The D.C. Council is holding up plans to outfit a shuttered school for use by District police over questions about the contract, which might in turn delay construction of the District’s long-awaited forensics laboratory.

Two council members co-introduced a resolution Thursday withdrawing approval for an $11.5 million contract to convert Bowen Elementary School, at 101 M St. SW, into the new headquarters for the Metropolitan Police Department’s First District. The deal with GCS-Sigal LLC, which was submitted to the council on the eve of its summer recess, is on hold while it undergoes a 45-day council review.

At-large Councilman Phil Mendelson, who introduced the resolution with Chairman Vincent Gray, said the issue wasn’t the cost of the contract, but rather how Mayor Adrian Fenty intended to pay for it. Contract documents indicate the work is to be funded through a reprogramming, Mendelson said, but there were no details as to from where the reprogrammed dollars would be pulled.

“We know what they want to spend money on, but we don’t know where they’re getting the money from,” Mendelson said. “As far as I know money was not budgeted for this, so there’s some MPD programs that are going to lose funding.”

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The MPD’s First District must move out of its current home at 415 Fourth St. SW to make way for the District’s $220 million Consolidated Forensics Laboratory. The 240,000-square-foot facility is critical to reducing the city’s massive backlog of DNA evidence awaiting analysis. Construction is slated to start in early 2009 and take at least two years.

“Every day we’re waiting for the contract to be approved is a day we’re not doing the work at Bowen to get the First District in its new location,” said Will Singer, Fenty’s budget chief. “There’s a chain reaction that also delays physical work on the lab project.”

Financing the Bowen overhaul will require several reprogrammings, Fenty officials said, including $5.5 million that was to be used to move the First District to 225 Virginia Ave. SE, a vacant building the District is paying $546,000 a month to rent. Fenty scrapped the move last year.

The dispute over Bowen is the latest of many tussles between Fenty and the council over transparency in contracting. During a recent hearing on school modernization, for example, Gray accused the mayor of “chaotic contracting” and turning deals in at the last minute without critical information.

mneibauer@dcexaminer.com