Private donations have saved the Baltimore Police Department's horse unit for at least another year. Nearly $90,000, including a big one for $50,000, poured into the Baltimore Community Foundation.

At left, Baltimore Mounted Police Sgt. John Ambrose, right, with his partner Barney talks with Carol Laucht, left, of Baltimore. The photo wa taken by The Sun's Kenneth K. Lam.

The money falls short of what police had originally said would be needed -- $150,000 -- and the unit's future beyond 2010 remains in question. But Wednesday afternoon, the police commissioner and mayor announced that a $5,000 check from the Curtis Bay-Brooklyn Environmental Oversight Committee and Curtis Bay Energy Co. put the fund raising driver over the top.

Ambrose brought his horse Barney, though he had to stay outside in the rain while officials moved the announcement inside the Southern District police station's roll call room. Barney posed for the media when it was all done, and after the mayor had disappeared.

So efforts by citizens who sent in checks for $100, and a little girl in Baltimore County who raised $2,000 selling lemonade, and a Jewish community crime fighting group who raised $15,000 playing the cops in football, paid off.

But with the city's budget still in need of fixing, it's going to be tough to secure funding for another year. If the unit is going to remain active, it needs a corporate sponsor.