Good morning, Washington. It’s Leap Day! So that means we should, uh, celebrate? We do suppose it’s nice to have that extra day before rent is due. Other than that, we’re not exactly sure what to do with ourselves today.

Council Balks at High Cost of Police Evidence Warehouse: Some D.C. Council members are threatening to reject renewing the lease for the MPD’s police evidence warehouse in Southeast over its high cost, reports the Examiner. A new warehouse is slated to be built in the next year and a half, but in the meantime, the cost of rent on the current building, which is in serious disrepair, has gone up to 4 1/2 times what the District is currently paying.

City to Target Children’s Health Issues: A new public-private partnership the city plans to announce today, dubbed the Child Health Action Plan, will target the worst health problems affecting District youth, including things like obesity, asthma, infant mortality and teen pregnancy. It’s unclear how much the new program might end up costing, but the city hopes to finance it through current budgets augmented by federal grants.

Holy See and Be Seen: If you thought Opening Day at the new Nationals stadium was the toughest ticket in town these days, you thought wrong. Ever since the Washington Archdiocese announced it would distribute 14,000 tickets to Pope Benedict XVI’s mass at the stadium, they’ve been overwhelmed with pleading requests for seats, reports the Post. With only 45,000 total tickets available to the papal mass in Washington on April 17, we can imagine the fury to get them will only build over the coming weeks.

Briefly Noted: City to spend $110 million repairing, closing schools … Execution-style shooting in Northeast … D.C. property values to rise 7.54 percent.

This Day in DCist: There hasn’t been a February 29 since DCist launched in Sept. of 2004!

Photo by sciascia