Nuisance

Recently, Baltimore County stepped up efforts to eliminate signs on lawns and poles in residential neighborhoods ("Crackdown on nuisance road signs," April 26), but what we have around Park Heights Avenue and Stevenson Road is a problem with numerous tractor-trailers parked from Friday night to Monday morning on Brooks Robinson Drive (formerly Radio Tower Drive). This road primarily serves a residential neighborhood, and anyone who wants to walk along this stretch of road must do so in traffic as the trucks occupy the shoulder.

One of the ironies of the art world is that for all its important holdings the Baltimore Museum of Art is laying off 14 people in order to balance its budget (" Baltimore Museum of Art lays off 14," April 9). Yet right over the city line, in Towson, the federal government is funding the construction of a new museum to house a collection of unknown value - the artifacts of the Ridgley family of Hampton. To make matters worse, the site chosen for the building is in an area of running streams and granite deposits.

Baltimore police padlocked Suite Ultralounge on Wednesday night after an administrative hearing officer declared the bottle club in the basement of the historic Belvedere Hotel to be a "public nuisance" earlier this month. Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III decided to shut down the club for a year after several violent incidents in and around the bar over the past 18 months, a spokesman for the department said. A written report released last week by the administrative officer found the club guilty of providing an unsafe environment, clearing the way for Bealefeld to close the business.

For years, Baltimore officials felt they could do little more than throw up their hands in frustration over the archipelago of small liquor stores that blight many of the city's poorest neighborhoods. Local residents complain the businesses are magnets for crime whose patrons are unruly and a threat to public safety, while public health officials cite the strong correlation between a range of serious health disorders and the number of liquor stores in a community. The ineffectiveness of the state-controlled city liquor board, as documented in a recent audit, only makes matters worse.

After living here in Columbia for 34 years, I thought I had become inured to the oddities and missteps of amateur government. Well, a decorative fountain meant for children to play in the middle of Symphony Woods ("Reviews mixed for planned fountain," Feb. 2) certainly ranks up there with bad software decisions and water flumes that break down. Has anyone ever sat near that same kind of fountain now operating in Fairfax, Va.? What you see there is a constant parade of parents and children and noisy adolescents.

At precisely noon yesterday, 70-year-old William Springs silently watched a bulldozer demolish the home he said he built 40 years ago, the home Anne Arundel County police and prosecutors say had become a public nuisance and haven for drug dealing.The front porch went first. Then the front wall. The T. R. Wilkinson Excavating Co.'s bulldozer swung around to the north side of the house in the 800 block of Mount Zion-Marlboro Road in Lothian. Within an hour, the house was a pile of rubble, the latest victim of State's Attorney Frank R. Weathersbee's use of the state "common nuisance" law."

The notices Anne Arundel County police slapped on the doors of 19 homes in the Warfield Condominiums Tuesday declared the property, not the tenant, a nuisance. But that was little consolation for some of the residents."My house ain't no nuisance," fumed an indignant William McDonald, 39, of the 8300 block of Pioneer Drive. Police put the notice on Mr. McDonald's door while he was at work. His wife was at home and became so upset after receiving the notice that he left work early.On Monday the state's attorney's office filed a complaint in District Court asking a judge to declare the 19 condominiums nuisance properties because of the drug dealing, shootings, robberies and other crimes that occur in the area.

IN A CITY whose too-many homicides are so often the result of complex societal and criminal problems, you'd think authorities would be quick to enforce simple regulations that could help lower the body count. But you'd be wrong. A good example can be found in the city's dealings with a raucous hip-hop club called the Tunnel. Last month, a 19-year-old college student was shot dead during a robbery as he walked toward the Eutaw Street club. In April, a 19-year-old barber was gunned down in his shop after an argument with a man outside the club.

We live in a lovely area with nice homes, so why are our thoroughfares so cluttered with illegal signage? Many businesses in Towson, along York Road and Joppa Road, post plastic signs, flashing signs, vertical flags, banners, pennants, etc., for which they do not have permits. Unfortunately, a citizen complaint must be filed for each violation. Citizens can call the county at 410-887-8099 for these unattractive nuisances, but I wish that these businesses could be cited without having to call the county about each one. In the meantime, when you see an attractive business with a well-kept exterior, be sure to tell the owner that you appreciate it!

County workers boarded up a house in Deale yesterday morning after a District Court judge ruled Tuesday that it was a crack house and a nuisance, authorities said.The house is the second boarded up since Friday, and the fifth that State's Attorney Frank R. Weathersbee has taken action against under the state's nuisance abatement law. Three of the houses were demolished.Paul Alan Warren, 39, the owner of the house in the 5800 block of Swamp Circle Road, has confessed to selling crack to support his drug habit and to letting his friends use crack in his house, officials said.

Forecasters are continuing to model a passing snowfall expected Friday in the Baltimore area, and while odds of significant accumulation are decreasing, the timing could make for a messy end-of-the-week commute home. Meanwhile, a separate system could slicken Thursday morning's commute. Meteorologists have backed off predictions of a wintry mix Friday, with warm air aloft that could have brought sleet instead of snow no longer expected. Any snow that falls will be light and powdery given the frigid temperatures, said Tom Kines, a senior meteorologist with AccuWeather.com.

We live in a lovely area with nice homes, so why are our thoroughfares so cluttered with illegal signage? Many businesses in Towson, along York Road and Joppa Road, post plastic signs, flashing signs, vertical flags, banners, pennants, etc., for which they do not have permits. Unfortunately, a citizen complaint must be filed for each violation. Citizens can call the county at 410-887-8099 for these unattractive nuisances, but I wish that these businesses could be cited without having to call the county about each one. In the meantime, when you see an attractive business with a well-kept exterior, be sure to tell the owner that you appreciate it!

Recently, Baltimore County stepped up efforts to eliminate signs on lawns and poles in residential neighborhoods ("Crackdown on nuisance road signs," April 26), but what we have around Park Heights Avenue and Stevenson Road is a problem with numerous tractor-trailers parked from Friday night to Monday morning on Brooks Robinson Drive (formerly Radio Tower Drive). This road primarily serves a residential neighborhood, and anyone who wants to walk along this stretch of road must do so in traffic as the trucks occupy the shoulder.

In Rafael Medoff's recent op-ed ("The president and the Jews," April 24), he makes two basic contentions. One is that President Barack Obama regards Israel as a "nuisance. " The second is that the purveyor of that opinion, Gary Rosenblatt, editor of the Jewish Weekly, may turn out to be like Walter Cronkite in his influence on voters. Regarding the first assertion as to Mr. Obama viewing Israel as a "nuisance," here is what President Obama has done regarding it: He killed Osama bin Laden.

The signs shout advertisements from the sidewalks: $1 crabs, day care open until midnight, cherry wood furniture and fresh starts after bankruptcy. They cover telephone poles and sprout up in medians, sometimes getting swept away by wind. And they really get under some people's skin. "It irritates me to no end," said Ed Bard, president of the Rockdale Civic & Improvement Association, who called fighting illegal signs "one of my passions. " Baltimore County code enforcement officials say they are cracking down on the common nuisance.

After living here in Columbia for 34 years, I thought I had become inured to the oddities and missteps of amateur government. Well, a decorative fountain meant for children to play in the middle of Symphony Woods ("Reviews mixed for planned fountain," Feb. 2) certainly ranks up there with bad software decisions and water flumes that break down. Has anyone ever sat near that same kind of fountain now operating in Fairfax, Va.? What you see there is a constant parade of parents and children and noisy adolescents.

Advocates for the homeless fear a crackdown on nuisance crimes on downtown Baltimore's west side could worsen a "never-ending cycle" of homelessness. The city's state's attorney's office, police and the business community support a crackdown on nuisance crimes, such as public intoxication. J. Peter Sabonis, executive director of the nonprofit Homeless Persons Representation Project, and Jeff Singer, chief executive of Healthcare for the Homeless, put their concerns about the crackdown - which is to include more arrests - in a letter to State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy and Police Commissioner Edward T. Norris.

Ben Pfeffer traded his Charles Village apartment for a sleeping bag across the street from the Inner Harbor. He gave up a roof over his head to join a protest without specific goals or a clear end date. He's not even sure what would constitute a successful outcome for Occupy Baltimore, which sprang from similar protests that have swept New York and other major cities. But after a week living in McKeldin Square, Pfeffer feels part of a forming community, one centered on the basic sense that America has lost its way. "I've been generally discontented with the structure I've been living under for my entire life," said the 22-year-old, who graduated from Towson University with an anthropology degree in the spring.

That unfamiliar incoming call to your cellphone soon might be from a debt collector. Cellphones are largely off-limits to collection agencies, but proposals by the White House and Congress could change that. Supporters say regulations have not kept up with technology and the fact that many consumers have replaced traditional landlines with cellphones. But consumer advocates warn that cellphone users could be bombarded with "nuisance" calls if debt collectors gain another avenue to reach — or hound — consumers.