Improvement Association

A COALITION of north county community groups, the Crestwood Improvement Association, North Linthicum Improvement Association, Linthicum-Shipley Improvement Association and Taxpayers Improvement Association of Patapsco Park Inc. from Pumphrey, is holding a presentation by the Mass Transit Administration about the proposed maglev project. The MTA will present an update, including the latest route alignment, on the project at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the auditorium at Lindale Middle School near Andover and Hammonds Ferry roads in Linthicum.

The Odenton Improvement Association will have a general membership meeting next week to close loopholes that allowed a developer to pack an election last month and to elect his slate of candidates.Outgoing President Pat Wellford declined to elaborate on a press release sent out Monday, which also says the board will confirm two appointments to occupy vacant seats on the board."Recent developments have brought to light unintended weaknesses in the existing constitution and bylaws," the release says.

The Glen Burnie Improvement Association (GBIA) is sponsoring a drive to collect school supplies for needy children in Freetown and Meade Village in August.Members are asking for donations of pencils, paper, erasers and other supplies.People who wish to donate items should take them to the civic group's building on South Crain Highway near First Avenue.GBIA members voted this month to spend up to $150 on mailing notices to other associations, inviting them to join the drive.For more information, call the association at 766-6760.

Improvement Association to elect officersThe Arundel Improvement Association will elect officers for 1993 during the monthly meeting at 8 p.m. today in the association's hall, 705 Cross St., Brooklyn Park.Nominations will be accepted from the floor for president, vice president, secretary and treasurer, and for the seven members of the board of governors, said Frances Jones, who has been the group's president for 11 years. New officers will be installed Dec. 20.The association also will make final plans for its annual Santa Claus program, now in its 49th year.

A public meeting to discuss the location for a proposed swim and recreation center in north county is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Jan. 27 at the Linthicum Library.Land at Dorsey and Camp Meade Roads near the Amtrak lines is being considered. The site is not far from Westinghouse, said Ferndale resident Lewis F. Holmes, who is trying to bring a recreation center to north county.Residents objected to a site near the northern end of Baltimore-Washington International Airport at a Dec. 7 public meeting that Mr. Holmes organized.

Ephraim Freedman, a retired medical records worker at Johns Hopkins Hospital and former longtime member of the Fallstaff Improvement Association, died of pneumonia Sunday at Northwest Hospital Center. The Pikesville resident was 75. Mr. Freedman was born in Baltimore and raised on Quantico Avenue. He was a graduate of City College and in the early 1950s worked at a family-owned appliance business. He was employed as a medical transcriptionist at Johns Hopkins Hospital for 33 years before retiring in 1993.

It's dusk. A middle-aged man sits contently enjoying the warm summer air on the porch of his home on Painted Post Road. A young girl kicks her soccer ball around on Bittersweet Court. The sun begins to set over the neighborhood of Scotts Hill, a community near Pikesville in Baltimore County. The area, composed of 294 homes, is adjacent to Baltimore County's 280-acre Gwynns Falls Stream Valley Park and the Talmudical Academy, a private Jewish day school. It also has been home for the past 17 years to Paul Gahagan, president of the neighborhood improvement association.

THE START of a new year is the time to plan for the future and make a few resolutions. At the top of my list are to focus on the future instead of the past and to finish reading James Joyce's "Ulysses." Note, I said to finish reading it; I didn't say anything about understanding it. I then thought about the possibility of a collective resolution. For example, if the residents of Brooklyn Park could make a resolution for the community, what would it be? The range of possibilities seemed immense.

Gwen Taliaferro says that the after-school tutoring andenrichment program she directs using community volunteers has helped to relieve tensions betweeen trouble-plagued Hampstead Hill Middle School and its neighbors in Southeast Baltimore.The Baltimore Community Foundation, which funds community organizations through its Neighborhood Grants program, recently awarded a $3,000 grant to continue the year-old effort.Residents say the program is sorely needed and some results are already apparent.

Bill Lagna doesn't feel he's leading a coup. As the first president of a community group created in the wake of a divisive plan to build condominiums at a weathered marina in Bowleys Quarters, Lagna says the goal is to unify residents on the eastern Baltimore County peninsula. "The intent of the group is to try to come up with acceptable developments that will fit in with the general theme of the existing neighborhood," says Lagna, president of the new Bowleys Quarters Community Association.