Worcester

Worcester County's commissioners decided yesterday to appeal a federal court ruling striking down the county's at-large voting system on racial grounds.No black person has ever been elected to the Eastern Shore county's five-member Board of County Commissioners. Civil rights lawyers hoped that record would change with U.S. District Judge Joseph H. Young's ruling Jan. 7 that the county's at-large election system violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in diluting the strength of minority voters.

Visitors to Ocean City are often struck by the contrasting fortunes of the vacant Ocean Plaza Mall on 94 t h Street and the bustle of development along U.S. 50 in West Ocean City , with its new Walmart and other big-box stores. There are a number of reasons for this, but one in particular sticks in the resort town's collective craw: double taxation. In essence, property owners in Ocean City have been subsidizing sprawl development outside town limits, a self-destructive policy that can only be described as dumb growth.

Police arrested a Baltimore County man yesterday in the killing of a Worcester County woman whose body was found in West Ocean City on Thursday night. Gregory W. Stokes, 30, of the first block of Right Elevator Drive, Middle River, was arrested in Baltimore on a warrant charging him with first-degree murder, according to state police. Stokes is charged in the death of Pamela Balk, whose body was found with a gunshot wound in Mystic Harbor in West Ocean City. Stokes was arrested just after midnight yesterday at a home in the 6200 block of Alumore Way in Southeast Baltimore.

A pilot working for an Eastern Shore company that flies advertising banners over Ocean City beaches each summer was killed Thursday after his plane crashed on a golf course in Worcester County, according to Maryland State Police. The pilot, identified by police as Garett Colona, 23, of the 5000 block of Sharptown Road in Rhodesdale, was a "super guy" beloved by all the company's other pilots, said Bob Bunting, owner of plane operator Ocean Aerial Ads Thursday afternoon. "This was one of the nicest individuals I've ever known in my life," Bunting said.

SNOW HILL -- Civil rights activists from around the state who rallied here yesterday warned Worcester County officials to change the way top officeholders are elected or face political and economic reprisals.Almost two years after seven Worcester blacks filed a lawsuit to get rid of the county's at-large election system, the costly legal battle continues despite two rulings from federal judges that white voters have an unfair advantage over minority voters.About 150 marchers vented their frustration yesterday with the county's five-member commission, which has spent more than $400,000 in legal fees to keep its election system intact.

EASTON -- Worcester County residents waiting to conduct a County Commission election that has been delayed by a legal battle over voting rights will have to wait longer.An opinion released late Friday by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., agreed with a ruling by a lower court judge that Worcester's traditional election system was unlawful.But the three-member panel ordered the matter resolved at the county level. The jurists rejected a lower court judge's imposition this summer of a new, controversial voting system, but declined to suggest what kind of system should be used.

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge and the U.S. Supreme Court acted separately yesterday to push Worcester County toward an election next fall that could lead to the first black member on the five-member Board of Commissioners.Senior U.S. District Judge Joseph H. Young of Baltimore ordered officials in the Eastern Shore county to go ahead with plans to hold an election by Nov. 7, using an unusual plan he adopted last month that will allow blacks to pool their votes behind a single candidate.Judge Young acted shortly after the Supreme Court turned aside an appeal by the county that asked the justices to allow the continued use of an at-large voting system that the judge ruled illegal in 1994.

Margaret Noland Smith Worcester, a homemaker and former laundry manager, died of complications from Alzheimer's disease April 27 at the Fairhaven Retirement Community in Sykesville, where she had lived for the past 25 years. The former Eastport resident was 90. Born Margaret Lee Noland and raised in Warrenton, Va., she was a secretary at Fauquier Laundry -- where she met and then married an owner of the family business, Stuart Archer Smith. During his military service and after his death in 1957, she ran the laundry business in Warrenton.

The death penalty trial of Roger Dale Ramsey Jr. -- charged in the contract killing of his stepmother -- will be moved at his request from Baltimore County to Worcester County, according to Baltimore County Chief Circuit Judge Edward A. DeWaters Jr.Ramsey, 19, formerly of the 300 block of Endsleigh Ave. in Middle River, is accused of paying an acquaintance $250 to kill Kimberly Sue Ramsey, his 32-year-old stepmother. Investigators said she had admonished her stepson about a car accident.She was shot seven times during a robbery Sept.

A Worcester County teenager died Sunday when his Suzuki motorcycle crashed into a minivan that was trying to make a U-turn on Solley Road in Anne Arundel County, police said. Douglas Robert Jarrell, 19, of the 3000 block of Village Trail in Snow Hill was driving north on Solley Road about 1 p.m. Sunday when he struck the Dodge minivan in front of him, police said. The crash threw Jarrell from his motorcycle and into the minivan. Jarrell suffered head, face and chest injuries and was flown to Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, police said.

A 15-year-old girl from Allegany County has died after being struck by a car Tuesday along Coastal Highway in Ocean City , police said Wednesday. The driver of the car that struck her, a 17-year-old boy from Worcester County, was not charged and was released by police at the scene. Neither have been identified due to their ages, police said. Police first responded to the intersection of Coastal Highway and 21st Street about 5:45 p.m. for reports of a pedestrian struck by a vehicle.

Edward O. "Ned" Thomas, a retired District Court and Circuit Court judge for Worcester County who was a Baltimore native, died of congestive heart failure March 20 at his home at Buckingham's Choice in Adamstown. He was 94. Raised on Englewood Road in Roland Park, he was the son of Oscar B. Thomas and Josephine Reindollar. His father was an owner of the Thomas & Thompson Co. drugstores, and as a boy, Judge Thomas worked summers at the business. He attended Roland Park Country and Roland Park Elementary schools and was a 1936 graduate of City College, where he was class valedictorian.

I am responding to your recent editorial titled, "Equity for pensions" (Jan. 9). The editorial asserts that Maryland should transfer the costs of teacher pensions from the state to its 24 local jurisdictions. As a rationale, the editorial argues that the current funding formula gives money to rich school systems while not supporting poor school systems. The premise of the editorial is that school systems which have higher teacher pay should have their local governments pay the price of higher pension contributions.

Thomas Kenny Carey Sr., a retired teacher and lacrosse coach, died of injuries sustained in a fall and complications from cancer Feb. 26 at Gilchrist Hospice Care. He was 82. Born in Baltimore, he attended Windsor Hills Elementary and Garrison Junior High schools. He was a 1946 graduate of Polytechnic Institute, where he played ice hockey. While a student at Loyola College, he married Mary Esther Carroll, whom he met at the Cahill Recreation Center near his boyhood home in Walbrook.

When are layoffs a genuine effort to streamline government and when are they an excuse to change policy in a backdoor manner? In Worcester County, home to Ocean City and some of Maryland's most valuable (and sensitive) waterfront land, it appears the latter is at work. Layoffs are uncommon in Worcester County government, but last month, a majority of county commissioners agreed to send 11 employees packing as part of a consolidation effort. All who lost their jobs in Snow Hill were employed in departments where important land use and development decisions are made.

SNOW HILL - If a tree grows in the forest but no one is around to measure it, can it be a champion? This is not one of those chin-stroking metaphysical riddles. There's an easy answer: Nope. Which is why Salisbury University ecologist Joan Maloof ventured recently into a wooded Eastern Shore swamp. Armed with a tape measure, the 52-year-old scientist was on a mission to gauge the size of a soaring black gum tree she had spotted last year. The dimensions would tell whether this tree was mighty enough to dethrone the reigning state champ black gum in Montgomery County.

Elizabeth S. Worcester, a former model and retired receptionist, died Saturday of heart failure at St. Joseph Medical Center. The former Roland Park resident was 92. Born Elizabeth Sothoron in Baltimore, she was a direct descendant of George Read, a Delaware signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Robert Oliver, the Baltimore merchant and Baltimore & Ohio Railroad executive whose 68-acre country estate became Green Mount Cemetery in 1839....

It has taken almost a million dollars, two appeals to the Supreme Court and a mountain of maps, legal briefs and ballots, but come Tuesday Worcester County voters will go to the polls to choose their county commissioners by district.The result could be the first black commissioner in the county's 253 years.The five commission races are the only ones on the ballot in this special election. The commission races were removed from last year's regularly scheduled election while Worcester fought to retain the countywide, at-large voting system it has had since before the American Revolution.

Shirley Worcester had just taken down her Christmas decorations and was carrying two bags of trash when she stopped Wednesday night on the porch of her modest waterfront house in Middle River to talk with relatives who had pulled into the driveway. As the 58-year-old grandmother chatted with her sister-in-law and brother-in-law, a boy dressed in black ran past them along narrow Whitethorn Way, her sister-in-law said yesterday. The boy fell, just as two gunshots rang out, she said. The boy got up and continued running.