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The Hagerstown City Council Tuesday evening unanimously approved the introduction of ordinances that would designate school speed-camera zones and approve a loan to buy larger recycling bins for city residents. The five-member council approved the introduction of an ordinance that establishes citywide school zones, which was first presented by Police Chief Arthur Smith last Tuesday. The school zone ordinance would establish speed limits at more than a dozen locations near Hagerstown schools that could be sites for new speed-monitoring cameras.

Spay Today, a local, reduced-cost spay and neuter program, offers new locations in Cumberland, Md., Moorefield and Petersburg, W.Va., and Culpeper, Va. For more information, go to www.baacs.org or call 304-728-8330.

Bookmobiles  Homewood Retirement Village area, 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 3. Call 301-739-3250, ext. 155, for stop locations. Lexington Avenue, 2:15 to 2:45 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 3. Bester Elementary School, 4 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 3. Shiningtree Home in Smithsburg, 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 4. Edgemont Road area, 2:15 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 4. Call 301-739-3250, ext. 155, for stop locations.  Seminole Drive area, 3:15 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 4. Call 301-739-3250, ext. 155, for stop locations.

 West Virginia Division of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Joe E. Miller said Wednesday the agency's Martinsburg regional office is expected to move into a new building west of Interstate 81 next year. The DMV's new 9,000-square-foot facility is expected to open sometime between July and September of 2012, depending on weather conditions, according to Miller. “We'll be breaking ground before too long,” Miller said. Miller said the DMV office will be built on the south side of W.Va.

St. John's Catholic Prep will move to a new location, the property where St. Thomas More Academy sits on Buckeystown Pike in Buckeystown, Md.   St. John's and St. Thomas More Academy have agreed to move the location of both schools. St. John's has entered into a contract with St. Thomas More to purchase its building and property.   St. Thomas More will move its school to a to-be-determined location in Frederick County.    The sale of the academy's building and property to St. John's allows both schools to move to a building more suitable for their respective sizes.

Lanes are closed to traffic in three locations near the intersection of Dual Highway and Edgewood Drive. The right lane of Dual Highway eastbound is closed between Mount Aetna Road and the intersection, the left lane of Edgewood Drive northbound is closed at the intersection, and the right lane of Edgewood Drive southbound is closed at the intersection. Crews from Pessoa Construction Co. are working along the sidewalk of the northbound lane of Edgewood Drive south of the intersection.

Martinsburg Mall is in negotiations with a prospect interested in the former Sears location, and Robert Gardner, the mall's general manager, said the possibility of signing a deal to fill the anchor space appears promising. Deals to replace Sears and develop an outparcel of the 79-acre property at 800 Foxcroft Ave. for a fine-dining establishment could be announced in the near future, Gardner said. "I would love to mention the name of (the restaurant)," Gardner said. "It will be a fine-dining establishment, something the Martinsburg market doesn't have.

Downtown Hagerstown will might never be a retail magnet again, but getting a major employer to locate downtown could attract the small shops and restaurants needed to support a large business or institution. "It's a chicken or egg argument," Mayor Robert E. Bruchey said after Friday's meeting of the Greater Hagerstown Committee. Do retailers draw people downtown to shop, or will downtown employment create retail opportunities? "We need a company that can come in with 200 jobs," Bruchey told the assembly of county and local elected officials, and business people at Meritus Medical Center outside Hagerstown.

A company that needs more than 2 million square feet of industrial building space apparently is considering locating in Berkeley County, but no deal has been struck, a county official said Tuesday. Stephen Christian, executive director of the Berkeley County Development Authority, said he's been working to recruit the investment since March, but he did not reveal the name of the company. “We are still fighting to win this project or some portion thereof,” Christian said in an interview.

Changes could be coming to the way students are bused to baby sitters, grandparents and other locations in the Waynesboro Area School District. The school board talked Tuesday about students being transported to different locations during the week. While school board members said they're OK with students being picked up at one site in the morning and dropped off at another site in the afternoon, they said they have concerns about those stops changing depending on the day of the week.