(WKBN) – In July, First News brought you the story of Columbiana County Humane Society’s need for help as it was overflowing with animals and nearly out of funds. Months later, WKBN toured the facility and spoke with board members to see how the shelter was progressing and to talk about the next steps.
First News spoke with just shy of a dozen people who are or were involved in shelter operations, including three board members and eight former employees – plus the former humane agent. Everyone says the animals and their care are the top priority, but the methods of providing that care differ and have been debated for the last several months.
The core operating hang-ups can be grouped into a few main points: a critically depleted budget, the need for facility repairs, and the impact reduced operations have on animals in abuse/neglect situations in the county.
Facility
The Columbiana County Humane Society was quiet when WKBN visited on Nov. 4, with under 10 feline residents remaining – the rest either adopted out or with a foster family – and no dogs or other furred, feathered or scaled companions. No cats were kept in cages but rather allowed to roam bedrooms in a set-up similar to a cat cafe.
As any pet owner knows, animals can do a number on your home, and for a facility that houses far more animals than a personal home sees in its lifetime, damage is to be expected. But at a certain point, it must also be repaired.
Board member Doris Buzzard gave WKBN a full tour of the facility, pointing out areas that were not up to their standards as set by the “Journal of Shelter Medicine & Community Animal Health” and would need to be renovated in order to reopen. The journal is a manual Buzzard said the board uses as guidelines for operating the shelter. She said concerns of overcrowding earlier in the year and the loss of operating funds led to the need to restructure – for both animals currently under the shelter’s care and future ones it will bring in.
Buzzard highlighted areas of the manual where the board was particularly concerned the shelter was not meeting the standard, providing some of the following concerns: creating favorable conditions, improving enclosures and sanitation.
Some of those fixes would involve painting, sanding and resurfacing a floor in the dog room, fixing exposed wiring a dog had chewed on, as well as updating generalized wear-and-tear from an 80-year-old building that has housed animals for years. Not to mention the consideration of a massive overhaul of the dog facilities, including direct outdoor access so dogs would not need to be led outdoors in front of the cages of others, potentially causing stress to the animals.
For now, a majority of the board is focusing on facility renovations to house cats and tabling canine operations.
In an Oct. 16 press release published by the shelter, it addressed the concerns of housing both dogs and cats as part of its new PERT Plan (Program Evaluation Review Technique).
“The board has determined that the current facility can be renovated to comply with the Guidelines for Standards of Care in Animal Shelters (Association of Shelter Veterinarians) for cat isolation and general population rooms, but does not have adequate space for proper dog and puppy isolation areas to meet quarantine and infection control requirements. Once the shelter is renovated to adequately house cats, in the next phase, the board will explore options for a facility adequate to meet the needs of dog accommodations, as well as other animal species.”
“The concern we have, and we made that decision — and we’re getting criticism on that — is we want to make sure our shelter is up to code, up to standards,” Buzzard said. “Our animals come from abuse situations. We don’t want them living in conditions that are not standard shelter protocol, and we stand by that.”
However, not all board members agree that limiting operations is the best step. In a Zoom interview, board secretary Rachael Martin was surrounded in support by former staff members as she expressed a desire to remain operating at a higher capacity – a desire that she says is in opposition with other members of the board.
“One of the points of huge disagreement between myself and the majority of the board is … they just woke up and decided, oh, all of a sudden we have to shut everything down because all of a sudden overnight, a place isn’t safe to hold animals anymore, when that’s what has been,” Martin said. “But the shelter has been doing [that] for many, many years and even before that. But there’s no reason to shut down the shelter completely in order to do that [improvements]. And other than that initial point back in July, and it did take a couple of months to reduce the population of the animals, but by September, there was absolutely no reason the shelter couldn’t have resumed operations on a very, very tight budget.”
Former staff member Swift Kendall, who worked primarily in the cat isolation room, said another hurdle was the lack of necessary cleaning equipment.
“When we had the parvo outbreak, the worst part really was the fact that we didn’t really have the proper cleaning equipment. … We brought up many times about in the cat isolation [room], how the cages are very old and were not locking properly. After the night shift would be finished doing their job, sometimes when I came in in the morning, there’d be cats running around to the entire isolation unit, spreading whatever diseases they may have had because not everybody was properly vetted at the time due to a lot of the financial constraints we had. So there was all different kinds of things going on to where the outbreaks just continue to get worse and worse.”
It should be noted that outbreaks of sickness are not uncommon in shelters due to the close conditions and high concentration of animals, but these isolation rooms exist as an attempt to stop the spread of any potential illness.
“In the last four years, we’ve adopted out over 350 dogs, over 410 cats, all fully vetted, all with very little, at least in the four years I have been here, with returns, you know, people returning those animals, less than maybe 10. So our success rate has been very good,” Buzzard said.
The First News visit on Nov. 4 was not a surprise to shelter staff, but during that visit, all the remaining cats had plenty of space, access to clean water and food, clean litter boxes, plenty of toys for enrichment, and even a radio running in each room.
Buzzard said stimulation is one of the shelter’s main goals for the animals residing there.
“We’re working to keep the shelter and keep it functioning for our animals. We’re calling on community to do that … if it’s not a monetary donation, they can help with volunteering. We can always use people with great ideas for fundraising, someone to roll up their sleeves and just do some work at the shelter, or just come in and spend time with our cats. They need that enrichment.”
“We don’t want to be a facility where we feed them and we wait for them to be adopted. That is not our role and that will never be our role. Our mission is to make sure they’re loved, they’re cared for. And when we were over capacity, in good conscience, we were not making good decisions on that. We’re back at it, we’re starting – sometimes you have to look at how well you do things and how well you need to do things.”
Buzzard said members of the board hope to get the remaining cats adopted out by Christmas.
Budget
Buzzard said the shelter had been experiencing overcrowding, and therefore a tax on their financial resources, for the last two years, and they began to curb animal intakes starting in January. In June, the board evaluated the shelter conditions and finances and determined a change had to be made. Come July, a hold was placed on incoming animals.
All members of the board that WKBN spoke with agreed on one thing: there was no misuse of funds donated to the humane society.
“All of our donations are marked and recorded so there’s no discrepancy of where the funds go, how the funds are used,” Buzzard said. “We are audited by the Attorney General. We’re a 501C3 [nonprofit]. Money that comes in in donations, we do not see. It goes right to our financial manager and is audited, accounted for, and then requests are made for that. Nothing is done without board approval or without it being monitored by our financial manager.”
What Buzzard described as a “critical need for our budget” was a combined result of an influx of animals and steadily rising vet costs. Martin agreed, stating the two biggest costs were vetting and paying staff members.
“Most of the animals that are brought in under the nature of the abuse neglect cases, a lot of the vet visits are emergency visits and they always seem to be after hours. Those are very costly visits. When you have any kind of surgeries, you’re just [paying] thousands of dollars,” Martin said. “So the primary expenditures were vet bills and then the staffing cost. And having said that, the wages that were paid to the staff were were, you know, barely above minimum wage.”
The board members are volunteers and therefore do not get paid for their time contributions.
First News reviewed 2024 financial statements of activity for the Columbiana County Humane Society as well as public record tax documents filed in the last several years, confirming how and where finances were directed.
Revenue is broken into categories such as direct public support, Facebook donations, adoption fees and a variety of fundraisers, among others. Some expenditures included bingo expenses; business expenses such as bank and legal fees; contract services for building maintenance, facility and equipment; utilities; pet expenses including food, medicine and toys.
While money was coming into the shelter, it was far exceeded by expenditures. In July, when expenses peaked and action was taken to reduce animal population and therefore costs, vet and hospital expenses accounted for approximately 83% of total expenditures.
To begin the year, the financial statement from January showed a positive net operating revenue. However, come February, expenditures were up and revenue fell steeply, putting the operating net revenue for the month in the negative. Monthly statements show revenue has been in the red since.
| Month (2024) | Revenue | Expenses | Net operating revenue |
| January | $94,719.73 | $45,466.81 | + $49,252.92 |
| February | $34,381.79 | $54,109.17 | – $19,727.38 |
| March | $6,478.31 | $49,978.74 | – $43,500.43 |
| April | $14,022.43 | $57,201.72 | – $43,179.29 |
| May | $31,887.71 | $58,242.94 | – $26,355.23 |
| June | $5,467.88 | $33,217.61 | – $27,749.73 |
| July | $30,694.53 | $77,029.39 | – $46, 334.86 |
While revenue was negative on a monthly basis, the humane society still had some financial reserves in its bank accounts, according to board meeting minutes, but not enough to sustain operations and expenses at their current pace.
The question some members of the board are pondering now is whether it would be financially beneficial to restore the current facility for the memories and historic value it holds or follow the trend of other local shelters and construct a new facility. Either way, the expenses will be steep.
Martin believes that while it is not out of the question in long-term operations to consider constructing a new facility, she said the current one is in the best shape it’s been in for years, with a recent grant to support an electrical upgrade for the building.
“I know there’s still a lot of surface work that needs to be done that looks bad in pictures, but that’s again, on the surface,” Martin said. “There’s been an extraordinary amount of work to that building with the plumbing, with the electrical. And a big chunk of that was donated for that purpose, for that specific purpose.”
“And that’s been that issue has had been debated quite a bit among the board members,” Martin said. “I, in my opinion, having worked with all the contractors that have come into that building, the building is a solid building. The structure is solid. … There’s been this past year a lot of debate about the facility, whether to maintain that one or improve it. Well, it’s been improved. It’s been, you know, as long as I’ve been on the board, that’s been one of my focuses. So it’s a little bit baffling to me to hear other board members be completely dismissive of the condition of the building.”
Not only does the shelter provide supplies for the animals it houses, but it also offers food to foster families as well as past adopters and members of the community who may find themselves financially struggling to provide for their pets.
At this time, board members are working to raise funds for facility maintenance as well as continued pet care.
They’re doing this through recurring fundraisers, such as weekly bingo, as well as one-time events. Monetary donations are always accepted and welcomed on the humane society’s website. There is also a donation box outside the facility for physical donations, such as blankets, towels, cleaning supplies, pet food, and whatever else the shelter may be able to use, with wish lists of needed items posted online.
Impact of reduced operations on animals
As stated on the humane society’s website, one of its four mission goals is to “employ a humane agent to enforce laws for the prevention of cruelty to animals.”
Buzzard said the society is legally still able to function without a humane agent if the society does not have the funds to pay them or support the animals the agent’s investigations bring into the shelter. She said they instead rely on local law enforcement to seize animals from abuse/neglect situations.
“We’ve operated a shelter in the past without a humane agent and we can, the humane society lawyer says we can operate without a humane agent – especially if we don’t have the money to pay them. So we decided that is something we cannot afford. The crux of that is once an agent is out in the field, they’re obligated to bring those animals into our shelter, hence the money to pay for those animals.”
“So we’ve relied, as part of that, rather than the humane agent, we’re trying not to let those animals left to themselves, we’ve relied on local law officials – which the law, the local police, in their jobs, can go out and investigate abuse and neglect. And, working with the pound, to bring those in if need be or also working with Angels [for Animals] to take some of the cats because the pound does not take cats.”
Columbiana County Humane Society’s former humane agent Britney Price said while law enforcement officers can seize animals, they are not able to pursue charges against potential abusers through the court, saying that’s something only an active humane agent can do.
“We could have been saving multiple animals over these last few months,” Price said. “I still get calls on my personal cell phone. I get emails asking for help. And I just feel like they’re neglecting the county’s animals by not having the humane agent and staff.”
“Now the weather is getting colder. I’m getting emails all the time, pictures – I can’t even get on social media half the time because I want to help these people so much and give them advice, but I can’t do so not being an active, humane agent,” Price continued.
Buzzard said they are visiting other local shelters, humane societies and pounds to see how they’re organized and operate and to discuss financing to help decide the best steps moving forward.
“We’re seeing that some counties, the local counties are paying for a humane agent – we [the Columbiana County Humane Society] pay for all of that, as well as their expenses, travel,” Buzzard said. “We’ve looked at how to fund that again … once we’re up and running and have a budget that can handle the animals, maybe the county can come forward with paying those agents rather than our local agency.”
But for now, the humane society is relying on sustainable fundraisers like recurring bingo – which with startup costs isn’t expected to return a profit until December, according to Buzzard – and public donations. Buzzard says grants are normally awarded to larger facilities and shelters that have in-house veterinary clinics – which the Columbiana County Humane Society does not.
