Ward 4 again comes up short on leadership, costing us another $1.4 million dollars.

In the last several weeks we've seen D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray move millions of dollars between various projects, a maneuver called a "reprogramming," to address emergency needs — construction projects, safety upgrades, lawsuit settlements. Reprogrammings are a fact of life in any budget year, as unexpected issues crop up all the time, and most are run-of-the-mill.

Here's four recent reprogrammings of interest. Take note of the last one, fans of off-leash dog parks.

• The Metropolitan Police Department's overhaul of 2850 New York Ave. NE, where several divisions will soon move, requires $3.5 million. Gray has proposed reprogramming that money from 13 separate funds, including $1.1 million from "Penn Ave. SE properties" (unclear as to what that is), $46,225 from vacant property inspection and abatement, $215,566 from IT system modernization, and $1.44 million from the Georgia Avenue Great Streets project. The latter has not gone over well with D.C. Council members Jim Graham, D-Ward 1, and Muriel Bowser, D-Ward 4, who have issued a joint disapproval, delaying the funding move until after the council's summer recess. The District's Great Streets initiative is a joint effort of numerous agencies to transform nine struggling corridors, including Seventh Street-Georgia Avenue. "We still need it for the Georgia Avenue Great Streets," Bowser told me. "If the administration has a way to replenish it, then we can talk about it."

• The Department of Housing and Community Development reprogrammed $1.25 million previously budgeted for the Langston Terrace and Greenleaf Gardens projects to pay a lawsuit settlement related to work on Canal Park in the Capitol Riverfront neighborhood. D.C. Housing Enterprises Inc., a nonprofit subsidiary of the D.C. Housing Authority, hired Cheverly's Civil Construction Inc. several years back to relocate a school bus parking lot on the Canal Park site to a new location deep in Southwest D.C. Civil Construction completed the project, but according to reprogramming documents, then-Mayor Adrian Fenty halted the parking lot project late in his administration and cut off funding. The contractor sued, and is now due $1.25 million.

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