Village Officials

A board member in Columbia's Wilde Lake village was ousted from office last month, and the board is now accepting applications to fill the vacant seat, village officials said yesterday.Kwabena Sabby, a board member who had been inexplicably absent from six consecutive meetings, was voted out of the office he had held since May, said Bernice Kish, village manager.Sabby failed to notify the five-member board of his whereabouts, did not return repeated phone calls and has yet to contact the board, Kish said.

Yard-of-the-month awards are supposed to be a pat on the back for homeowners who keep their places extra spiffy. In Columbia, the honor can feel more like a slap on the wrist. When officials in Kings Contrivance set out to recognize some of its suburban showplaces, they discovered that all the nominees had skirted the village's strict housing rules. One nominee had hung a baby swing from a tree without permission. Another had illicitly installed a brass kick plate on the front door, as well as a fountain, trellis and birdbath.

Concerned about rising energy costs, Columbia village officials are urging the Columbia Association board to consider an energy contingency fund and other possible solutions as it moves toward a final vote on the association's proposed 2007 and 2008 fiscal year budgets next month. "We don't have an extravagant budget," Bill Woodcock, chairman of the Oakland Mills Village Board, said of his village's finances. "It's just enough to do what we have to do, and utilities are a major concern in the budget.

Leaders in four Columbia villages are worried about the fate of their community shopping centers because the Rouse Co. has requested paperwork normally needed for a sale. Rouse has asked for "certificates of compliance" for the village centers it owns in Long Reach, Oakland Mills, Wilde Lake and Harper's Choice, village officials said yesterday. The certificates, which confirm that properties meet local architectural standards, are needed before a sale or refinancing can take place. Alton J. Scavo, a Rouse senior vice president, said earlier this week that the centers had not been sold.

Say goodbye to the weathered "space for lease" sign nailed to a piece of plywood on the former M&T Bank building in the Oakland Mills Village Center. Village officials said the brick building, which has been vacant since 2002, will soon be a coffee and doughnut shop, the newest addition to the once struggling village center. The announcement of the new business, which village officials said could open in a few months, follows news this summer that the longtime vacant property of a former Exxon station would be developed into an office complex.

After 4-year-old Fahad Islam was injured by a stray bullet as he sat coloring inside his home near Long Reach Village Center early this year, Howard County Police promised residents plans to make the area safer. But village officials remain concerned about loitering, a chronic complaint around the village center, despite assurances from police that overall crime in Long Reach remains under control. "What people are saying is that between the hours of 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. there are activities in the village center parking lot," Bridget R. Mugane, a village board member, told acting police Chief William McMahon after being updated on the crime situation this week.

Community leaders hope to heal the strained relationship between the Columbia Association and its 10 villages by spelling out who does what for Columbia's 87,000 residents. A task force that spent the past year trying to define the association-village relationship presented its findings last night to the Columbia Council in the form of a 29-page report called "Administering the New Town of Columbia: A Cooperative Endeavor." If it is accepted by the villages and the council, the report will serve as the blueprint for how and why the entities should work together.

Dorsey's Search village is creating a nonprofit environmental foundation that would use donations to improve and maintain the community's abundant natural resources and open-space areas.Donations from individuals or businesses would be used for planting and landscaping projects, shoring up eroding stream banks, creating recreational opportunities, developing environmental education activities and maintaining work that has been done, said village board member Dan Bucks, who came up with the idea.

The chairman of the Long Reach Village Board has abruptly quit the panel that oversees Columbia's largest village. Henry F. Dagenais, who served on the board for six years and was chairman for five, declined to say yesterday why he stepped down. "It's a personal thing," said Dagenais, 70, a decorated Army colonel who served in Korea and Vietnam. "It's just time to go, time to move on." Dagenais said that in a resignation letter sent to village officials Wednesday, he "gave a little bit of a reason, but that's between me and the board and the village manager."