Arson & Homicide Suspected in QAC

An 82-year-old man has been charged with beating to death his 82-year-old wife and then setting fire to their home in Stevensville, according to State Police.

Charged in a warrant with first-degree murder, arson and assault : Thomas Scherer of Oxbow Drive in Stevensville.

The victim was identified as Magda Sherer, found dead Thursday in a chair in the master bedroom of the family’s one-story home, after the Centreville Barracks got a call from a neighbor reporting a possible assault and house fire.

“She appeared to have blunt force trauma injuries to the bank of her head,” State Police reported.

When troopers and fire department personnel arrived they found the house ablaze.

Emergency personnel entered the home, found Scherer, carried her outside and tried to resuscitate her.  She was pronounced dead in her yard.

“The preliminary investigation indicates that two of the four residents were home during the time of the incident,” says the official report.

Officers said that when they arrived on the scene, “Thomas Scherer was standing outside of the burning home.”

He was taken to Easton Memorial Hospital “for precautionary reasons”  and kept under guard. State police said the charges would be served on Scherer after his release from the hospital.

KC Camp Gets Fed Stimulus

Camp Fairlee Manor, which serves children and adults with a range of disabilities, is getting $115,000 in federal stimulus money to build a new medical facility on its Kent County site.

The grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s rural development program was announced Thursday by Senators Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski and Rep. Frank Kratovil (all D-Md.).

The funds will be used by Easter Seals Delaware and Maryland’s Eastern Shore to build a new health center at the camp that replaces the current building which is aging, in disrepair and has non-functional restroom facilities.

The construction also will create a central location for Easter Seals to provide medical services for youth and adults with disibilities.

Camp Fairlee has been in existence for more than 50 years, providing summer camp and weekend respites. It provides 24-hour nursing staff with a doctor on-call at all times.

The health center at the camp is the central location for medication storage – critical because more than 90 percent of participants require medication.

In announcing the grant, Kratovil said, “Recovery funds are being put to good use all over the Eastern Shore, putting people to work and rebuilding our local infrastructure while easing the financial burdens on our already cash-strapped state and local municipalities.”

Mikulski said, “This is about creating jobs and providing essential community services in rural Kent County.”

Cardin said, “Camp Fairlee provides an important service for families who have loved ones with disabilities.” He added that funding will translate into local jobs and provide up-to-date medical care for Kent County residents who depend on the camp for services.

Hobbling a Mile in Her Shoes

One thing few anticipate when a high-heeled shoe is slipped off at the end of an evening’s adventure: there are hairs bristling all across the top the foot.

Even fewer would expect to see something like 100 such feet encased in red spiked heels to come hobbling down Washington Avenue at rush hour on Wednesday.

Men in high heels, maybe 50 of them.

There are Cecil County plowmen and Church Hill deacons, unaccustomed to certain ways hereabouts, who had to have witnessed it passing by on 213 and must have arrived home, saying, “Hon, that Washington College, I just don’t know . . .”  And, “That Marty Stetson, didn’t he start out a State Trooper?”

What it was: “Walk a Mile In Her Shoes” — an event that took WC athletes and fraternity members,  and maybe half a dozen male community leaders of Chestertown on a high-heeled walk from the center of campus to Fountain Park. They were followed by a vast crowd of dozens — girlfriends, just friends and, conspicuously in one case, but more on this later, a wife.

The idea was to draw attention to and raise sensitivities about rape, sexual abuse and gender violence.

And it did. Though, and not to make light of the seriousness of the message, most individual entrants were plainly thinking, at the end, of spike-heeled assault on feet.

The naked look of the male foot wasn’t even the ugliest part of it. There was the walking itself, which isn’t fit for description in a family publication, or even medical journals. There were the “skraak, skraak, skraak” sounds of every step of every foot as each pointy heel came in contact with the sidewalk. Hideous.

The walk went faster than organizers expected, done in half an hour.

Among the first finishers no arch or bunion was older than 20 years. Though, not far back in the pack, with a bunch more decades on his feet, was Humane Society Director Ed Birkmire.

And, let the record show that Town Councilman Marty Stetson did not finish the event on crutches. No, he began it, and he went the whole way, supported by crutches.

Also, and some athletic commission should look into this, Stetson had close at his side for most of the course his personal trainer, dietician, shoe consultant and wife, which are all the same. But yet, when he approached the finish line and the cameras of the entire Chestertown press corps, he walked across without crutches, which he held aloft as if he didn’t need them — and she was nowhere to be seen!  As if he’d done it unassisted, hah!

What’s more, Mayor Margo Bailey walked all the way with the suffering guys.

In flats.

Bay’s Crab Population Soars

The Chesapeake Bay’s blue crab population has jumped by 60 percent over last year  — to an estimated 658 million – showing remarkable growth for two straight years.

The Department of Natural Resources announced the figures today, attributing it to conservation measures put in place by Maryland and Virginia, and said the result is the highest population of blue crabs since 1997.

Last year the annual Bay-wide winter dredge survey estimated that 400 million crabs had overwintered in the Chesapeake.

Gov. Martin O’Malley, speaking from the Crab Deck at Fisherman’s Inn in Kent Narrows, attributed the resurgent crab population to measures that reduced harvest pressure on female crabs by 34 percent.

“We can see firsthand what progress looks and feels like on the Chesapeake Bay,” O’Malley said.

“While we are making progress, our work is not done and we are committed to working with our partners to achieve our ultimate goal of a self-sustaining fishery. . .”

The conservation mandates of 2008 resulted in a large increase in the number of adult crabs in the Bay and that carried over into a healthy spawn, DNR reported.

Crab reproduction this year was the sixth highest in the 21-year survey.

Last year the Bay-wide harvest of crabs neared 54 million pounds. That equates to approximately 43 percent of the population, which is below the target harvest level of 46 percent.

“Watermen actually harvested more crabs this past season than in 7 of the past 10 years,” DNR stated, “confirming the long-held belief that a healthy harvesting industry can coexist with regulations that protect . . .the blue crab population.”

DNR Secretary John Griffin said, “This abundance represents a terrific opportunity for commercial and recreational crabbers to realize an increased catch.”

In 2008 O’Malley asked the U.S. Department of Commerce to declare the Bay’s crab fishery a federal disaster due to the historically low crab population. The state’s congressional delegation secured $15 million in disaster funds.

The money has been spent on a variety of efforts including buying back more than 600 limited commercial crab catcher licenses, electronic reporting and restoration work being conducted by approximately 900 Maryland watermen.

In one project, watermen removed nearly 8,000 abandoned crab pots or pot fragments from state waterways in February and March of this year.

Cruise Ships Are Chestertown Bound

A  three-decked, 210-foot-long luxury cruise ship carrying nearly a hundred well-heeled guests will be coming regularly to Chestertown beginning in late spring.

According to its website, American Cruise Lines is making Chestertown a regular port of call for its ship “American Spirit” on cruises from Philadelphia down the Chesapeake Bay to Alexandria.

The vessel, which the line terms a “small ship,” will be coming six times this year and making 12 visits next year, carrying up to 93 guests per trip, each of whom will be paying from $3,000 to $5,000 for a six-night voyage and up to $11,665 for a 14-night cruise.

The Downtown Chestertown Association and the Kent County tourism office are, obviously, delighted with the news about all those folks with such deep pockets to come strolling around town.

But the question for Chestertown is: Where are they going to park that big thing?

Town Manager Bill Ingersoll is scrambling around for engineering reports that would show whether the town dock it manages in conjunction with Sultana Projects and Echo Hill Outdoor School is sturdy enough for a ship that size to tie up.

Ingersoll recalls that when the dock was built they had to use 65-foot-long pilings because “the bottom there is like Jello.” A problem in learning the tolerances is that the engineer who designed the dock has since died. Ingersoll thinks a better docking site might be the county’s at the foot of High Street, but he’s been told it may be too shallow because of silting. That suggests negotiations with the county for some regular dredging to maintain it.

Another option may be the large floating docks at Chesapeake Landing. True, that’s private property, but some speculate the developers might welcome cruise ships while units are still being sold. Of course, tenders could be used if the ship has to anchor in the channel.

American Cruise Lines is clearly confident the problem can be worked out. It is already taking reservations for the cruises coming here, advertising that it offers “oversized staterooms, most with private balconies” and “wireless internet access shipwide” and “hairdryers in all staterooms.”

Its cruise, the line boasts,  ”brings passengers to some of the most fascinating places in America.”

And in Chestertown, it promises, “You will also find a delightful Farmers Market along Fountain Park as well as a dozen or more art galleries located throughout the city.”

Really.

Legislators Wind Up Work

ANNAPOLIS – Budget woes, sex offenders, same-sex marriage, cell-phone use while driving and medical marijuana were just some of the issues that dominated the General Assembly’s closing legislative session.

Debate over these issues will likely carry on into this fall’s elections, including the rematch between incumbent Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley and former Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich. O’Malley unseated Ehrlich in 2006.

O’Malley praised what he called the collegial and cooperative tone of the session at a bill-signing Tuesday.

Senate President Thomas V. “Mike” Miller Jr., D-Calvert, said the state was still a long way from a full economic recovery. “We made great steps (this year),” Miller said. “But we have more strides to make before we get the job done.”

Absent from last-minute debate was the state’s $13.2 billion operating budget, which the House and Senate had each passed by Saturday. Last year, the budget was not resolved until the last day of the session.

The fiscal year 2011 budget adopted by the legislature is fundamentally unchanged from what O’Malley proposed in January. Legislators made few cuts and maintained the governor’s extensive use of accounting mechanisms to close a $2 billion shortfall.

Republicans blasted the budget for not closing a projected, long-term multibillion dollar gap between revenues and expenditures, accusing Democrats of refusing to make tough but necessary cuts in an election year and setting the stage for future tax increases.

“We didn’t go nearly far enough in solving Maryland’s overspending,” House Minority Leader Anthony J. O’Donnell, R-Calvert, said Tuesday. “We borrowed a lot of money from the federal government and a lot of other one-time sources that will run out next year.”

Democrats countered that O’Malley’s series of fund transfers will help Maryland maintain services until the economy recovers. They also pointed to hundreds of millions of dollars in budget cuts — including several dozen state employee layoffs — and some measures taken to address the state’s structural deficit.

Democrats further cited the state’s retained AAA bond rating — announced in February — as evidence that Maryland has continued to be fiscally prudent.

In addition to passing the budget, lawmakers tightened laws concerning sex offenders after the December kidnapping and death of an 11-year-old girl on the Eastern Shore.

A series of bills increasing sentences and supervision for sex offenders passed with strong bipartisan support, with legislators approving the final details Monday. Changes included tripling the minimum sentences for some offenses against minors to 15 years, and requiring lifetime monitoring of violent and repeat offenders.

Another much-publicized issue was same-sex marriage.

Last month, Delegate Don Dwyer, R-Anne Arundel, brought impeachment charges against Attorney General Douglas Gansler on the House floor, citing “willful neglect of duty” by Gansler in issuing an opinion that Maryland should recognize same-sex marriages performed outside the state.

After some floor debate on rules and procedure, the House voted to uphold a decision by Busch to send the impeachment issue to the Judiciary Committee, which roundly rejected the motion for impeachment.

The General Assembly expanded on last year’s texting-while-driving ban to include any use of a hand-held cell phone. Motorists cannot be pulled over only for using phones, but cell phone users who are stopped for other offenses could face an extra $40 fine. The ban goes into effect Oct. 1.

As federal lawmakers worked to pass President Obama’s health care overhaul, Maryland lawmakers were making changes to the state’s health care policies.

The legislature established civil penalties for filing false health claims. Lawmakers say the legislation, which failed during last year’s session, will help the state regain millions of dollars in Medicaid funds from false claims.

A bill legalizing marijuana use for medicinal purposes passed in the Senate but didn’t make it out of committee in the House.

“The House was being a ‘fraidy-cat about taking up medical marijuana,” said Sen. Jamie Raskin, D-Montgomery, a co-sponsor of the bill. “The Senate courageously took up the bill.”

Advocates for the disabled were disappointed with the defeat of a proposed dime-a-drink alcohol tax. The money would have been set aside to fund substance abuse prevention programs. The funds would also have helped reduce the waiting list for Developmental Disabilities Association services, which stood at more than 19,000 people in January. Neither chamber voted on the tax.

One significant piece of legislation that did pass allows all persons under guardianship due to mental disability the right to vote unless a court specifically decides the individual is incapable. Currently, no one under guardianship with a mental disability can vote. The new law will go into effect June 1.

Legislation calling for an expansion of Maryland gambling laws to include games such as poker and roulette failed to make it out of House and Senate committees. O’Malley and Busch have both said they want to focus on getting the state’s slot machines up and running before talking about expanding gaming.

Maryland public schools got a boost from the fiscal 2011 budget, with a record $5.7 billion going to K-12 education. But the budget also saw the end of the four-year, in-state tuition freeze for higher education. The legislature passed a modest increase of 3 percent, pending approval of the university system.

Lawmakers also approved a package of education reforms expected to make Maryland’s bid for a possible $250 million in federal Race to The Top funds more competitive. The legislation increased the minimum length of time before a teacher is eligible for tenure from two years to three years and required student performance data to be used in evaluating teachers and principals.

A controversial plan to shift a portion of the cost of teacher pensions from the state onto the counties gained traction in the legislature this year. A budget amendment proposed by Sen. Richard Madaleno, D-Montgomery, passed the Senate but was struck from the House version of the bill.

Madaleno said Tuesday that the problem wasn’t going away, and pointed to the difficulties in states like California, where pension funds assume a greater return on their investments than they’re actually getting.

A new commission established to study the retiree benefits system for state employees, including teachers, will deliver a report to the General Assembly in December.

“There’s potential for incorporating those recommendations into the budget that will be before us in the ’11 session, Madaleno said.

A proposed 75 percent income tax credit for businesses that make donations to scholarships and enrichment programs for public and private schools was voted down in subcommittee this session despite bipartisan support in both chambers.

Of the many oyster-related bills that brought watermen off their boats and into Annapolis this session, only one managed to pass through both houses of the assembly. The legislation allows fishermen to use a special metal device known as a “devil diver” when dredging for oysters.

Watermen also supported other bills, including one that would limit the scope of oyster sanctuaries in the bay. They opposed a measure to increase the percentage of viable oyster habitat designated as sanctuary. Neither bill made it out of the chamber where it was introduced.

Environmentalists didn’t spend the entire session talking about oysters. Two bills passed that ban chemicals believed to be harmful to children. Bisphenol-A, or BPA, a chemical commonly used in hard plastic bottles, will be banned in baby bottles and children’s products. A flame retardant, Deca-BDE, will also be eliminated from electronics, mattresses, couches and other uses.

New stormwater pollution rules will take effect in May for construction sites, though some projects will be grandfathered in or waived from the restrictions.

The General Assembly also passed a bill to create the Chesapeake Conservation Corps, a state environment-related public service organization. And legislators added $2.5 million to the $20 million Gov. Martin O’Malley requested for the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Coastal Bays Trust Fund, which funds projects that reduce pollution in the bay and its tributaries.

[Reporters Jennifer Hlad, Brady Holt, Adam Kerlin, Daniel Leaderman, Rachel Leven and Shauna Miller contributed to this Capital News Service report]

A Knifing in Chestertown

A stabbing on Washington Avenue late Sunday night put a Chestertown youth in the hospital and sent deputies on a hunt for an unknown suspect.

Injured in the knifing: Carlo Vela Perez, identified as a juvenile, of the 900 block of Washington Avenue.

Deputy M.L. Beck interviwed Perez at the hospital and reported he’d been stabbed in the center of his chest.

“According to the victim,” said the deputy, “the suspect stabbed him because of a drug deal that had gone bad.”

Real Men Wear Red High Heels

Who would you like to see walking a mile with Marty Stetson . . . wearing ladies red high-heeled shoes? How about Ed Birkmire?

In fact, the tall town councilman and the less vertical Humane Society director are just a couple of the hairier-legged community leaders who are joining Washington College male athletes and fraternity members in attempting to teeter in heels from the heart of campus to fountain park.

The spectacle begins at 5 p.m. Wednesday.  A large crowd is expected to cheer, and hoot, them on.

Some other good sports in red high heels include Ken Collins of WCTR; Brad Hirsh, board member For All Seasons, Inc.; Darnell Parker, director of multicultural affairs at the college, and Jared Halter, WC’s director of student activities.

“Walk A Mile In Her Shoes” is the event conceived by WC senior Alisha DiGiandomenico to raise community awareness about rape, sexual assault and gender violence.

The event ends with talks at the park by representatives from the Rape Crisis Center, the Mid-Shore Council and local law enforcement agencies.

There will be music. And there will be masseuses for the foot-sore.

Local oddsmakers were split on how many would complete the mile in high heels and who would finish first (not that anybody’s racing).

Some gave the edge to Stetson because his size-13 feet should make for remarkable stability. And remarks will be made on it.  [Look for them here.] His chances shrink, however, when it is considered that the four-inch heels are going to jack up Stetson to about 6-foot-9. So, if gusts are blowing off the river as he lurches southward, he could be fighting headwinds up there and have to do some tacking.

This scenario suggests an opportunity for the close-hauled Birkmire, who could plot a more direct course.

It can be revealed now that Stetson had a lot on his mind as the starting time approached.

At the last Town Council meeting, he was seen to lean over to Joan Merryman, who was taking the minutes, and then was overheard to ask her, “Is it going to hurt?”

Merryman managed not to smile as she reassured him, “It’s going to hurt.”

Rough Stuff at KCHS

It won’t go down as a good day at Kent County High School. The  sheriff’s office reports it caught an 18-year-old boy with drugs and broke up a punch-out between two 17-year-old girls.

On Friday afternoon, before school let out, deputies arrested a Chestertown youth on charges of having a controlled dangerous substance and disorderly conduct. The narcotic was not identified.

About an hour later they arrested a girl from Rock Hall and another from Worton on a charge if disorderly conduct for fighting in a hallway at KCHS.

As the investigator reported, “Both females assaulted each other with their fists, causing a crowd to form.”

All three students were referred to the Department of Juvenile Services.

The Goals of Thieves

Better lock up your GPS units if you live around Galena and anchor down your lacrosse goals in Worton. Thieves are going after both.

The Kent County sheriff’s office is investigating three cases of GPS units being stolen from vehicles in recent days.

Jeff Haley of Galena discovered his GPS unit, radar detector and wallet containing credit cards were stolen from his vehicle.

James Mullen of Galena reported a GPS unit was stolen from his truck that had been parked in his driveway.

Ginger Camp of Galena said her Garmin GPS was stolen from her unlocked vehicle in her driveway.

All three cases remain under investigation.

So does the peculiar case with the victim identified as Kent County Parks and Recreation.  Sometime on Friday a lacrosse goal disappeared from the lacrosse field in Worton Park.

Or as the report reads, “An unknown suspect stole a 6-foot by 6-foot orange lacrosse goal valued at $350.

It leaves a lot of questions: Why? What could anyone do with anything that big and colorful and not get noticed? Where would you hide it? And how big is the “unknown suspect” who can make off with something so cumbersome?

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

“People are knocking people off crosswalks. People are screaming at each other.”

So says Mayor Margo Bailey.

In Chestertown?

Well, the mayor wasn’t real clear about exactly where that goes on. She was talking about ugly behaviors, incivilities, rudenesses that are happening, and seem to be increasing, almost everywhere. Maybe even right here in river city, where folks are wonderful but everybody may know of someone who’s a little shy of perfect.

So, in response, and thanks to the creative assistance of Joanne Fairchild of the Center for the Study of the Environment and Society, Bailey has come up with some finely drawn posters that she is placing around Chestertown.

They proclaim, or fervently hope, “We Can Change the World with Kindness.”

The mayor offered up the posters at last week’s Town Council meeting in lieu of the customary moment of silence to honor those serving the country in harm’s way.

“Let’s see if we can get things done around town with a smile on our faces and not abuse our fellow citizens,” Bailey suggested.

Recycling Worries

The Kent County commissioner’s talk of ending their recycling program keeps causing consternation and kerfuffle among Chestertown’s political and business community.

Though the commissioners likely won’t make a final decision until sometime in May, the threat of Kent’s recycling coming to a stop has town leaders trying to put pressure on county politicians and scrambling for funds to adjust their own recycling to cover any future void.

The Town Council has sent a letter signed by all members urging Kent to keep on recycling, and Nancy McGuire says the Downtown Chestertown is doing the same.

It’s not that Chestertown officials don’t sympathize with Kent’s problem – the deep cuts in state payments and its shriveling tax base that have it staring at deep deficits despite careful budgeting.

As Town Manager Bill Ingersoll noted at last week’s Town Council meeting, recycling is much less expensive in Chestertown because of the density of collection points, while the county must send its trucks miles and miles between each gathering.

Still, as Mayor Margo Bailey sees it, for Kent to quit recycling betrays a fine tradition.

“Kent was the first county on the Eastern Shore to have recycling,” Bailey points out. “Kent has been an example to the whole country.”

Bailey says the fact that this small, rural county could recycle inspired bigger, richer jurisdictions as far as California.

Regardless of what Kent does, Chestertown seems determined to keep on recycling its own trash.

One notion that seems to have support from most Town Council members is to adjust Chestertown’s two trash collection days – if Kent retreats — so that one would be for garbage and the other strictly for pickup of recyclables.

Ford Schumann and other experts on recycling have been invited to the next Town Council meeting on April 19 to discuss the options.

Tire Thief, Gun Thief

Stealing tires is an ordinary sort of crime – but 24 of them? At once?

The Kent County sheriff reports unknown suspects cut a padlock and entered a storage shed on Back Street in Millington, belonging to Mountaire Farms of Delaware.

“The suspect(s) proceeded to remove 24 large truck tires valued at $11,200,” the sheriff’s office said. The case is currently under investigation.

———-

Deputies report that Jolane Ellen McCoy of Millington reported the theft of a Colt .45 Goldcup pistol and a Winchester 12 gauge Model 120 from her home on School Road.

During the investigation Jerry Lee Stanton, 50, of Clayton, De., “was developed as a suspect, ” as the report put it. He was charged with three counts of burglary and held on $50,000 bond.

The Winchester shotgun was returned to McCoy.

Come to the Prince for Sarah Cataldo

Once more Chestertown is being called to rally for young Sarah Cataldo, as it did several years ago when she was in desperate need of a heart transplant.

Mayor Margo Bailey informed the Town Council that the child is back at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She said Sarah is having trouble keeping anything in her stomach, foods or medicine.

“Obviously for a transplant patient, meds are critical,” said Bailey. She said the girl has been hospitalized since March 13 and she will be there many more weeks.

The mayor said there is something people can do for Sarah. She urged them to attend the  concert of Jah Works, a reggae band, at the Prince Theatre on Friday night at 8:30. Tickets are $35 each.

This is a fund raising event for Dragonfly Heart Camp, the Pennsylvania facility that gives children with transplants the opportunity to have a summer life like most children. The camp is dear to the hearts of Sarah’s parents, Rhonda and Jerry Cataldo.

Bailey noted that Chestertown rallied strongly for Sarah when she first fell sick and her heart bagan failing while on vacation in North Carolina. Townfolk raised something like $17,000 to pay for her transportation to Childrens Hospital.

Residents volunteered to wait tables at Rhonda’s restaurant, now called the River Heart Café. Some cleaned the Cataldo’s house while they attended their daughter. Some mowed their yard. Dragonfly pins were sold around town to raise more funds for Sarah.

Coming to the Prince for Sarah on Friday is another way to show the community is still there for her. And the reggae is, as the Rastas say, “Ah sey one,” when something is really cool and great.

The Curse of the Corn Dumper

What’s the town to do about deluded bird lovers, and slobs, trashing the park at the foot of High Street?

Somebody keeps bringing big bags of corn and dumping them in the park to feed the ducks and geese. And yes, that brings more of them to the site. And more poop.

It also brings big flocks of gulls, crows and scavengers of every sort, including rodents. And much more poop.

The park’s woes came up at the Town Council meeting on Monday night and the answer seems to be a lot more monitoring.

The town is in discussions with Washington College to place a camera atop Customs House, in an effort to catch the grain dumper and other miscreants.

“We have another problem of people pulling up the benches and throwing them in the river,” reported Town Manager Bill Ingersoll.

More frequent garbage collection at the park may be necessary, said Ingersoll, to keep levels of trash in the bins lower so leavings don’t blow out and collect on the ground.

Then there’s the natural contrariness of the Chester River itself. Tides happen. The series flood tides of last week washed debris all over the little park and left scum on the bricks and the composit walkways.

A power wash is planned.

What’s planned for the corn dumper, besides identifying him or her, isn’t clear.

“We’ve had people feeding the birds for years, but this stuff is just being dumped,” says Mayor Margo Bailey. “One person is bringing enormous amounts of feed and dumping it in a huge ple. It brings incredible numbers of gulls, hundreds of birds,  making a huge mess.

“We have appealed to people, please stop this. They are making problems with rats and gulls, and the park has become a big staging area – but not for humans.”

Rail-Trail in Big Trouble

The Maryland Transportation Administration appears to be pulling a bait-and-switch with Chestertown that could bring the Rail-Trail project to a grinding halt.

An email sent to the town by MTA reverses earlier communications and says the best option now is for Chestertown to keep the rails “as is.”

MTA says its current position is that there is plenty of right-of-way for the railroad and the trail project “to co-exist.”

This means the town could not pull up the old rails – a necessary step before any asphalt could be laid along the right-of-way.

That leaves Chestertown in the position of trying to bypass the MTA. Town Manager Bill Ingersoll said the one option at this point is to ask the Surface Transportation Board to declare that the railway has been abandoned.

Ingersoll told the Town Council Wednesday night that “we are jerked around” and MTA has reversed previous assurances to the town that the rails could be taken up. He noted that substantial federal funds may be lost to the town as a consequence of MTA’s decision.

The email sent last week reads: “. . .it was determined the Maryland & Delaware Railroad has a common carrier freight right over the trail area and if they wanted to cease those rights, MD&DE would need to request the Surface Transportation Board’s approval. That process may take 6 to 9 months and then execution of the agreement afterwards. Our most efficient and timely option is to license the right-of-way to Chestertown and keep the rails “as is.” This will be a significant cost savings. . .and there is sufficient (right of way) for the two uses to co-exist.”

Ingersoll fumed to the Council that anyone who’s ever walked the line can see that, at the ravine alongside Washington College, the cut is so narrow there’s no safe room now for a train to pass, much less sufficient space for both a railway and a walking path.

He also noted there haven’t been any freight shipments to Chestertown in 20 years, and the ties beneath the rails are all rotted so that it’s impossible for a train to come here now.

Also, he observed, the railroad itself has removed rails along some sections of the tracks.

Council Member Jim Gatto said, “There is no industrial site here that can use the rails. There is no site south of Worton that exists that could convert back to rail.”

And Council Member Gibson Anthony said, “I can’t express how angry I am about where we are now. If the railroad really insists in having a rail line, they should tear up the rotted creosote ties and have to replace them.”

After the council meeting some members hung around to vent their frustration and fury over the latest twist. Their comments were off the record.

What their remarks came down to: follow the money. Government pays railroads by the mile to maintain roadbeds. No railroad is maintaining the right-of-way within many miles of Chestertown. But if the rails are taken up, and de facto becomes official, that’s miles of fees a railroad can’t keep on collecting for maintenance work it isn’t doing.

Heck of a way, somebody said, to run a railroad. Or a state agency.

Tempers at Town Hall

The Town Council meeting took an angry turn Wednesday night when Frank Rhodes stood up to question each member one by one why none had attended any meetings on county plans for school consolidation.

“You didn’t show up,” Rhodes loudly charged.

Voices raised. Hands gestured. Frowns happened. Amity left the room in a rush.

Rhodes pointed out that mayors and council members of other towns across the county had attended the series of hearings on proposals to consolidate.

Council Member Jim Gatto pointed out to Rhodes that no school in Chestertown is currently on the hit list of schools to be closed. Gatto said chances are 80-20 against any school closing in Chestertown. He noted that officials of other towns went to the meetings because their schools are in direct jeopardy of closure.

“We did do our job,” said Mayor Margo Bailey when her turn came.

She noted that the Town Council sent a unanimous letter to county officials strongly urging that no Chestertown school be shut down. “We did what we could do with the most punch, in sending a letter to the Board of Education.”

The only council member to take Rhodes’ point was Mabel Mumford-Pautz, who said she hadn’t realized that at one time  Henry Highland Garnett Elementary was in fact on the list of schools to possibly be closed, and she wished she had attended some of the meetings.

If the grilling was moot, it did reveal some officials’ concerns about what the Board of Education is doing.

Mumford-Pautz complained that the Board of Education had kicked the Elections Board, a paying tenant, out of the school board building and then went on to justify plans to sell it by contending it had too much empty space.

Town Manager Bill Ingersoll said the the whole consolidation issue seemed grow from a previous superintendent’s idea of getting revenue by unloading the school board building at a time when the real estate market was at it’s peak – but now the structure would probably pull in only a fifth of what might have been worth then.

Then, tempers flared again.

Stetson asked if Rhodes’ purpose was to embarrass council members.

“No,” said Rhodes, who ran unsuccessfully for a council seat in the last election.

Stetson asked if Rhodes himself would have gone to all those public hearings if he didn’t have children in the schools. Rhodes insisted he would have.

“You didn’t show up,” Rhodes said, heatedly, a couple more times.

The interrogations ended after Mayor Bailey made cutting-off motions with both hands and said, twice, “That’s it.”

Bay’s Report Card: ‘Very Poor’

Despite 25 years of restoration and protection efforts, the Chesapeake Bay’s health is still bad and making only slight improvements, according to an assessment released Wednesday.

With the waters of the bay sparkling through the glass doors at the Annapolis Maritime Museum, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Chesapeake Bay Program released its annual Bay Barometer report — which says the bay “remains in poor condition.”

But environmental officials said the news is not all bad.

Jeff Lape, director of the Chesapeake Bay Program, called the report card “a mixed message of hope and reality.”

“What this tells me is we’ve still got a long way to go,” he said.

The report gave the bay a score of 45 percent in overall health, with 100 percent representing a fully restored ecosystem. The score is a 6 percent increase from 2008.

“The report speaks for itself. The bay is dying on our watch,” said Tommy Landers, policy advocate for Environment Maryland. “This annual report has become a broken record, and it’s time to fix it.”

The bay’s wildlife score went up 9 percent this year, which the report said is mostly due to a 70 percent increase in the bay’s adult crab population. The number of adult blue crabs in the bay increased to 223 million, the highest it’s been since 1993.

Frank Dawson, assistant secretary of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, said crabbing restrictions spurred the dramatic increase in the number of adult female crabs in 2009. He said the increase in female crabs is likely to lead to more young crabs.

“If we have more mother crabs in the bay, we’ll have more baby crabs in the bay,” he said.

But while he said he is “delighted’ to see the increase, he cautioned that only time will tell whether the increase will last.

“One year doesn’t make a trend,” he said.

Bay water quality showed only slight improvement — a 2 percent increase — and it was still called “very poor” by the report. Only 24 percent of the water quality health goals were met.

The report blamed the pollution in rain water for the low score.        The report said that the bay’s decline is directly linked to the number of people living in the watershed. Since 1950, the population has more than doubled, the report said, and as of 2008, 16.9 million people were estimated to live in the bay watershed.

“Human activities continue to contribute more pollution, offsetting many of the accomplishments restoration projects have made,” the report said.

Increasing population spurs development, which leads to natural areas being paved over to “make way for houses, shopping centers and parking lots.” The pavement prevents water from soaking into the ground, prompting runoff, which picks up sediment, nutrients and other pollution and dumps it in local waterways.

Maryland lawmakers recently addressed the runoff problem, approving strict changes to storm-water pollution rules Tuesday; starting in May developers will have to use “environmental site design” on construction projects by figuring out how to get rain to soak directly into the ground.

Lape said the barometer is an important measure of bay health, but releasing it each year has created an expectation that it will make dramatic improvements quickly.

“It took us hundreds of years to get to this point,” he said, and it is the responsibility of everyone in the watershed to help improve the bay’s health.

“We cannot expect a clean bay until we get clean streams and rivers,” he said.

[By Morgan Gibson and Jennifer Hlad of Capital News Service]

Chestertown Cemetery to Bloom

A small forest of native trees and shrubs is being planted in the heart of Chestertown – in the old cemetery – to create a buffer of  leaves and flowers for gravesites that were long neglected.

The plantings on Thursday are joint efforts, involving the Chester Cemetery directors, Washington College’s Center for the Study of the Environment and Society and a group of inmates from the pre-release unit of Eastern Shore Correctional Facility, who do the actual shovel work.

It won’t be visible from upper High Street but the stand of 125 winterberry bushes and 25 Red Osier dogwoods will border Dixon Valve and the old right-of-way that’s soon to be the Rail-Trail path where it passes the college athletic fields.

Jack Diller, president of the cemetery’s board, explains, “We had a gentleman who donated some money to plant the trees, and we got them from the state tree nursery in Preston, which has a program so projects like this can get a good price.”

Diller says the actual spading is free, done by the inmates, “who do a lot of planting of trees all around the Eastern Shore and apparently have a really good team that knows what it’s doing.”

Cemetery rules don’t allow larger tree specimens because a long root base can cause problems. There are some common areas left in the cemetery that eventually could accommodate larger trees, but the intent now is to make a hedge to screen off industrial neighbors.

“We hope to add some color,” says Diller, who adds that in recent years “It had really gone to pot, the whole place really.”

Today, he credits Chestertown with providing help from maintenance crews, and also Boy Scout volunteers and fraternities at Washington College for pitching in to help clear the undergrowth that had swallowed two acres of  the grounds.

Some Chestertowners won’t know Diller’s name, but many will remember him as the man who worked, summer after summer, scraping rust and repainting the wrought iron fencing that borders the cemetery along High.

“It was a labor of love,” says Diller, adding with a laugh, “but at the end I was running out of love.”

Apparently not quite. Not once is seen the new plantings, the work of  a community that grew from his lonely efforts.

Light Sentence Irks QAC Law

Queen Anne’s law enforcement officials are plainly upset about the case of a man who got a suspended sentence with probation after his conviction for repeated sexual abuse of two girls, ages 12 and 14.

William Michael Christian Clarke, 19, of Grasonville, was found guilty on no less than 30 charges that included three counts of attempted rape 2^nd degree, one count of sodomy, three counts of attempted sodomy and three counts of unnatural/perverted practice involving the two children.

Charges against Clark came after a joint investigation by the county Department of Social Services, the State’s Attorneys Office and the sheriff’s department.

On March 30 in Circuit Court, Judge Andrew Sonner sentenced Clark to three years in the Division of Corrections on each count of the indictment but suspended the sentence with five years of supervised probation, which includes sex offender treatment.

In a press release, the office of the QAC sheriff noted, “Judge Sonner is a former State’s Attorney from Montgomery County . . . and he is a retired judge from the Maryland Court of Special Appeals.”

The release went on to point out, “At sentencing the Queen Anne’s County State’s Attorney’s Office requested that Clarke be sentenced to 240 years with all but 20 years suspended.”

Assistant State’s Attorney Christine Dulla argued at sentencing that Clark’s crimes were “heinous” and warranted a sentence to punish him, protect the community and deter offenders like him from committing similar crimes.

“In her argument Dulla identified several cases of a similar nature from Queen Anne’s County wherein defendants received sentences at the higher end of the Maryland Sentencing Guidelines,” the sheriff’s office noted.

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