of plates face $50-a-day fines. Plates are used to cover sites during rush hours, according to the DPW, so that crews can quickly return to work during times of less busy traffic.

DALLAS --Grass fires continued to devastate drought-stricken Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico yesterday, with Oklahoma City hit particularly hard. Oklahoma City firefighters fought 35 grass fires within the city limits - one narrowly missing two shopping centers - from early Sunday to early yesterday, said Maj. Brian Stanaland, a Fire Department spokesman. "We average about two grass fires a day in a normal year," Stanaland said. "That went up to about three a day in 2005, which was a dry year.