People packed the Howard County Council's Ellicott City chambers Monday night to testify on a bill that would create nutritional standards for food and drink sold on county property, in a hearing that was reminiscent of another held almost a year ago.
The debate then, in July 2014, also centered on a bill that addressed food and drink guidelines in Howard, and drew so many people that it ran into the early morning hours, with the last testimony delivered shortly after 1 a.m.
Monday night, the hearing wound down around midnight after about five hours worth of testimony.
Downtown Columbia is on the move.
Merriweather Post Pavilion is getting a facelift; there's money in the budget for the first phase of the Inner Arbor park; and the Metropolitan, Columbia's newest apartment complex, is open to residents.
Still, a question remains: how does affordable housing fit into the plan?
So far, none of the 817 units approved – 380 at the Metropolitan and another 437 in an apartment building planned for next door – are slated to be moderately priced.
Twice over the past year, an aging Head Start school bus has broken down, forcing Alejandro Martinez to skip a day at work so he can stay home and care for his two children enrolled in the program.
As a result, the Ellicott City resident says his job working in building maintenance is now on the line.
Kim Graham and her husband want to live in Howard County -- it's where the couple work, it's where they grew up, it's where their friends are, it's where they go to church.
But the recently married couple, in their late-20s, reside outside the county, and not really by choice. Both teachers in the county, they can't afford to live in the richest county in the state on their modest salaries.
"Howard County is our home," Graham said. "To our dismay, we found that buying a house in Howard County is but a dream."
When the revised health and wellness policy for Howard County schools was up for discussion last spring, it was roundly criticized for not going far enough in encouraging students' health.
A year later and after a delayed vote, phased implementation and several additional changes, that policy was largely applauded by the public Thursday, March 13 at the Board of Education.
UPDATE: The Head Start Classrooms has been successfully operating at First Presbyterian Church in the Long Reach neighborhood since Fall 2012.
Four-year-old Hylah Haynes had an hourlong car ride each day this past school year to get to her Head Start program in Ellicott City. Franora Gray said the ride was worth it.
"The program has so much," Gray said, noting that her daughter has received instruction in Spanish before even starting school.
When Shehlla Khan's husband became ill, it fell on her to take their three children to the pool. But for Khan, who is Muslim, the task was difficult.
The Columbia resident said she was concerned about people watching her swim in the conservative, cover-all dress required by Islamic dress codes, and thinking: "What's wrong? Why can't you take it off?"
Starting tomorrow, the wait for most riders of those bright green Howard Transit buses should get shorter.
Instead of arriving once an hour, buses will come once every half-hour on weekdays in most of Columbia and in Ellicott City. Some buses will start earlier, at 5:30 a.m., while others will run after 10 p.m., extending their schedule slightly.
Happiness doesn't come in a red can. Obesity does.
That's the tag line from a commercial that will begin airing soon in the Baltimore area, and it's a not-so-subtle attack on Coca-Cola mounted by a group of local health advocates including Howard County's Horizon Foundation, the Maryland State Medical Society (MedChi), the American Heart Association and People Acting Together in Howard (PATH).
As a Columbia pediatrician, Henri Merrick regularly sees young patients who are significantly overweight. It's a trend she started noticing several years ago, and the weights of school-aged children began to cause her great concern.
So three years ago, she started a diet program at her practice. If a child had a body mass index in the 84th percentile, she put them on a diet: no sugar, lots of water and healthier food