Harford County

As tough as it is to be a repeat champion, C. Milton Wright's girls team looks like a solid choice to run the table and win titles again. Except for a mid-season setback to Middletown in the open-class division of the Bull Run at Hereford last season, C. M. Wright was all but unapproachable. The Mustangs took the Harford County crown by sweeping the first five places in the race. They won the tough 4A East Regional by going 1-3-5-7-8. In the Anne Arundel Invitational, team members finished 1-2-4-5-7.

Piled on Sheriff L. Jesse Bane's desk are stacks of unopened mail, and among the envelopes stuffed with condolences, is a black leather-bound Bible inscribed with gold lettering. Harford County's top lawman has been wrestling with leading an agency of 290 sworn officers through tragedy unlike any it has endured in the last two centuries: the back-to-back deaths of active duty officers. Sgt. Ian A. Loughran died in the hours after he began to suffer a heart attack at the funeral of his mentee, Cpl. Charles Barton Licato.

The average citizen could be forgiven for failing to understand the way taxpayer money gets spent at the state and county level. It's as complex as a spider web, and about as easy to get tangled in. As of this week, Harford County Executive David R. Craig was getting ready to put together a spending plan for the year that begins July 1 (not Jan. 1, as the year does for most of us). His initial citizens input meeting was supposed to have been Monday, but that was delayed because of the weather.

The following is a letter, dated July 21, 2011, from Harford County Executive David Craig to residents of the Cedarday communities regarding the proposed extension of Cedarday Drive: Dear Citizens of Harford County, Residents of Cedarday & Cedarday Estates: The County is proposing to complete the long awaited connection of Cedarday Drive this fall. For the past month my office, along with the County Council and notably the Department of Public Works have received numerous inquiries concerning this project.

A Whiteford man was killed Saturday afternoon when his motorcycle hit a dump truck in Harford County, police said. Around 1 p.m., Ronald Krulock, 69, was driving his motorcycle east on Dublin Road toward Conowingo Road when he crossed the midline of the road and hit a dump truck, according to a statement Saturday evening from Maryland State Police's Bel Air Barrack. Krulock was thrown from his vehicle. He was taken to Upper Chesapeake Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, police said.

John Wesley Jones Jr., a retired Harford County public schools teacher who headed its teachers union, died of cancer Dec. 3 at his Bel Air home. He was 63. Born in Baltimore and raised in the Jones Creek section of Sparrows Point, he was a 1967 graduate of Sparrows Point High School, where he played lacrosse and football and wrestled. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in geography at Frostburg State College, where he also played football and lacrosse. He had a master's degree in liberal arts from the Johns Hopkins University.

As a member of the arts community, I find it to be very exciting that Harford County will get a new arts center funded by a major contribution from Emily Bayless Graham ("Designs are unveiled for Harford arts center," Oct. 24). What bothers me however is the hiring of a New York firm to design it. Maryland, and particularly Baltimore and it's surrounding counties, have several extremely talented architectural firms, some of which have excellent reputations for this type of project.

Gino's Burgers and Chicken will be back in Harford County this fall, with the first of three new sites in the county to open in Aberdeen,  The Aegis reported.  A new Gino's will open in late October or November on Beards Hill Road, with two more franchises expected to open sometime next year at undetermined sites in Abingdon and Fallston, Tom Clatterbuck, vice president of operations, told The Aegis .  Gino's, founded in 1957 by former Baltimore Colts Alan Ameche and Gino Marchetti, closed in 1991, but President Tom Romano began re-opening Gino's restaurants last year in the Baltimore area.