Night Meetings

The school board is switching to evening meetings on a trial basis, starting Wednesday. But this month's agenda contains little that is likely to draw a crowd -- day or night.So if the meeting at 7:30 p.m. in the Francis Scott Key High School auditorium is well attended, it could be solely as a show of support for the new time.Sex education often attracts parents to meetings. Even though the health curriculum is up for approval at the meeting, nothing in the proposed document has drawn any comments, said Gregory Eckles, director of curriculum.

Both teams enter this contest smarting from unexpected losses. Mount St. Mary's dropped a 13-5 decision to a Towson team that had won just once in its previous four games. The Mountaineers (2-3) will be playing their fourth contest in 11 days and are 2-1 when the offense has scored at least 11 goals this season. Johns Hopkins absorbed an 11-8 upset loss at the hands of then-No. 14 Princeton that dropped the Blue Jays from No. 5 to No. 10. Johns Hopkins (3-1), which has won all four previous meetings with Mount St. Mary's, is 57-7 against teams from Maryland since Dave Pietramala became the head coach prior to the 2001 season.

Carroll County Attorney George Lahey will deliver an opinion today on the legality of a controversial move to cancel night meetings of the Carroll County Planning and Zoning Commission.The monthly sessions, held the first Thursday of the month, rotate among different sites and draw residents interested in planning issues. Commissioners Richard T. Yates and Donald I. Dell voted last week to eliminate funding for the night meetings.Although Laurel Taylor, an attorney on George Lahey's staff, routinely deals with planning commission issues, Commissioner W. Benjamin Brown assigned the research task to Lahey.

The Baltimore city school recently elected David Stone, who once headed up the city's charter school office and is serving his second term as a commissioner, second-in-command of the district last week. He takes over for longtime board member, Jerrelle Francois, as vice chair of the board. “As a city resident, a former employee and, most of all, as a parent of three Baltimore City Schools' students, my commitment to the system is strong," Stone said of his appointment. "This is a time of great importance for our schools, and I believe that my experience will be of value as we continue to reform City Schools.

After experimenting with night meetings the first half of this year, the school board has decided to make them permanent.The board voted unanimously last week to adopt a hybrid schedule of meetings that keeps the old and adds a new twist. Members will continue to meet at 9 a.m. the second Wednesday of each month, but that will be for more routine business and administrative issues such as staff appointments, awarding of bids and budget transfers.On the fourth Wednesday of each month in the school year, the board will meet at 6:30 p.m., usually in a school in a different part of the county each month.

Former allies of County Commissioner Richard T. Yates plan to meet in South Carroll tomorrow night to begin developing a strategy to defeat him and Commissioner Donald I. Dell in the 1998 election.Their goal is to build a countywide coalition committed to recruiting and electing General Assembly and commissioner candidates who share their desire to slow or stop development until there are enough schools, roads, public utilities, police and fire personnel to adequately support it.Organizers expect to attract 16 to 20 slow-growth advocates from Finksburg, New Windsor and South Carroll to the invitation-only event.

There has been no public outcry against the County Commissioners' decision to end funding for night meetings of the planning commission, Commissioner Richard T. Yates told the panel this week.He and Commissioner Donald I. Dell would reverse their Feb. 10 decision to end the funding if there were a "storm of protest" from residents, Yates said.But there has been no such protest, Yates said. He told the planning commission Tuesday that he has received only one phone call since he and Dell ended funding for the meetings last month.

For the second time in a year-and-a-half, Carroll's school board members are considering another meeting schedule, one that better balances accessibility for parents and workload for the school system's staff.After talking with other members, C. Scott Stone is proposing the board go back to meeting once a month, instead of the current twice-a-month meetings, with half the sessions in the day and half in the evening.The proposal is the latest in a series of trial meeting schedules that board members say all have the same goal -- allowing more parents to attend.

The county school board has a new president, a new member, and now a new meeting time -- a change supporters hope will make it easier for parents to attend.The president is Ann M. Ballard. Former Hampstead Town Council member Gary V. Bauer, elected in November, provided the majority vote to switch to evening meetings -- 4 p.m. for PTC routine business and 7:30 p.m. for the classroom issues that usually interest parents. The meeting day will remain the same -- the second Wednesday of every month.

Three cheers for the Carroll County Board of Education. After years of pleading by citizens, the board has agreed to hold meetings at night until May, when it will decide whether to continue the practice. We hope that other county government boards, commissions and officials follow the school board's example.Citizen participation is essential in a democracy, yet the school board's former practice of holding public meetings during daytime hours excluded large segments of the population who could not afford to take time off from work or school.

Maryland athletic director Kevin Anderson's statement earlier in the week that the school won't compete against Georgetown in any sport until their respective men's basketball teams meet in the regular season will impact the cross-town rivalry between the lacrosse programs. The Terps and Hoyas have met annually on the lacrosse field since 2003, and Maryland has owned the series, 9-2. But the rivalry could end after Friday night's contest at Multi-Sport Field in Washington, D.C. Terps coach John Tillman was philosophical about the potential loss of a traditionally strong opponent from the team's schedule.

A little more than nine years ago, I moved to Mount Vernon. It was great, although at first I'd occasionally want to go to Rite Aid --- the one in the island near State Center complex, at the north end of Martin Luther King Blvd. --- and drive around and around in circles and never find it. Other times, I would try to go home, take a wrong turn and find myself at the Rite Aid, which I knew was not going to help me navigate to my apartment. I nicknamed it the Bermuda Triangle.

A fiercely contested plan to turn a crumbling Navy base into a high-tech office park on the Severn River nearly cleared its last major hurdle last night as the Anne Arundel County Council gave its blessing to two of three bills necessary to acquire and redevelop the former David Taylor Research Center. The votes on the two bills came at the end of an acrimonious all-night meeting of the council. The project's key opponent, Councilwoman Barbara D. Samorajczyk, delayed a vote on the last bill by introducing 23 amendments at midnight - after which the council is barred from voting.

It was 12:30 a.m. July 18, and Howard County Police Chief Wayne Livesay was alone, in uniform, carefully watching a small group of people just a few feet away. This was no stakeout, though - just another late ending to a routine Howard County Council hearing. "It's been awhile since I worked the true midnight shift," Livesay joked as he rose to speak on two bills pending before the council. Other people had left without testifying, unwilling to wait. Although many Baltimore-area jurisdictions - Baltimore, Baltimore County and Carroll County - hold government meetings during the day and plan no changes, Howard's citizens love their night sessions.

There has been no public outcry against the County Commissioners' decision to end funding for night meetings of the planning commission, Commissioner Richard T. Yates told the panel this week.He and Commissioner Donald I. Dell would reverse their Feb. 10 decision to end the funding if there were a "storm of protest" from residents, Yates said.But there has been no such protest, Yates said. He told the planning commission Tuesday that he has received only one phone call since he and Dell ended funding for the meetings last month.

IS IT ANY surprise that South Carroll no-growth activists want to oust County Commissioners Dick Yates and Don Dell?They have much to complain about, these denizens of the Greater Eldersburg complex, even if many of them are part of the problem (new residents, despite obvious facilities shortages) as well as trying to be a part of the solution. But some are simply of the gangplank mentality -- "Pull it up, I'm on board" -- that cannot pass for a solution.Despite their varying degrees of distaste for development, some South Carroll protesters are organizing a movement to Yank Yates, Dump Dell.

County Commissioner W. Benjamin Brown said yesterday that he plans to force another vote on a controversial decision to end monthly night meetings of the county's planning commission.In Brown's absence Monday, Commissioners Donald I. Dell and Richard T. Yates voted to end funding for a second monthly meeting of the planning commission, which also meets once a month during the day. Eliminating the night meeting would save the county about $7,000 a year, commissioners said."Openness to the public ought to run through this county like a river," Brown said.

Carroll's planning and zoning board will hold a night meeting next month despite a decision by the County Commissioners to eliminate funding for the evening sessions.Thomas G. Hiltz, planning commission chairman, said he has no plans to discontinue the popular night meetings, held the first Thursday of each month at different locations. Several members had said they will work without compensation.Hiltz has asked for a legal analysis of the County Commissioners' Feb. 10 decision from Laurel Taylor, the county attorney who serves the Carroll County Planning and Zoning Commission.

Former allies of County Commissioner Richard T. Yates plan to meet in South Carroll tomorrow night to begin developing a strategy to defeat him and Commissioner Donald I. Dell in the 1998 election.Their goal is to build a countywide coalition committed to recruiting and electing General Assembly and commissioner candidates who share their desire to slow or stop development until there are enough schools, roads, public utilities, police and fire personnel to adequately support it.Organizers expect to attract 16 to 20 slow-growth advocates from Finksburg, New Windsor and South Carroll to the invitation-only event.

West County parents will have one more chance this week to say where they think their children should attend elementary, middle and high school.Groups of parents began meeting last year to come up with their version of new school boundaries to accompany the opening this fall of a new middle school for the Fort Meade area.There's been nothing straightforward about the process since then. Some parents have made clear they don't want their children in Meade area schools at all.Here are the threads of the complicated debate:Parents on a redistricting task force had to decide which students would attend the new middle school and which students would go to 30-year-old MacArthur Middle School, both on Fort Meade.