Gardina

A second Baltimore County councilman is planning to introduce a series of bills tonight that would earmark land in his district for County Executive James T. Smith Jr.'s signature plan for the revitalization of older neighborhoods. Councilman Vincent J. Gardina's proposal to designate three parcels - in Towson and the Loch Raven area - is the second since council members approved legislation in December that created a community-intensive development process for selected projects in selected neighborhoods.

With a glowing report from code inspectors about their first attempts to systematically catalog and inspect rental properties in Baltimore County, one county councilman said he will propose extending the pilot program to include several Towson-area neighborhoods. Councilman Vincent J. Gardina, a Towson-Perry Hall Democrat, said he would like to see the owners of rental properties in Loch Raven Village, Ridgely Manor and possibly several areas near Towson University be required to register their units with the county and have them inspected.

A Baltimore County councilman wants to know what the county school system is doing to weed out students who live elsewhere but fraudulently attend county schools -- and he wants the force of a resolution behind his request. Councilman Vincent J. Gardina, a Perry Hall-Towson Democrat, said yesterday that parents have called him to complain that large numbers of out-of-county students attend the schools closest to the city-county border. "I think it's pretty pervasive," he said. At a County Council work session yesterday, Gardina introduced a resolution asking the schools to relay to the council and parent-teacher groups at schools with the greatest concerns information about their efforts to control the situation.

On September 27, 2004, CATHERINE A. GARDINA; beloved daughter of the late Joseph and Clara Gardina; dear sister of Josephine De Carlo and the late Rose Gardina, Mary Caprarola, Frank and Vince Gardina. Also survived by nieces, nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews. Friends may call at the family owned Leonard J. Ruck, Inc. Funeral Home, 5305 Harford Rd. (at Echodale) on Wednesday, 3 to 5 and 7 to 9 PM. A Funeral Mass will be celebrated on Thursday, 11 AM at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church.

The Baltimore County Council tabled a bill last night that would have expanded a rental registration pilot program to five Towson-area neighborhoods. Although the bill's sponsor, Councilman Vincent J. Gardina, a Perry Hall-Towson Democrat, said the program was needed to prevent the decline of some neighborhoods in his district, other councilmen said they wanted to hear a report on the pilot program from the county's permits department before seeing it expanded. The report is due next summer.

Baltimore County Councilman Vincent J. Gardina sued Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. yesterday to get his state job back, saying he was hired in anonymity thanks to competence but quickly fired because of crass partisan politics. Gardina, a Democrat who has served as a council member since 1990, had worked for five months as a contract engineer with the quasi-public Maryland Environmental Service, concentrating on dredging projects. His lawyer says Gardina obtained the $56,000-a-year position in April without the knowledge of the governor, but was abruptly terminated despite positive reviews when his employment became more widely known during the summer.

A Democratic Baltimore County councilman said yesterday that he was fired from a low-level state job in a political move orchestrated by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. Vincent J. Gardina said that despite positive work reviews, he was told yesterday morning that he had been dismissed from his $56,000-a-year job as an engineer working on dredging projects for Maryland Environmental Service, a self-supporting state agency that provides water supply, waste purification...

Baltimore County Executive James T. Smith Jr. said yesterday that he nominated Orioles principal owner Peter G. Angelos to the county's Revenue Authority board in an attempt to prod the agency to take a more active role in economic development. Smith said he didn't realize the nomination would create an uproar on the County Council, a majority of whose members said he violated an unwritten "gentlemen's agreement" that allows them to choose one of the five Revenue Authority board members.

Despite lobbying by preservationists and descendants of one of Baltimore County's earliest families, the Bowens, the County Council appears unlikely to grant historic landmark status for a 1730s farmhouse at the center of the Greater Baltimore Medical Center campus in Towson. Although the original house is one of just a handful of pre-1750 structures in the county, the Bowens' descendants face an uphill battle saving their family's old home. GBMC is working to keep the structure off Baltimore County's landmarks list, saying it has been divorced from its historical context and added onto so many times that it has lost its identity as a farmhouse.

One way or another, the abandoned Crown gas station on York Road that has been the bane of Towson residents and businesses for years will be gone by March 15, county officials said. County Councilman Vincent J. Gardina had been investigating whether the county could force the station's demolition as a dilapidated structure when it partially collapsed under the weight of the snow this week. "Now it's not even a question," Gardina said. "Now it has to, for safety reasons as well as code violations, be removed."