Posted on 04/20/2004 4:03:25 AM PDT by chambley1
County officials say that the taxpayer-funded “pavilion” for day laborers, which opened in Shirlington late last year to complaints that it was an incentive for illegal immigrants to congregate, has already shot past its anticipated budget and is facing problems of unruly behavior at the site.
The pavilion, located at 27th Street South and South Shirlington Road, is open weekdays from 6 a.m. to noon as a place for workers to gather and be picked up by construction and landscaping employers. The Shirlington Education and Employment Center (SEEC) oversees the facility, and the county government provided $30,000 when the facility first opened for a part-time staffer to be at the pavilion whenever it was open to maintain order.
However, SEEC officials have already found that one employee at the site is not enough.
“In order to fulfill our commitment to maintain order, we need two people at all times,” said Andres Tobar, interim executive director of the education center.
“The gathered workers rush the cars of employers all at once, and they’ll open back doors and just get in the car – it’s very intimidating,” Tobar said.
Since it opened, the county government has added another employee at a cost of $22,000, and raised employees’ pay rate from $12 to $15 per hour.
In a memorandum earlier this month, Ivy Lewis, the county government’s neighborhood services division chief, said that the county was having difficulty filling the positions at the lower pay rates, and that it had become clear that at least two skilled employees would be necessary whenever the pavilion was open.
“This is an effort to manage an outdoor gathering of day laborers,” Lewis told the Sun Gazette. “Without any real experience at doing this, we never knew how many staff would be necessary.”
However, some county budget watchdogs say officials simply failed to do proper spending estimates on the pavilion, and misled residents on the real costs.
“In their desire to do good for everyone, they seem to fail to do complete cost estimates,” said Arlington County Taxpayers Association president Tim Wise.
“Taxpayers end up footing the bill for the county’s failed efforts to estimate the cost of new projects,” Wise said.
Tobar said that until the county paid pavilion employees a reasonable salary, they’d be likely to end up with little more than a set of eyes.
“We don’t have any police powers, and we don’t want any,” Tobar said. “Every morning, we’re dealing with 50 to 80 guys that might not have seen work in weeks or even months – we need more than a bouncer, we need someone to facilitate discussion.”
Every day, between 15 and 35 workers are picked up at the site. Most of the rest leave when the facility closes, although many will linger on the corner throughout the day – exactly the situation the county tried to eliminate by building the pavilion.
“We’ll close the gate, and the staff leave, so we obviously discourage people loitering,” Tobar said. “But it’s county property, and they don’t cause trouble, so there’s not much we can do.”
The county’s problems with the pavilion have mirrored increased turnover at the education center. Tobar is the facility’s third executive director in the last 12 months, and he voluntarily gave up half his salary to allow for additional office staffing.
County officials agreed to build the pavilion after officials with the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority kicked the day workers off parkland across South Four Mile Run Drive from the current center. Park authority officials said their action was necessitated by renovations at the Washington & Old Dominion Regional Park.
Top officials at Shirlington-based WETA, the public broadcasting giant, initially complained vocally about moving the day-laborer site across South Four Mile Run Drive, closer to their production facilities and headquarters. But, after a spate of bad publicity, WETA officials backed off from their complaints.
I hope you guys don't end up with the day laborer/murderer situation we had a number of years ago. IIRC, our guy's name was Bruman Alvarez, and he killed a few people at a Potomac home he was supposed to be painting.
Best of luck with the illegal/day laborers, VA.
This is exactly the attitude that got you in trouble in the first place. You need a bouncer who can maintain order.
If you are going to provide a place for illegals to gather and seek work, you need to supervise them. After the area has closed you need to disburse the remaider.
The only conceivable public purpose this pavillion serves is to abate the nuisance of illegals gathering unsupervised in public places to seek work. The coounty needs to understand that it should serve the citizens, not the illegals.
Har - I thought that's what these America hating employers wanted. An oversupply of cheap desperate labor.
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