The Baltimore City Council has 14 members, each representing a geographic district, with one city council president elected at-large. Ballot Question H asks voters if they think the number of members should be eight.

The Baltimore City Council costs taxpayers about $10.5 million per year out of the city’s $3.4 billion budget. That supports a staff of about 80 people; including people who answer phones, attend community meetings, research and write legislation. Then of course there’s the council people themselves.

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.

The Clerk for the Baltimore City Circuit Court is demanding more information about underground fires that disrupted numerous services downtown last week.

Circuit Court Clerk Xavier Conaway is asking the Public Service Commission to open an independent investigation into the fire that blazed beneath Charles Street for days.

That fire damaged businesses, caused power and internet outages and forced the Elijah E. Cummings and Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr. courthouses, along with the Juvenile Justice Center, to close for an entire day.

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.

A cage filled with empty-looking oyster shells sits in front of Kellie Fiala on the Canton Waterfront promenade. A crowd of eager high school students from the Baltimore Lab School gather around her as she lifts up a shell for all to see.

“Raise your hand if you know what a baby oyster is called?” she asks.

“Spat!” yells a student.

“Spat. I love it,” Fiala, who works on oyster restoration with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, nods enthusiastically as she continues. “So there are thousands of spat — baby oysters — on these oyster shells.”

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.

Jason Billingsley, 33, pleaded guilty to murdering tech entrepreneur Pava LaPere Friday morning in Baltimore City Circuit Court.

It comes days after he pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of April Hurley, a West Baltimore woman, and her partner in a separate home invasion case. Friday’s guilty plea was expected as part of a plea agreement for the two cases.

The crimes committed by Billingsley have already inspired legislative change in Maryland.

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.

Baltimore City civil rights leaders and labor unions rallied outside the Cherry Hill Reedbird sanitation yard on Wednesday, demanding further accountability from the city’s Department of Public Works.

The rally came nearly four weeks after Ronald Silver II died of heat exhaustion while collecting city trash on a day the heat index hovered around 105 degrees. His death came weeks after a series of investigative reports from the Baltimore City Office of the Inspector General revealed “subhuman” conditions across agency facilities, especially at Reedbird, including a lack of air conditioning and accessible fluids like water and Gatorade.

“Accountability means many things, and that includes the termination and or reassignment of persons who were complicit, who had a fundamental obligation to supervise… to implement change, and were derelict in their duties,” explained Linda Batts, a retired federal employee who also worked briefly doing equity work for DPW.

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.

Baltimore City’s Department of Public Works is preparing for a possible pause in trash, recycling, and mechanical street sweeping Wednesday, as the National Weather Service predicts that the heat index could exceed 96 degrees.

The announcement comes less than a month after sanitation worker Ronald Silver II died of heat exhaustion while collecting the city’s trash. During an hours-long hearing before the City Council last week, sanitation workers condemned DPW leaders for being reactive when it comes to worker safety. Before Silver died, the Baltimore City Office of the Inspector General released a series of investigative reports highlighting unsafe conditions for DPW workers. The reports found workers lack adequate access to air conditioning and fluids, like water and Gatorade, at a number of DPW facilities, including the one where Silver worked.

Read more at WYPR.

Frustrated Baltimore city councilmembers got few answers during a Thursday night hearing as to why broken facilities and a toxic culture of bullying by management have been allowed to continue at the Department of Public Works for so long.

Ronald Silver II, 36, died of heat exhaustion while collecting trash on August 2nd, a day when the heat index reached 105 degrees. His mother Faith Johnson, barely held back tears as she remembered her son “I wake up every day still at 4:30 in the morning, expecting him to greet me, as he did every morning before he went to work picking up trash to provide for his family. He was our provider and our protector, and he is gone,” she said.

Silver had allegedly complained of pain for hours before he died.

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.

A few years back, things weren’t always going so great for the refuse and recycling workers in the City of Rockville, the seat of Montgomery County, the largest county in Maryland.

Back in the late 2010’s Jamie Sydykov, the Rockville Safety and Risk Manager, remembers the heat was becoming a big problem.

“There’d be often times where someone gets a call over dispatch that someone’s in heat stress, and then we’re responding either by calling 911, or responding with our crew supervisors,” Sydykov recalled.

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.

Large rental buildings with 20 units or more with a constant history of 311 calls and city housing violations could find themselves on a type of public “naughty” list kept by the city council.

As part of a bill advanced by the Economic and Community Development committee on Tuesday, properties on that list could trigger a series of inspections from the housing department that could result in a loss of licensure if not corrected.

Bill sponsor Councilman Zeke Cohen introduced the legislation, known as the Strengthening Renters’ Safety Act, last February — in part as a response to conditions he saw in senior buildings throughout the city as he worked to create the Office of Aging.

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.

Ronald Silver II would wake up early every morning to provide for his family before his family was fully awake to go out and complete his route as a Baltimore City sanitation worker. When he came home, he stayed busy; whether that was attending his kids’ activities or re-organizing his mother’s home.

That’s how his family remembered him in a press conference held two weeks after his death.

On August 2nd, Silver, 36, died of heat sickness after working his trash collection route when Baltimore City was under a Code Red heat index. His death, which his family has called “entirely preventable”, is currently under investigation by the Maryland Occupational Safety and Health and the Baltimore Police Department.

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.

The family of a Baltimore sanitation worker who died of heat stroke earlier this month is demanding accountability from City Hall and calling on other workers to share their stories.

Ronald Silver II, 36 years old, died on August 2nd of hyperthermia, i.e. heat sickness. He worked the trash and recycling route, literally hauling tons of trash while traveling about the city. On the day he died, Baltimore City had issued a Code Red heat advisory, meaning temperatures were at or expected to be 105 degrees.

“Ronald was the backbone and heartbeat of our family, and he was taken from us long before his time in what was a completely preventable death,” said Renee Meredith, an aunt of Silver’s and the only relative to speak publicly during the press conference.

Silver’s five children stood in front of their other relatives, all wearing shirts emblazoned with family pictures of their now-deceased father.

Through their lawyer, Thiru Vignarajah, Silver’s family is demanding that the Baltimore City Council hold immediate investigative hearings on Silver’s death. The family also demands direct “real time” updates straight from City Hall into Silver’s investigation – not secondhand reports filtered through the media.

They want that to happen immediately.

“A statewide investigation is a wonderful step in the right direction for the workers who are going to be toiling in the hot summer heat next summer, but it’s August. It’s hot today. It’s going to be hot this week,” said Vignarajah, a former state deputy attorney general and four-time citywide candidate for elected office. “Those investigative hearings need to happen this week or next week. They don’t do our workers any good if we do them in the dead of winter.”

“Ronnie was not just a sanitation worker,” said Vignarajah, calling Silver’s death “preventable.”

“He was also a son, brother, cousin, nephew, fiancée, and father to five beautiful children.”

Litigation against the city is on the table, Viganarajah confirmed, although no suits have been filed at this time. Right now, he said the priority is accountability and answers from the city and its public works department.

Read more at WYPR

When Baltimore City solid waste worker Ronald Silver II died of heat stroke on August 2nd, his death shined a light on the dangers of working in extreme heat– an event that is becoming more common as global temperatures continue to break records.

There is no federal heat standard set by the Occupational Safety Health Administration, leaving states like Maryland to create occupational heat regulations of their own.

Widely considered to be one of the most comprehensive standards to hit the books, Maryland’s proposal is set to become law within months.

Read more at WYPR.

Applications for environmental health grants are now open for residents in greater Curtis Bay and communities along the Patapsco River as part of collective damages in two recent legal challenges.

When Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown fined medical incinerator Curtis Bay Energy $1.75 million for failing to properly dispose of waste and biohazards, $750,000 of that was set aside to support the residents of Curtis Bay via grants. Brown tasked Chesapeake Bay Trust with administering that funding.

Since the penalties were enacted in the fall of 2023, the CBT has held meetings with Curtis Bay residents to better understand the community’s needs, said Kathy Somoza, a program manager with the organization.

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.

The beaming yellow face of Mr. Peanut greets visitors outside of the otherwise prim and stately historic Governor Calvert House.

“He’s cool, he’s dapper, he’s, need I say, sexy?” saidScott Schmitz, the president of the Peanut Pals Club, a group dedicated to the monocled mascot of Planters peanuts, during their annual meeting in Annapolis over the weekend.

By their own admission, these are the legume’s most “die hard” fans; if it’s related to Mr. Peanut, they either have it or they want it. Collectors, most of them grey-haired retirees from across the country, sat at tables showing off their wares — like Mr. Peanut purses, paint kits, even an 80 year old candy bar wrapper preserved and valued at $1,000 dollars.

Tony Scola’s first experience with Mr. Peanut wasn’t actually a good one. He was a baby on the Atlantic City boardwalk when a costumed Mr. Peanut appeared.

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.

Fat mollusks, rockfish and even parasites can be found thriving at oyster sanctuaries in three Chesapeake Bay tributaries, leading scientists to believe that current oyster restoration techniques are working.

Those findings are detailed in a newly released study from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill which found more wildlife diversity at sanctuaries than nearby unprotected harvest sites.

One indication of that — two native parasites: the boring sponge and mud blister worm.

They win their names easily enough. The boring sponge drills or “bores” through the shell to make a home while the mud blister worm burrows into the inner shell causing the oyster to form darkened, muddy-looking patches around the worm in self-defense.

Read more (and listen) at WYPR.