Lynchburg looks at taxpayer support of humane society

"Everyone is going to bark at me, so we’ll just go in for a second,” Makena Yarbrough, executive director of the Lynchburg Humane Society, said as she approached a door which already seemed to be muffling a cacophony of high-pitched yelps.

When the door opened, revealing an austere room lined with narrow kennels, the volume shot up as the dogs greeted their visitors with a frenzy of barking.

“You can see all the rust and rot in here,” Yarbrough said over the din. “There isn’t a good ventilation system. It isn’t conducive to keeping animals healthy.”

Shutting the door on the canine clamoring, Yarbrough moved on to a decidedly sleepier cat room, where she was surprised to find a pen of puppies wedged in among all the cat cages.

“Oh my gosh, I haven’t seen you before,” she said, stooping down to get eye-to-eye with the furry interlopers. “Look at those wrinkly faces.”

There must not have been space for the puppies anywhere else, she said.

“It’s funny,” she said. “Every room here has to have two or three uses.”

For years now, the humane society has felt its city-owned building on Naval Reserve Road is undersized, under-equipped and just plain unwelcoming.

In 2011, it announced plans to build a new facility on Old Graves Mill Road, a generally popular proposal that easily sailed through City Council when it needed a rezoning.

Then the organization came back and asked for a hefty city contribution to the project, and the tone of council’s discussions shifted.

Now, every aspect of the city’s 50-plus year partnership with the humane society is being reexamined.

“I want to say I personally support the humane society and hope others will, too,” Councilman Turner Perrow said during a discussion last Tuesday.

“But I just do not believe it’s the purpose of the city tax dollars to support the humane society.”

Perrow said the city should only pay for the services it’s legally required to offer. “We can’t afford to do anything more.”

The city is required by the state to offer a public pound, a service it currently pays the humane society to provide. But the pound only has to accept dogs, and the dogs can be euthanized after five to 10 days.

The humane society, in contrast, accepts dogs, cats and other animals, including, at the moment, a few ferrets. In 2011, it adopted out more than 1,200 animals.

The humane society is also working to become a no-kill shelter, and succeeded in saving 89 percent of the animals that came through its doors last year — more than half of which were city strays.

But some council members balked at paying more for that higher level of service.

Councilman H. Cary noted the city was never given a say in whether the shelter should transition to a no-kill policy.

“Now we’re being asked to pay more for it,” he said. “That doesn’t wash well with me.”

Cary said he couldn’t support the full level of funding the humane society was seeking.

The humane society’s request has sharply divided council with four members being generally supportive of it and three objecting to the higher price tag it carries.

Those in favor argued working with the humane society was still the cheaper option as the organization provides a valuable service at a lower cost than the city could on its own.

“To not do it would be fiscally irresponsible,” Councilman Michael Gillette said. “And I’m sounding really red [Republican] tonight. If a public-private partnership saves the city money and returns us a better product at a cheaper price, how could anybody who’s fiscally conservative say no?”

Following a long and sometimes testy debate, council elected to issue a request for qualifications to see if any other organizations are interested in replacing the humane society as the public pound.

But a majority of council made it clear they were only agreeing to the measure to soothe the concerns of the minority.

“I’m not really hot on this,” Mayor Joan Foster said. “But if we can bring this body together, that’s always a good thing. I’ll go along with it.”

Humane society supporters, about 25 to 30 of whom were present Tuesday, seemed tired and frustrated by the end of the meeting.

George Dawson, retired Centra CEO and chairman of the fundraising committee for the new shelter, cautioned council that a minimum-only pound would be a “serious departure” from past practice.

“At some point, you’re going to be outside the expectations we think the public has,” he said.

The humane society also has its own standards of compassion to comply with, he added. It will move forward with its new facility whether the city remains a partner or not.

“We want to make sure the record is clear on that tonight for the people who’ve supported the project and the people who may support it,” Dawson said.

If no viable candidates respond to the request for qualifications, city staff will negotiate a new contract with the humane society and bring it back for council consideration.

Both sides continue to hope a mutually beneficial agreement will be reached. Both are also on a clock— the city because it is starting work on a new budget and the humane society because it needs to finalize the design of its new facility.

For her part, Yarbrough said she was confident they could work it out.

“I think we’re going to be able to work out an equitable agreement that makes sense for the city, for taxpayers, for the humane society and for the animals,” she said. “That’s my expectation.”

As a nonprofit program, the humane society will always be the cheaper choice, she said, and in fact it specifically tailored its recent request to ensure the city would still be realizing a savings compared to the cost of operating the pound itself.

“We were trying to be thoughtful,” Yarbrough said. “Even if that’s not how everyone may have felt about it.”

The humane society remains focused on and excited about building its new facility and continuing its no-kill mission, Yarbrough said.

It would not consider reverting back to a euthanization-based operation even if asked to by the city.

“We would never do that,” Yarbrough said, noting that in addition to saving animals brought into the shelter, they are also helping people keep their pets at home by providing free food, help with behavioral training and other support.

“We’re helping pet owners deal with problems instead of just being a dumping ground and never really solving issues,” Yarbrough said. “You tell me what the better service is.”