Quality Of Life

Throughout the County Council session, Veronica "Roni" L. Chenowith's view of the audience was impeded by the foot-high stack of e-mails topped with a paper weight. Those messages, as well as more than 100 phone calls in the past three weeks, prompted the councilwoman to rethink her proposed bill restricting the use of all-terrain vehicles. At the end of the session Tuesday, Chenowith, the longest-serving member of the current council, announced that she was withdrawing the measure before it comes to public hearing.

CUMBERLAND -- Home prices in the Baltimore metro area? Up 5 percent. In the Washington area? Barely budging. In San Diego, Tampa, Las Vegas and several dozen other metros areas? Down, down, down. But in this corner of Appalachia - in this long-struggling, geographically isolated metro area - home prices have just shot up 17 percent. The National Association of Realtors, which calculated the change in median price for single-family homes sold in the first quarter of the year vs. the same period last year, says the Cumberland increase topped all other metro areas in the nation.

Baltimore needs a town meeting, and it's getting one this Saturday from noon until 5 p.m. at the Baltimore Convention Center. You might want to stop by and bring your sense of future with you. What comes out of this town meeting will go a long way toward making Baltimore a better city, particularly for its children. The event is called the Opportunity Summit, and it presents a chance for the citizens of all social classes to have a say in where this city goes in the next 10 years. Baltimoreans will pick a new mayor in September, but Saturday's summit might be just as important because it will set priorities that the next mayor won't be able to ignore.

LAS VEGAS -- The king of Las Vegas sat in his throne, a wooden and leather replica of one that belonged to a mid-19th-century Bavarian king. Resting his hand on the lion's head carved into its arm, Mayor Oscar Goodman talked of his empire's poorest. "I love the homeless," said Goodman, who once proposed shipping them to an abandoned prison 30 miles away. "Unfortunately," the former Mafia defense lawyer said, "they're really interfering with the quality of life." In this land of glitzy casinos and quick riches, Las Vegas is struggling to solve its most unglamorous problem once and for all. Under Goodman, the city has tried what some say are among the country's harshest tactics against the homeless, including a short-lived city ordinance that outlawed feeding them in parks.

Paul's Place Outreach Center is a wide-ranging community center in Southwest Baltimore's Pigtown neighborhood. The center has a dining room where lunch is served five days a week. Paul's Place also includes a clothing center, literacy program and computer lab, as well as programs for children. The mission of Paul's Place is to improve the quality of life in Southwest Baltimore, according center's Web site. A quote in the dining room reads, "Hope, personal dignity and growth in a welcoming, safe and respectful environment."

The candidate backed by Howard County's biggest slow-growth advocates may have taken an election thumping Tuesday, but those pushing the issue are adaptable - and say it isn't going away. "I think it was just a Democratic sweep, but the growth issue, I think, is still alive," said Angela Beltram, the former county councilwoman and Democrat who led a grass-roots revolt based on anger about a rezoning bill that County Executive-elect Ken Ulman supported. Beltram, like others upset with council Democrats, backed Republican Council Chairman Christopher J. Merdon for county executive because he stressed his vote against the contested "Comp Lite" bill and advocated a laundry list of slow-growth measures during his campaign.

In Howard County's hotly contested campaign for county executive, image may be everything. That is why one candidate wants to be seen as the champion for residents resentful of congestion, while another portrays himself as a battler for maintaining the county's top-flight public services. The flip side is their efforts to define each other in negative ways with images such as the developers' best friend or the one who cuts budgets for schools, libraries, parks and public safety. "Growth and development are the No. 1 issue," said County Council Chairman Christopher J. Merdon, the Republican nominee for executive who is trying to capitalize on his vote against the unpopular Comp Lite rezoning bill.

About 150 residents of the neighborhoods near Patterson Park voiced concern at a community meeting last night about drug activity, prostitution and other crimes that they say persist, while police officials pointed to decreases in crime. The turnout was due, in part, to the shooting Thursday of Baltimore police Officer Robert G. Cirello in Patterson Park. A four-year veteran of the department, Cirello, was struck in the head and then shot by a male assailant who has not been apprehended.

CASCO BAY, Maine -- It's 8 a.m. and my neighbor, Bob Putnam, has been at work for hours by the time he eases the lobster boat up to the dock to take this slacker on board. For two decades, my neighbor has brought lobsters to our kitchen and tolerantly discussed my pet theory of lobster "behavior modification." Lobsters are not just "caught," after all. They're fed and ranched over a bay floor nearly covered with traps. They walk in and out of the traps in search of their free lunch. They are hauled up and thrown back for about seven years until they reach legal size and are sent to market.

A call to share ideas on safety, quality of life Recently, the press reported on a local deadly shooting that resulted in the emergency room of the Howard County General Hospital getting shut down for two hours because an unruly group of over 20 persons (friends of a deceased individual at the hospital) disrupted emergency room services. Also recently, there was an armed robbery at a local bank in which Dr. C. Vernon Gray, prominent educator and political leader, and others were ordered to lie on the floor.