The Fillmore gets more money, with some help from Wheaton. (Photo: Jay Westcott)

We got yet more information on the ongoing Fillmore saga yesterday from TBD's Ryan Kearney, who reports that officials were originally misled about how much the project was really going to cost.

As things stand, about $2.7 million of the Fillmore overruns will be covered by funds from Montgomery County's Department of Recreation. The White Oak Community Recreation Center came in nearly $2.4 million under budget, and there was some spare money just sitting around, apparently, for an already-built outdoor pool and diving tower. Why that extra money is not used to help pay for, say, portable toilets in county parks (important stuff!) is another matter.

But the Wheaton Community Recreation Center was also stripped of its comparatively lowly $109,400, and a Department of General Services memo to County Executive Isiah Leggett states that the Wheaton project was canceled. What gives?

It turns out that renovations to the 1960s-era building at 11711 Georgia Ave. are still funded — well, the design and planning of them, anyway. That $109,400 (now Fillmore money) was originally intended to pay for renovations to the Rafferty Center, part of the former Good Counsel High School, into a second, much-needed, community recreation center for the Wheaton-Kensington area.

But officials scrapped the Rafferty plan because, they say, it wasn’t cost-effective (at one point, the plan was estimated to cost $7 million). Also, just last year a plot of land on Mason Road and Georgia Avenue became available to build a twice-as-large, full-service rec center. No need for Rafferty anymore.

But when the call to axe the Rafferty plan was made, the County Council was told by the Department of General Services that "we can now use available funding to advance ‘future’ renovation of the existing center."

Nope. At least not $109,400 of that money, which is now being moved over to the Fillmore. Granted, there is still the $520,000 the county allocated for designing and planning the full-service rec center. Construction is currently scheduled for 2015, and no money for that has been set aside for that yet (standard practice).

But what if the Wheaton rec center's construction ends up costing more money than anticipated, just as the Fillmore project did? Perhaps by 2015 there will be a Silver Spring project with some spare cash that can save the day for Wheaton. Oh, karma.