Community Support

This is simply a letter of thanks to the individuals in the Laurel community who are helping me grow the Mance Foundation. In particular, I am especially grateful to Chief McLaughlin and every person in the Laurel City Police Department for their valuable input and community engagement in helping the organization carry out its first Tour de Laurel bike ride and 5k walk fundraisers. I cannot say thank you enough to them for volunteering their time to help keep the participants safe during these fundraisers.

Uber, the popular car-hire service that's been making waves (and controversy) across the U.S., is interested in setting up shop in Baltimore, according to its website and to a job description on Jobvite for an operations manager. (H/T to @insidecharmcity for the tweet ) Uber is giving the traditional taxi/limo business -- and regulators -- heartburn in cities across the country, as the company uses smartphone apps to connect with customers who are looking for rides. The company was covered in the Wall Street Journal today for trying to launch a yellow taxi cab-hailing app in New York City, but it was rebuffed by regulators there.

A wide range of community, business and political leaders hailed the decision yesterday by Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke to seek the ouster of schools Superintendent Richard C. Hunter.Critics of Dr. Hunter said that he had made scant progress toward improving the troubled school system in his 2 1/2 years on the job, and that the community was eager for a sign that the mayor would move decisively to put the system on a course that would bring success."It's very clear to me as a parent that it is worse than it has ever been," said Jo Ann Robinson, president of the Western High School PTA, who was had children in the school system since 1976.

CHEERS WILL UNDOUBTEDLY be heard all around southeast Carroll when the new middle school opens its doors in January.The Oklahoma Road Middle School is expected to open for the third term of the 1996-1997 school year and will relieve crowding at Sykesville Middle School.The building is nearly complete, and much of the inside work is nearing the final stages. But anyone who works in a school knows that it's not the physical structure that makes a school great; it's the people who work at the school and the community that supports the school that determine the quality of the education inside.

AMERICA'S religious community has, since the Vietnam War, provided the leading critics of U.S. military involvement. That was certainly the case when President Bush sent U.S. troops to Panama in an effort to capture Gen. Manual Noriega.But the churches have been much more supportive of Bush's decision to send U.S. troops to the Middle East, primarily to defend Saudi Arabia, in the wake of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.In a sense, the churches' response generally echoes that of Congress -- supporting what Bush has done so far, but expressing concern about what happens next.

Some north Baltimore wine and liquor stores may have found a way around a proposed Baltimore City zoning change that could eventually ban them from the residential neighborhoods in which they are located. Several stores in the Hampden and Charles Village areas are seeking rezoning from residential to commercial, with the support of community leaders and their City Council representatives. Among the businesses seeking rezoning to C1 commercial status are JT's Market & Deli in Medfield, the Charles Village Schnapp Shop, the Wine Underground in Hoes Heights, and Roland Park Wines & Liquor in the Rolden neighborhood.

In some of the neighborhoods near Frederick Douglass High, youthful drug dealers take over street corners each night, and gunfire pierces the air routinely.Continual bloodletting in nearby areas weighed on the minds of about 125 people who gathered in the school's auditorium last night in search of ways to keep the violence from spilling over into the school.School administrators, alumni and parents recalled Douglass' heritage as one of the city's pre-eminent black high schools and said media coverage of a brawl across from the school last week has tarnished its name unfairly.

Annapolis police and city leaders pleaded for support last night from residents of a public housing complex where a crowd jeered and attacked police last week during two separate drug arrests last week.About 60 residents of the 150-unit Annapolis Gardens turned out for a meeting at the recreation center to talk about mounting tension between their mostly black community and city police trying to clean up a flourishing drug market on Bowman Court."Let's don't get hung up on what happened in the past," pleaded Joseph S. Johnson, the city's first black police chief and a city leader who has pledged to root out lingering racism in the Police Department.

Alan Gross, the Potomac man serving 15 years in Cuba after carrying communications equipment into the communist island nation, continues to communicate with supporters from the military hospital where he is held. The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington said Monday that Gross called to express his gratitude for the efforts of the Jewish community to push for his release. "I worked many years to reinforce the concept of community and I really feel it," Gross, 63, said during the telephone call last week, according to the council.

A FAVORITE springtime tradition continued last weekend as area youngsters were invited to hunt for Easter eggs at Carrolltowne Elementary.The family event has been sponsored by the Eldersburg Super Fresh for the past six years."