Alexandria Detective Is City's New Sheriff

Fairfax, Loudoun Voters Say Yes to School Financing

Alexandria police detective and Democratic candidate Dana A. Lawhorne was elected city sheriff yesterday and immediately promised to forge closer ties between the sheriff's office and his longtime police colleagues.

Lawhorne defeated another experienced law enforcement officer, former Alexandria vice mayor William C. Cleveland, a Republican who had been endorsed by longtime Democratic Sheriff James H. Dunning.

Fairfax County voters enthusiastically endorsed a $246 million financing package for school renovation and construction.

In heavily Democratic Arlington, voters chose a new School Board member, Edward J. Fendley.

In Loudoun, voters faced an unusually long list of ballot questions. With more than half of the precincts reporting, funding for a fire and rescue station had passed handily, and all eight school bond measures were well on their way to passage.

"I'm pleasantly surprised," said Loudoun School Board Chairman John A. Andrews II. "It confirms my feelings about the support of public education in Loudoun County by the voters."

In Loudoun, supervisors took the unusual step of breaking the list of eight school projects into eight questions on yesterday's ballot.

Excellent schools are a key selling point for the new communities that have made Loudoun the fastest-growing county in the country since the 2000 Census.

The high cost of new schools and other public facilities such as parks and roads needed to serve new residents has fueled a fevered growth debate in recent years.

Supervisors who wanted a separate question on the ballot for each school were seeking to make a political point about high construction costs. But critics of breaking out the questions said that doing so threatened to pit community against community and was contradictory, given the enthusiasm of some Loudoun supervisors for approving more subdivisions that will in turn require more new schools.

In the past, Loudoun bundled its school projects together, as Fairfax did yesterday. The Fairfax proposal created little controversy.

The support for school bonds in Fairfax County is "an acknowledgement from voters that if we're going to educate children for the 21st century, they need 21st-century learning space," said county School Board member Stuart B. Gibson (D-Hunter Mill). "It means flexible space. . . . It means up-to-date buildings that have the capacity to support technology. It means energy efficiency."