March 18, 2010

Residents appeal for shelter help

By Keri Brenner
The Chronicle

     Area leaders said Wednesday they will probe options for financing Home at Last Humane Society shelter and try to gather enough data to give credence to a possible tax levy measure on the November ballot.
     “I think we are all in support of the work of Home at Last,” Wasco County Commissioner Bill Lennox said before about 50 shelter boosters and area residents at a public meeting at the county courthouse in The Dalles. “The trick now is to be responsible and to justify our support to the public, or we increase the probability of losing it.”
     Wednesday’s public strategy session came after operators of the no-kill regional animal shelter in The Dalles said they will have to shut down their cash-poor private nonprofit facility June 30 if there is no financial solution.
     One by one, residents testified that closing Home at Last would be a bad precedent to set in the community.
     “It’s very important that we do what’s right by our animals,” said retired veterinarian Dr. Milton Skov, formerly of The Dalles Veterinarian Clinic. “Our children look to us to take care of those things.”
     Wasco County Commission Chairman Dan Ericksen said he will meet March 29 with The Dalles City Manager Nolan Young, The Dalles Mayor Nikki Lesich and Home at Last Executive Director Janna Hage to investigate what can be done.
     “Home at Last has not had any government oversight,” Ericksen said. “If we’re now being asked to fund it at a higher level, we need to get more information, because we don’t have any idea about how they run things or what they do.”
     Young agreed. At Wednesday’s meeting, the city manager submitted a “Budget Issue Paper” asking the shelter for a detailed accounting of its programs, services, income, expenses and animal demographics.
     “We need to have that information prior to the meeting” on March 29, Young said.
To go out for a tax levy bond measure in November, Wasco County officials would need to have a proposal ready by August, Ericksen said.
     Home at Last board president Cindy Miller asked county commissioners and the city to make a financing decision by April 1 — if their decision were to close Home at Last by June 30.
     That date would be early enough to give shelter staff time to find new jobs and to stop taking in new dogs or cats after May 1.
     Miller suggested that better options were either to approve a November ballot tax levy or to finance a salary for a new full time executive director to replace Hage’s volunteer part-time position.
     “We hope the county chooses the option to preserve jobs and lives,” she said.
Currently, the city and county contribute $64,000 annually to Home at Last’s $368,000 budget, with the rest coming from private donations and from adoption, impound and spay-neuter fees. Despite the various income streams, the shelter is at least $60,000 short in its projected 2010-11 budget. Hage said.
     She said she had “underestimated the need in the area” for shelter services when she took over the operations from Wasco County about five years ago. Now, she said, she was open to all options – with the tax levy being a reluctant last resort.
     “I’m a homeowner and I’m a taxpayer and I don’t want to pay any more taxes either,” Hage told county commissioners. “There’s nothing I want less than an uphill battle of going out for a tax levy.”
     Before Hage took over the shelter and made it a private nonprofit no-kill operation, the county was euthanizing more than 70 percent of abandoned animals – or between 775 and 1,270 animals annually between 1998 and 2003, according to data released at Wednesday’s meeting.
     “It’s way cheaper to euthanize the animals than to find them homes,” Hage said. “But we really don’t think the community wants to go back to that – to having all those body bags going out to the dump.”
     Real estate broker Keef Morgan said he thinks the tax levy measure would be a “challenge.” But he said “the community does step up if people can see a tangible value.”
     “The community has already passed taxes for NORCOR, for the library, for parks,” Morgan added. “I don’t enjoy paying these taxes, but it seems to be a necessary evil. “
Miller said even if the tax levy were to be posted by Wasco County in November and voters approve it, the shelter would still need emergency funding from the county and city to stay in operation until tax monies come in starting July 2011.
     Home at Last has asked the county to post a five-year property tax levy at an annual rate of 20 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value.
     “Failure of the levy by voters would result in the shelter starting the shutdown process immediately, with the shelter closing Dec. 31,” Miller said.
     She said the stopgap option was to finance a salary for a new executive director.
     “They would fund the position for a period of three to five years while the Home at Last board of directors continues to pursue permanent funding sources and solutions,” Miller said.
     Other residents commenting Wednesday included Betty Mercado of Catlink, which specializes in feral cat spay-neuter services. She offered Home and Last the use of her clinic for two days per week for surgery on cats and small dogs.
     “I am glad to offer that,” Mercado said.
     Vickie Ellett said Wasco County will suffer if the shelter has to close.
     “If we don’t fund this one way,” she said, “we’re all going to have to pay the price another way.”