Service Area

My old cell phone is too old.The main menu button is sticking, the battery doesn't last half as long as those in colleagues' newer phones, and I'm lusting after the latest models that can hold my appointment schedule.I'm even a little tempted by the possibility of e-mail and Web access, though I doubt I'll bother because of the tiny size of phone screens and the slow speed of their Internet connection.The big question is: Which phone? And along with that, which service? Some of these new phones won't work with my current provider.

A Baltimore County teen-age boy was killed last night when the car he was driving on York Road left the road and crashed into an automobile service firm in the Cockeysville business district, police said.Police said Jason Deon Wells, 16, of the 4000 block of Compass Run Lane in northern Baltimore County was driving south at high speed in the 10700 block of York Road about 9: 10 p.m. when he lost control of a 1991 Dodge Stealth and crashed into Hunt Valley Imported Auto Service.Police said Wells, who attended Calvert Hall, was pronounced dead at the scene.

IT IS CLEAR now that 6th District representatives of the Baltimore City Council didn't know what they were doing when they lobbied earlier this year to expand the service area of a medical waste incineration business. Having fought for the expansion so -- as they put it -- a lot of hospitals wouldn't have to burn their own waste and pollute the air, these same council members now say that doesn't matter. They want Phoenix Services Inc. punished for cutting 15 jobs.Sixth District council members Norman A. Handy, Edward L. Reisinger and Melvin L. Stukes said they were led to believe Phoenix would hire more South Baltimore residents if it was allowed to expand its service area.

During the last 25 years, Gene Edwards has transformed the half-acre behind his three-bedroom rancher in Eldersburg into an area that whisks visitors off into a resort-like atmosphere, giving them a sense of being on vacation."

POLICE LOG* Elkridge: 6600 block of Santa Barbara Road: Someone pried open the front door of Natural Inc. and took a safe from a desk Thursday. In the same area that night, someone broke into several vehicles and sprayed inside them with a fire extinguisher, police said.7100 block of Brookdale Drive: A white 1989 Ford Mustang was stolen from the Baltimore-Washington Auto Exchange on Wednesday.* Ellicott City: 8500 block of Route 40: Someone stole keys from the service area of Acura West and took a beige 1988 Acura Legend with Maryland tags NFN149 from the lot Thursday.

Thomson-Sun Microsystems firmThomson Consumer Electronics and Sun Microsystems Inc. said yesterday that they would form a company to sell equipment to enhance telephone and cable networks and services.Executives said they will have an advantage over competitors because, instead of individual products, they will present a menu ranging from so-called "servers" that go in a carrier's main office to set-top boxes that work on home TVs.The two companies declined to disclose financial terms or estimate when they would have products ready.

POLICE LOG* Owen Brown: 8800 block of Stanford Blvd.: A mechanic at Apple Ford discovered a dark green 1993 Ford Tempo stolen from the service area Friday. Police said he had parked the car and gone to get a part, but the car was gone when he returned. The vehicle had Maryland tags AXM080.

Carroll Dale subdivision is in Carroll County's master plan for public sewer service within six years, but that doesn't mean residents can look for public sewer service within six years. Or 10 years. Or 20."There's no real link" between the county water and sewer master plan and its budget for public water and sewer projects, Public Works Director Keith Kirschnick told a delegation from the Eldersburg area subdivision yesterday.A public hearing on the master plan also brought a request from Westminster city government for exclusion from a section of it that would allow some property owners to use "interim" private water and sewer systems where public services are available.

Ameritech, the main provider of telephone service to 12 million customers in the Midwest, made a bold proposal yesterday to end its local telephone monopoly in return for freedom to offer more lucrative long-distance and cable television services.If approved by state and federal regulators, the Ameritech plan would hasten the day when businesses and consumers in Ameritech's service area could choose the company that provides their local phone service, just as they now can decide which company provides long-distance service.

The surprise in the proposed merger of Bell Atlantic Corp. and Tele-Communications Inc. is that the deal was reached between these two giants, not that a phone company and cable TV operator decided to join forces. There have already been smaller deals between regional telephone companies -- the so-called Baby Bells, offspring of the old Ma Bell national telephone system that was dismantled in 1984 -- and cable operators.Increasingly the two sets of communications goliaths were looking to poach on each other's territory.

Transportation service available on demand Harford Transit has started a new Demand Response Service for eligible senior citizens, individuals with disabilities and low-income wage earners. The service is available from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. weekdays. The fare is $2 (Harford Transit-issued vouchers will be accepted) to take eligible participants wherever they need to go. Reservations must be made by 2 p.m. the working day before travel is planned. The service area includes parts of Aberdeen, Bel Air, Edgewood and Havre de Grace, and areas in between.

Gas crisis or no, millions of Americans are hitting the road this summer, and many will travel that magical stretch of road known as the New Jersey Turnpike, where they'll stop at its various service areas which are, well, not so magical. These are named after great Americans, for some reason, and include the Vince Lombardi Service Area, the Thomas Edison Service Area, the Grover Cleveland Service Area, the Molly Pitcher Service Area and so on. You wonder what someone like Thomas Edison would think about having a rest stop named after him. This was maybe the greatest inventor in history, the man who gave us the electric lightbulb, the phonograph and 1,000 other inventions.

Are you getting your money's worth from caller ID? Some callers can't be identified because their information is blocked or unavailable, but in other cases the callers aren't named because the customer's phone company simply doesn't want to spend the money to obtain the data. A small Boston Globe test of caller ID accuracy found several instances in which Verizon Communications and Comcast Corp. didn't provide a caller's name because they didn't want to pay the extra money. The price is minimal on a per-call basis - often a penny or less a call - but spread across a telecommunications giant's many customers, it can quickly run into the tens of millions of dollars.

Developer Donald R. Reuwer Jr. lost his bid last night to rezone a parcel at Route 99 and Marriottsville Road for commercial development, a relief for neighbors who feared a domino effect of industry heading westward from the site. The Howard County Zoning Board, made up of the five County Council members, didn't even need to take a vote on the request because Reuwer had not convinced a majority of the panel that it had acted in error when it originally zoned the site. The parcel in question isn't large - just over 2 acres - but it attracted intense attention from residents who do not want gas stations, office buildings and stores along Route 99. "Change begets change," said Jack Butler, a Marriottsville resident who lives less than a mile from the site.

A retirement community proposed for the junction of Route 144 and Marriottsville Road would rely on a "multi-user" septic system that would be the largest of its kind in Howard County, an environmental engineer said last night. Testifying for the developers, engineer Robert W. Cheesley told the county's Board of Appeals that the system would work fine, despite county Health Department warnings that a large septic system would have "extreme difficulty" at the site. "I've been to the site and looked at the soils, and it will support a septic system," Cheesley said.

In an early test of the principles laid out in Howard County's new general plan, a developer is proposing senior housing at the intersection of Marriottsville Road and Route 144 that, if approved, could result in the expansion of the county's public sewer and water area. Columbia-based Brantly Development Corp. has applied to build 143 senior housing units on 73 acres at the northeast corner of the Marriottsville juncture - 71 of them single-family detached homes and 72 attached homes with four units per building.

A late afternoon storm with gusting winds left about 1,200 Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. customers without power last night. "This is typical damage for a storm of this nature," said Darcel Kimble, a spokeswoman for BGE. Several trees were reported uprooted in southern Baltimore, including one that fell onto an unoccupied car. Kimble said the outages were scattered throughout the service area, however. All service was to be restored by 10 last night.

Anti-growth activists in Howard County can breathe a sigh of relief. Joseph W. Rutter Jr., director of the county's Department of Planning and Zoning, says the agency is no longer considering expanding the county's public sewer and water service, which marks the boundary between rural western Howard and the not-so-rural eastern part. "There will not be a proposal to expand the planned service area into the west for the purposes of accommodating additional growth," he said. Because it is more expensive to develop land not connected to public sewer and water, Rutter's announcement is considered good news for those who want to prevent sprawl from engulfing farms and fields in western Howard.

My old cell phone is too old.The main menu button is sticking, the battery doesn't last half as long as those in colleagues' newer phones, and I'm lusting after the latest models that can hold my appointment schedule.I'm even a little tempted by the possibility of e-mail and Web access, though I doubt I'll bother because of the tiny size of phone screens and the slow speed of their Internet connection.The big question is: Which phone? And along with that, which service? Some of these new phones won't work with my current provider.

A Baltimore County teen-age boy was killed last night when the car he was driving on York Road left the road and crashed into an automobile service firm in the Cockeysville business district, police said.Police said Jason Deon Wells, 16, of the 4000 block of Compass Run Lane in northern Baltimore County was driving south at high speed in the 10700 block of York Road about 9: 10 p.m. when he lost control of a 1991 Dodge Stealth and crashed into Hunt Valley Imported Auto Service.Police said Wells, who attended Calvert Hall, was pronounced dead at the scene.