Residents

The Carroll County Sheriff's Office said Monday that county residents have been hit with a series of suspicious telephone calls in which the caller claims that he's holding a family member captive until an amount - between several hundred and several thousand dollars - is paid because of "damages. " According to information from the Sheriff's Office, suspicious telephone calls are reported to have also been made to Baltimore County and Baltimore City residents. In Carroll County, a Hampstead man and a Mount Airy man each reported receiving a call where the male caller claimed to have been involved in a motor vehicle accident with a member of the victim's immediate family, with the caller citing the correct name of the family member, police said.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation's recently released 2012 State of the Bay Report tells us the health of the Chesapeake Bay has improved 14 percent since 2008. But that doesn't tell the whole story. Throughout Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, we hear about local governments, businesses and citizens rolling up their sleeves to reduce pollution from all sectors: agriculture, sewage treatment plants, and urban and suburban runoff. They are working to restore local rivers and streams.

Standing amid his $44 million refurbished textile mill, now nearing completion, developer and one-time mayoral candidate David Tufaro observed a bird wading in the Jones Falls nearby. "That's our great blue heron," Tufaro said. Water birds fly up and down the Jones Falls between the two sides of the mill, which straddles the stream. So he insisted that an image of one be included on the rooftop sign that faces Interstate 83, announcing the presence of the commercial-residential complex called Mill No. 1. When residents begin moving into the converted mill early next month, the valley between the Baltimore neighborhoods of Woodberry and Hampden will shift from being a predominantly industrial area to being an extension of the surrounding neighborhoods.

Multiple residents in Anne Arundel County were displaced Thursday evening after fires blazed through their homes in separate incidents. Fire officials first responded to the 6400 block of Lamplighter Ridge in Glen Burnie around 9:45 p.m. where a two-story townhome was ablaze. The 43 firefighters at the scene had situation under control within an hour, but not before three homes could endure $215,000 in damages, according to fire officials. Six people who were displaced in the event are now being assisted by the American Red Cross while a firefighter and 60-year-old male were treated for minor injuries at the Baltimore Washington Medical Center, officials said.

With the city putting together a plan for adding 10,000 families to Baltimore, this is a good time for interested Baltimoreans to weigh in. I'm told that the plan will be driven by the best possible data - a great place to start. But the plan needs to address a critical question: Who is going to want to live here during the next decade? Some of the trends that are driving Baltimore's nascent revival will prove almost impossible to determine based on the opinions of the city's current population, many of whom live here because of ties to family and friends or because housing is relatively affordable, not because they particularly want to live in a city.

America is in the midst of an affordable housing crisis - Baltimore, too. Ten million families are paying more than 50 percent of their monthly income on rent, a severe cost burden that leaves little for food and other necessities. Over 32,000 applicants (and counting) are on the Housing Authority of Baltimore City's waiting lists. Public housing authorities can only do so much. With limited, dwindling public resources, private dollars are needed now more than ever to help create affordable housing.

The United Way of Central Maryland's Access to Healthy Food Initiative distributed more than 2.8 million pounds of groceries - enough to fill 56 tractor trailers - to low-income individuals and families, the organization announced Tuesday. Businesses, organizations and individuals, including 89 healthy food drives across the region hosted by Constellation Energy, Johns Hopkins institutions, LifeBridge Health and others, made contributions. The amount of food is nearly double the initiative's first-year goal set when it kicked off in 2011.

The bad news is that the smaller of the two lakes that make up Laurel Lakes is almost filled in with trees, bushes, cattails and other shrubbery. Only a small portion of that upper lake, near Oxford Street, has a section of water visible from the decks of the surrounding town houses along its banks. The good news is that some time next year, Prince George's County officials, who have authority over the water in the lakes, plan to dredge the upper lake, something many local residents have been calling for over the past 10 years.

Margaret C. Doyle, a retired public school English teacher and poet who later taught for many years at the Renaissance Institute, died Thursday from complications following surgery at Baltimore Washington Medical Center. The former longtime Pikesville resident was 85. "Margaret was a magnificent woman. She was brilliant and loving," said Jim Holechek, a retired Baltimore public relations executive and author. "Her husband was an artist and she was a poet, and it was always wonderful to interface with her. She was a very sensitive person and able to express herself very well.

Clarksville resident Tatyana McFadden won the women's wheelchair race in the London Marathon on Sunday, six days after her win in the Boston Marathon. "The race is definitely dedicated to Boston and we had huge support from London, which was amazing," McFadden said during the post-race news conference. "Just the support that we're getting around the world means a lot, especially back in Boston and to the athletes. " McFadden, whose 1:46.02 time was a record mark for London, won the Boston Marathon wheelchair event Monday.