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Subdivision residents aghast at roaming pets now see a fence
by Akeya Dickson
Zainab and Rakiatu Bangura were headed to the bus stop in their Lanham neighborhood in February when they were chased by the neighborhood llama. “It started following us, and there was a big pig running after it,” said Zainab, 16, a sophomore at DuVal High School. “I didn’t want to play — I wanted to get to school.” No one was hurt, but it was the third time the sisters had seen it in on their street. They did not call Prince George’s County ani- mal-control officials. But in re- cent months, other residents of the Crandall Stream subdivision did so after finding pigs rooting around their yards and unteth- ered goats strolling the neigh- borhood. The animals belong to Leo
Dorsey, who bought the 25-acre property adjacent to Crandall Stream after he returned from Vietnam. An old wooden fence flanks a smoothly paved street that gives way to a 30-foot dirt road leading to his home. The animals mill about the property, which includes a pond, wetlands and trails. Dorsey was sympathetic to his neighbors’ concerns and a bit peeved at his animals’ desire to roam. “They’d go down into the neighborhood and freak out the residents who didn’t know that these animals are harmless,” said Dorsey, 70. “They’ve got all these acres, and they want go out there.”
Animal-control inspectors vis- ited a dozen times in recent months, and their warnings to keep his animals secured became a threat to revoke Dorsey’s per- mit to own the animals. “When I first heard about it . . . I thought no one can have those kinds of animals there,” said Rodney Tay- lor, chief of Prince George’s ani- mal management division. “We checked that portion to make sure that it was zoned agricultur- al, and it is.” That makes things interesting for its neighbors. “While getting ready for work one morning, I looked out the
PHOTOS BY AKEYA DICKSON/THE WASHINGTON POST Because of Home Depot employees’ generosity, Leo Dorsey now has a fence to keep his animals home.
Among the animals Dorsey keeps: pigs, which he trains to be “house pigs,” teaching them to sit, use a litter box and roll over.
window and said, ‘Is that a don- key?’ ” said Wanda Wallace, a program analyst who lives in Crandall Stream. “I’ve seen the whole crew walking down the street together — the donkey, the horse and the llama with the pigs and the goats,” she said. “If you’re going to have them, secure them, be- cause we have kids here.” Dorsey had been trying to
build a fence, buying supplies a little at a time at Home Depot in Lanham. Laura Kalinowski, an assistant store manager, noticed him buy- ing warped wood, listened to his story and offered to help. “We regularly do community
projects that usually take months to plan, so I suggested at a staff meeting that we build a fence as one of the projects,” Ka-
linowski said. “As soon as I showed his picture to everyone, they immediately recognized him.” Last week, 20 Home Depot em- ployees showed up at Dorsey’s farm and worked from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., erecting a mile-long fence for free. Dorsey estimates he saved $20,000 and a year’s worth of work. “I’m not a man of a lot of money,” he said. Dorsey said he ran the county’s chapter of the United Way years ago and has lived on the property for the past year after retiring from his career of re-settling refugees from Laos and Vietnam. Fluent in Vietnamese and armed with three master’s degrees, Dor- sey leads students on historical trips to Vietnam and jokes that he “has all this education and is a pig farmer.” He oversees the property with his Jack Russell terrier, Sparta, and plans to turn it into an animal preserve. Taylor, the county inspector, plans to visit soon to ensure that the animals can’t wander away. “We’re always happy for ani- mals to stay with the owners and to be properly cared for and properly confined,” he said. “Our goal isn’t to take the animals.”
dicksona@washpost.com
Some ask if District’s CFO is swayed by election gandhi from C1 “You operate in a highly political
environment here,” he said. “My function here is to say no.” Gandhi said that he is impar- tial on city finances and that his office is trying to determine how close the District is to bumping against the 12 percent cap. Budg- et documents show that debt service is expected to jump from 9.51 percent in fiscal 2010 to 11.8 percent in fiscal 2011, before Gray’s proposed borrowing for the streetcar program. Council and finance staff members are looking at ways to pay for the streetcars without borrowing. Evans has repeatedly said dur- ing recent budget hearings that the current level of city spending re- minds him of the time just before Congress stepped in with the finan- cial control board, which oversaw city finances from 1995 to 2001. At the time, Congress also bestowed
independence on the city’s finan- cial officer.
Gandhi dismissed Evans’s com- parison. “Is the control board around the corner? Emphatically no,” Gandhi said, pointing to a balanced budget and a spending plan that remains fiscally sound. Gandhi defended his decisions
to say yes to the mayor’s tapping into reserves, Gray’s borrowing as well as Schools Chancellor Mi- chelle A. Rhee’s controversial plan to fund a new voluntary pay per- formance program for teachers with private donations.
Gandhi said his recommenda-
tions go only so far because he can- not make policy. “We don’t tell them where to spend the money. We tell them there’s money to spend,” he said. He said he was “very assertive” with the mayor and the council about the city’s fund balance. “You can lose just like that,” he said,
snapping his fingers. But reserves, he said, are rainy-
day funds that are used during cri- ses, and the city’s declining rev- enue could be considered a crisis. “In tough times, a family uses its savings account,” Gandhi said. With the streetcar project, Gan- dhi said his office told budget staffs of both the mayor and the council that there was room to borrow, just not much. “That’s the myth. This whole idea that there was no mon- ey,” he said.
“I think as long as we’re within” the debt limit, said Gray, who is challenging Fenty for mayor. “I was the architect of the debt cap in the first place.” In the case of the teachers con-
tract, Gandhi noted that he told Rhee she could not fund pay raises with private contributions outlined in her initial union contract. He said he certified the contract only because a $39million funding gap in the agreement was filled by
budget cuts. The private contribu- tions now cover the pay-for-per- formance part of the contract, which was approved Wednesday. Council member David A. Cata- nia (I-At Large), who once pegged Gandhi the “chief fictional officer,” said the mayor and council might have felt comfortable in ignoring some of Gandhi’s advice because his conservative number-crunch- ing has led to surpluses in the past. “I call it the September miracle,” Catania said. “It happens like clockwork.”
Gandhi “is walking a tightrope” when it comes to the tug of politics from the mayor and council, he said.
Gandhi, whose five-year term will be up in 2012, said he is inde- pendent. “Here, you can disagree with the mayor in the morning and be here in the afternoon,” Gandhi said. “I’ve been here many afternoons.”
stewartn@washpost.com
K S
KLMNO Llama on the lam in Lanham no more
SUNDAY, JUNE 6, 2010
In Va. GOP contests, the labels really stick
virginia from C1
GOP Senate primary contest against the establishment- backed Trey Grayson. Virginia does not lack for similarly pas- sionate insurgent candidates. Rather, it has too many. “Scott Rigell is well-positioned and he benefits, just like Robert Hurt, from the fact that his oppo- sition is split,” said David Wasser- man, the House editor at the Cook Political Report. “If there were one identifiable, no-excep- tions conservative in the race against Rigell or Hurt, we could have real contests on our hands.”
The go-getters
In Hampton Roads, where Re- publicans are eager to oust Rep. Glenn Nye (D) from office after just one term, multiple Davids are flinging rocks at the Goliath in the race: Rigell. “It’s the establishment candi-
date versus the tea party candi- date,” said Ben Loyola, who con- siders himself the latter. Loyola, a Navy veteran and owner of a defense contracting firm, got the endorsement of the Hampton Roads Tea Party last month. While others in the race suggested that the endorsement did not mean the group’s mem- bership was really unified behind any one candidate, Loyola said he believed the move was a “cam- paign changer.” “The tea party has shown [win- ning] is not about money, it’s about votes,” he said. Loyola is no pauper; he’s lent his campaign almost $1 million, but he still trails Rigell in the fundraising department, as do the other Republican hopefuls. The last public poll of the pri- mary, conducted for Rigell’s cam- paign in mid-May, showed Rigell with 47 percent of the vote and the other contestants at 10 per- cent or less. Even as they acknowledge that
Rigell is the front-runner, Loyola and the other candidates say the car dealer is vulnerable to the ac- cusation that he’s a “Republican in name only” for two main rea- sons: Rigell gave $1,000 to Ba- rack Obama’s campaign during the 2008 Democratic presiden- tial primary, and Rigell’s dealer- ships participated in the federal “Cash for Clunkers” program that is loathed by many conservatives. Army Reserve Gen. Bert Mizu-
sawa’s latest piece of campaign mail shows a picture of a smiling Obama and the words “THANK YOU SCOTT RIGELL,” and his current radio ad slams Rigell, who has never held elected office, as a “typical politician.” The cam- paign Web site of Scott Taylor, a businessman and ex-Navy SEAL, urges voters to “Take Back Wash- ington! Send a SEAL not a R.I.N.O.” Rigell has been forced to ex- plain the donation to Obama re- peatedly during the campaign and did so again in an interview Tuesday.
“I was deeply concerned about the momentum Hillary Clinton had and don’t like imperial fami- lies,” Rigell said, later adding that he “had some deep reservations about [John] McCain’s ability to win” and so feared that one of the Democrats would probably be elected president. (Rigell also do- nated to Mitt Romney’s cam- paign and, during the general election, to McCain’s.) As for the clunker program, Ri-
gell said he felt he had an “obliga- tion” to his employees to keep his
dealerships competitive by par- ticipating. Are the attacks on Rigell work-
ing? Taylor said he has seen an evolution as he has knocked on doors across the district: “Several months ago, no one was talking about the Obama donation. Now everyone is.” Taylor, Loyola and Mizusawa each said they think they were in first or second place alongside Rigell. Loyola’s spending is sec- ond to Rigell’s, and he has been advertising the longest. Mizusa- wa has the longest résumé and the highest rank, in a district with a huge military presence. Taylor has the biggest online presence and campaign experi- ence from a failed run for Vir- ginia Beach mayor in 2008. All three acknowledged that —
as is often the case when estab- lished car dealers run for office — Rigell was the best-known candi- date.
Because of Rigell’s strong name recognition and deep pock- ets, national GOP strategists are privately rooting for him. Pub- licly, he has the endorsement of Virginia’s top Republican, Gov. Robert F. McDonnell. Although he has stayed neutral in the state’s other competitive prima- ries, McDonnell is a friend of Ri- gell’s and announced his support last month.
‘Unfair playing field’
Shirley Darnauer, who works for a local insurance company and has been active in Repub- lican politics for 35 years, said McDonnell’s endorsement of Ri- gell left a bad taste in her mouth. She is backing Loyola in the pri- mary.
“I don’t like the way they’ve been endorsing from the top down,” Darnauer said. “I thought [McDonnell’s endorsement] made it an unfair playing field. I don’t have anything against Scott Rigell, except that I feel the elec- tion has been bought.”
Similar sentiment is bubbling
in the 5th District. “Despite Robert Hurt’s at- tempt to claim that he is one of us, he continues to rely upon his Richmond, Washington, D.C., and out-of-state political and me- dia consultants,” read a missive this week from the campaign of property developer James McKelvey. But in a field divided so many
ways, Hurt’s superior organiza- tion looks decisive. As with Ri- gell’s poll, Hurt’s last campaign survey showed him with a wide lead, while McKelvey and the rest of the pack carved up the anti- Hurt vote several ways. Not all the voters in these con- tests are clamoring for a revolu- tion. Wayne Coleman, owner of a Norfolk-based commercial freight company, said he was “in the middle” ideologically, and liked Rigell best because of his “degree of business experience.” “I consider this tea party that has been quoted in the paper as being extremists,” Coleman said. Against one candidate or five,
Rigell is convinced that the tactic of tarring him as an “insider” simply won’t work.
“I think it is really laughable to
say that a person who wasn’t even considering running . . . is an insider,” Rigell said. “I think there’s no basis for that, and I don’t think it’s getting any trac- tion within the district. No one’s treating me on the campaign trail . . . as an insider.”
ben.pershing@
wpost.com
For handful of troubled girls in the District, building a new place to call ‘home’ girls from C1
residents usually leave to go to school, the residents of Wor- thington will have their primary classroom on site, similar to resi- dential treatment centers. And when the residents, ex-
pected to range in age from 15 to 20, do venture out, say, for a les- son at a museum or a visit to Howard, they will be escorted by facility staff just as they would be at a residential center, officials said. The program is one small step in the District’s effort to reduce its reliance on distant residential centers to house children caught up in the juvenile justice, child welfare and mental health sys- tems. “For too long the District has sent lots of its children to states all over the country,” DYRS Inter- im Director Marc Schindler said. The contract with Metropolitan, a for-profit corporation that also operates a group home for boys in the District, is an important step in building better options, Schindler said. “We have to in- vest in our communities.”
A study last year by University
Legal Services, a federally man- dated watchdog program for people with disabilities, found that more than 300 young people from the District were in resi- dential treatment centers, with scores of them in facilities more than 300 miles from the District. The annual cost in local and fed- eral dollars was more than $60 million, according to gov- ernment statistics cited by ULS. Today, about 120 DYRS youth are in such centers, and about 25 of them are girls, a DYRS spokes- man said.
Community presence
Jennifer Lav, a ULS attorney and the author of the 2009 report on residential treatment centers, said that if the girls are to benefit from being in the city and near their families, the new facility can’t be just like the places the girls are coming from or would have gone to. “I think the ques- tion is, what will the new facility look like? Will it be an institu- tional placement or are we build- ing a group home that’s really en- gaged in the community?”
MARVIN JOSEPH/THE WASHINGTON POST
Metropolitan Educational Solutions’ Valdez Mumford tours the Worthington facility, which will take a half-dozen girls at the outset.
While some of the youths sent to residential treatment centers have serious medical or behav- ioral issues that require highly specialized care, some who end up in them through the juvenile justice system simply lack the op- tion that boys have in New Begin- nings, the 60-bed juvenile deten- tion center opened last year to
replace Oak Hill’s facility for boys.
Boys make up the majority of the juvenile justice population in the District — and elsewhere — so the system has evolved around their needs. But advocates are in- creasingly urging officials to give more attention to the particular needs of girls. Earlier this year,
the American Civil Liberties Union said in a report that Mary- land was shortchanging the girls in the state’s juvenile justice sys- tem But even as some officials shift their thinking, budget cuts have made it difficult to sustain the programs already in place, let alone launch new ones, and that is partly why the new D.C. facility has been so slow to get off the ground, said Linda Harllee Harp- er, who is overseeing the project for DYRS. “The money wasn’t there.”
Building partnerships
Catholic University, with its campus in Northeast Washing- ton and its school of social work, was DYRS’s original choice for the facility, Harper said. But that never came together, and when the Marshall Heights house, which had been built to be a group home, became available, DYRS decided it was its best shot to make the project a reality any- time soon. Howard and its social- work school were enlisted, and the agency and the university have been working on a part- nership agreement.
As they walked around the house last week, pointing out the pink-and-purple bedspreads and the stylish furniture from Ikea and the huge sofa in the TV room, Metropolitan’s leaders Val- dez D. Mumford and Rosalind Lockwood-Brooks are bubbling with enthusiasm, excited that af- ter months of planning and reno- vations, the girls will soon be ar- riving.
Both have been teachers and administrators, and both worked for a time in schools operated by the private educational company EdisonLearning. Now they are embarking on another private- public venture that will enmesh them even more in the lives of the young people they are serv- ing.
Only when pressed do they concede even a little anxiety and uncertainty. “We want to say that if the girls come here, they will all be successful,” Lockwood- Brooks said. “But the reality is, we just don’t know. What we do know is we’re going to do every- thing we can to make them suc- cessful.”
cauvinh@washpost.com
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