Thursday, Oct. 17, 2002 | 9:38 a.m.
The Las Vegas City Council, after listening to growling criticism among animal activists, has agreed to give the Animal Foundation of Nevada extra money to run the Lied Animal Shelter, which serves as the city's pound.
"If you all came together instead of attacking each other, we'd be better off at the end of the day," Councilman Michael McDonald said. "Put your differences aside and work with each other for the betterment of the animals."
The council voted Wednesday 6-0 to approve $90,600 extra to cover expenses from the past two years, but only after cutting short clawing remarks that came out during debate of the foundation's first cost-of-living increase in its seven years as the city's contracted animal shelter operator.
The biting comments came as the foundation seeks Clark County pound contract currently held by the Dewey Animal Shelter -- a bone of contention over which the groups have been fighting. The foundation recently filed a defamation lawsuit against its critics.
City Detention and Enforcement Director Mike Sheldon backed an increase for the foundation, calling the lack of a cost of living allowance a flaw in the 1995 contract. He said the city expected that less than 10,000 animals would be impounded annually, but twice that many have been taken in each year.
He also noted that the new Lied shelter was built at no cost to city taxpayers and that the foundation now manages a pound with six times the space of the old facility and must pay for additional staff and utilities on the same amount of money the city kicked in seven years ago.
To fix that the council on Wednesday granted a one-time 10 percent adjustment of $44,100 for July 1, 2001, to June 30, 2002, a retroactive raise in monthly fees to $40,625 from $36,750, and annual cost-of-living allowances of 3 percent to 7 percent through 2005, based on the consumer price index. The foundation has a $1.5 million annual operating budget, $441,000 of it from the city.
"We are happy with the service we have received and the constituents have received (from the Animal Foundation)," Sheldon said.
Others are not.
Ann Herrington, founder of Media Partners for Pets and a longtime critic of the foundation, started to read a laundry list of animals she alleged the city pound euthanized before the required 72-hour hold, only to be stopped by Councilman Larry Brown, who told her to stick to the issue at hand.
Herrington, who is a defendant in the foundation's suit, said the foundation should not get more money because it has a poor history of animal treatment. She noted that the organization also gets to keep pet licensing and adoption fees and does not pay rent.
Doug Duke, a former foundation worker who now is director of the Nevada Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, questioned whether any of the city funds would be used for attorneys who were suing him and others or if they would go to the salary of recently hired spokesman Mark Fierro.
Foundation chairwoman Janie Greenspun Gale, a member of the Greenspun family that owns the Las Vegas Sun, said the money will go toward the animals, not attorneys or spokesmen. She told the council she receives no salary for her foundation work. She called Duke a disgruntled ex-employee who left the foundation "in a huff."
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