Dropped-off animals are temporarily being housed at Plettner Kennels. Houston police are responding to animal-related calls, and pets picked up by the police will be taken to the Mat-Su Borough Animal Care and Regulation shelter, city clerk Steven Cunningham said Tuesday.
The decision to shutter the shelter came in the wake of a week of controversy over how it was being run, particularly after a decision last week to shoot four dogs and four cats housed there since November.
Employees are part of the fallout: Chief animal control officer Dennis Lords was fired this week and a part-time employee was let go. Officer Rick Molburg quit his position there in December.
Lords was fired this week and officer Rick Molburg and a part-time employee were let go.
Cunningham said the city plans to rebuild its animal control department, starting with its five-member volunteer animal control board.
"Right now we need to have oversight to figure out where all this went wrong," Cunningham said.
Residents and animal supporters upset about the way the shelter animals were disposed of said they plan to attend the City Council meeting at 7 p.m. Thursday. The issue isn't on the meeting agenda but the public is allowed a time for general comments.
NO CONTRACT, NO MONEY
Things took a turn at the shelter when the city's $65,000 contract to provide animal control services to Wasilla lapsed in July 2009.
Houston also lost a grant and couldn't afford to keep subsidizing the cost.
After the contract was lost, Lords' hours were cut from 40 to 20 a week plus 10 flexible hours to meet with people at the shelter, Cunningham said. Lords said code compliance was his focus. A part-time shelter technician cleaned the shelter from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
"Animal control became ignored," Lords said Monday. "It suffered because someone responsible wasn't there all the time."
Longtime shelter volunteer Evelyn Rohr said the city also closed the shelter to the public. Administrative duties were moved to city hall and people looking for pets were told to call Houston police and arrange a meeting.
"If the shelter is never open (regularly) to the public, it's hard for animals to get homes," Rohr said.
Cunningham said the city budget for animal control was cut. Employees were moved under the police budget. The 2010 animal control budget was $11,000 for food, utilities, vet care and other costs.
But animal intakes in just three months exceeded the number the city expected to see in a year and more money was needed. Cunningham estimated the city has spent $15,000 this budget year.
"We were going through $150 a week in food," Cunningham said.
DECEMBER WAS WORST
Things came to a head in December. Lords said he had a heated discussion early that month with Houston Mayor Roger Purcell about conditions at the shelter.
Lords said Purcell wanted him to do something about the animals that had been at the shelter too long.
"My question was, do you want me to shoot the animals? I never got a definitive answer from him," Lords said.
Lords said he and the mayor had clashed before, but he had asked others at the city to grant him the proper training and equipment to euthanize the animals himself.
That month a cascade of events created nightmare conditions at the shelter, some outlined in a complaint Molburg delivered to the city in December. A dog at the shelter chewed through a wall and escaped. The hole wasn't fixed and the heating fuel tank was empty, making for a chilly building.
There was no straw for animals housed in outdoor dog houses.
The shelter wasn't being cleaned appropriately.
"It was in a deplorable condition," Councilwoman Rosemary Burnett said at a special meeting Monday night.
As acting mayor while Purcell was out of town, she and Councilwoman Ruth Blanchard inspected the shelter and made up a list of what needed to be done to clean it up. It was a long list, Burnett said. City Public Works employees brought down a hot-water pressure washer and scoured the shelter and washed down walls with bleach, Cunningham said.
DOGS, CATS SHOT
The shelter was freshly clean but that didn't solve the problem of the long-term boarders and the food they were consuming. Police Sgt. Charlie Seidl said he followed Purcell's instructions in late January to shoot the dogs and cats. Purcell maintains that he never told Seidl to shoot them.
The shelter is likely to remain closed until July, when the 2011 city budget begins, Cunningham said. By then, the city hopes to have a new city animal control board and a clear plan of action to prevent a repeat of recent events.
Find Rindi White online at adn.com/contact/rwhite or call her in Wasilla at 907-352-6709.
Important warning about e-mails purporting to be from the adn.com staff.