Sandy Spring News

Bill Ryan/The Gazette Peggy Lyn Speicher, this year's Greater Olney-Sandy Spring Athena Award winner, applauds past recipients at the awards tea in Sandy Spring on Friday May 3, 2013.

Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett is calling on the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission to "take another look" at a long-festering road dispute in Sandy Spring that has left some African-American property owners claiming their historic family parcels are worthless.

A long-simmering David vs. Goliath conflict pitting the owners of properties in a traditional African-American enclave against the region's most powerful land use agency may be moving toward resolution.

Sandy Spring, MD A recently revealed email chain between regional and state land use officials at the highest levels is being criticized by a Montgomery County Council Member as "totally inappropriate". "He went over the head of people who had made professional opinions and went to somebody at the highest level and said 'fix this for me'", said ... (more)

Queen Atlas Tuttles the First, a Maryland terrapin, raised by students at Sandy Spring Friends School, heads out into the wild of her natural habitat at Poplar Island in the Chesapeake Bay April 23.