County Code

A Circuit Court judge has ruled that the county was wrong in denying renewal of a bingo parlor license to a Florida businessman with alleged ties to organized crime.Judge Bruce C. Williams decided that the county Board of Appeals improperly applied county codes in denying Stephen Paskind a license to continue operating Bingo World on Belle Grove Road in Glen Burnie.The county has been trying to get Mr. Paskind out of the business since 1989, when it denied him renewal of his license to operate because of his company's alleged ties to organized crime.

Jill Farrar Planner Howard County government, Ellicott City Salary : $50,000 Age : 31 Years on the job : One How she got started: After getting an undergraduate degree in environmental studies and working for a New Jersey land conservancy, Farrar went on to earn a master's degree in geography and planning from Northern Arizona University. She worked as a planner in Arizona, relocating to Maryland last year when her husband transferred for a job. After putting in applications with several jurisdictions, she decided Howard County was a good fit. Typical day: Farrar is one of about 15 planners who review development projects as they come into Howard County for approval.

They cropped up yesterday the minute Mark Gawel steered his county-owned Jeep Cherokee onto the Beltway exit leading to eastbound Liberty Road - so many signs in red and white and black and yellow, all illegally stuck in the grass or on telephone poles. Gawel and fellow Baltimore County code enforcement officer Ed Creed hopped out. They uprooted signs advertising stores, real estate deals and church functions, clipped others off electrical poles, dumped them all in the back of the Jeep, then drove a few yards down the street and started over.

Time has all but run out on the Teamsters' effort to represent county police officers, unless the union can get a court order to delay contract negotiations and force an election.John P. O'Connor, state labor commissioner, announced last week that, because of budget constraints, he will not conduct elections to allow police to choose a union, and the Fraternal Order of Police will not agree to let a third party conduct the elections.Even if an election could be held, it would take at least six weeks to organize, O'Connor said.

Six years ago, Anne Arundel County code inspectors ordered George B. Hartsuff III to get rid of the untagged vehicles, the boats, the crab pots, Arizona Iced Tea vending machine and the U-Haul trailer that sat in his front yard. Now he's sitting in jail as his family and friends are cleaning up the Cape St. Claire property. Four large refuse bins weren't enough to haul away all the junk. "He has tried to clean it up - it would get cleaned up, and more things would pile up and it would just get messed up again," said his wife, Sandy, who added that close friends and their three children are pitching in to clean the property.

A 125-foot Sprint PCS cellular tower in the Edgewater community of Poplar Point meets the county's ice and wind requirements, even though a document attesting to its structural integrity is missing from county records, the company's attorney told the Board of Appeals last night. But residents seeking to have the communications tower dismantled remained unconvinced and were shocked to learn that the county reviewed and approved plans for a 130-foot tower, yet allowed Sprint to build one of a different height.

ANNE ARUNDEL County's new planning chief appears to have all the experience he needs to hit the ground running. He'd better. Denis D. Canavan, who arrived in Anne Arundel County from Montgomery County earlier this month with a 30-year planning background, stepped into the middle of a development controversy. Some residents and public officials think Mr. Canavan's predecessors too often allowed developers to build subdivisions that the county code would prohibit. One example is an 18-home Annapolis subdivision that went forward when county planners excused the developer from paying for road improvements.

Carroll Commissioner W. Benjamin Brown tried to put more bite into the county's Minimum Livability Code for rental housing yesterday. But his colleagues made it toothless."

Westminster is the first municipality in Carroll County to have its own rental property maintenance code. The code, introduced in November after two years of planning, was approved unanimously last night by Westminster's mayor and Common Council. It goes into effect June 1. "Obviously we've wrestled with this over a long period of time," said Mayor Kenneth A. Yowan, addressing the two dozen people at the meeting. "I think this is a good ordinance. If you have any problems with this being enforced you can come back and see us again and you will be heard."

Responding to residents' concerns, the Westminster Common Council and mayor have begun making revisions to a proposed property maintenance code, including limiting the ordinance to rental properties. The council has backed away from including all properties in the ordinance, as originally proposed. The majority of the problems the city has had with unkempt properties have been with rental units, not owner-occupied houses or commercial properties, council members said. If owner-occupied houses become a problem, the code could be revised, Council President Damian L. Halstad said at a council work session Tuesday night.