It should have been done when the McKamey Animal Center was built. It would have been ideal 20 months ago when both McKamey and the Humane Educational Society were without directors. Now, it seems imperative.
The time is right for Chattanooga and Hamilton County to have one main animal shelter, education and adoption center.
As it is today, the Humane Education Society (HES), located in an 70-year-old building with inadequate ventilation for animals, clogged sewer lines and a basement that floods when it rains, serves all of Hamilton County and the municipalities within the county with the exception of Chattanooga. The McKamey center, located in a $6.5 million, state-of-the-art facility when it was built in 2008, contracts with the city to serve Chattanooga residents.
HES receives $3.82 per capita from the county and municipalities, while McKamey receives city funding that is more than $9 per capita.
A mother dog and seven puppies are seen inside a kennel at the Humane Educational Society of Hamilton County.On Tuesday, HES officials said they would stop serving Hamilton County if the Hamilton County Commission does not increase its $395,255 in annual funding for the agency in its fiscal 2016 budget. Its future would necessarily be in doubt without the funding, and the county would have to find someone to wrangle its stray and abandoned animals.
The agency has asked for $620,970, a hefty increase but one that would address some of the desperate physical problems with the facility.
A better idea would be for city and county officials to come together and help determine how one facility could serve the entire county.
In a world where optics are everything, the optics of the two independent, nonprofit agencies couldn’t be further apart. Where HES is housed in a dingy brick building with ceilings that are caving in, several nonoperational HVAC units and mold, McKamey offers 26,000 square feet, brightly lit rooms, spacious outdoor play areas and an inviting atmosphere.
HES is wrongly thought of only as the place that picks up stray animals and euthanizes most of them. McKamey is wrongly portrayed as the only zealous savior of dogs from puppy mills, as the only go-to place for the adoption of strays and as a no-kill shelter.
In truth, both attempt to educate the public on pets, take in strays, offer adoptions, spay and neuter, and reluctantly euthanize. Both also must hold fundraisers to add to their bottom lines.
HES Executive Director Bob Citrullo told the Hamilton County Commission Tuesday his agency “cannot do this any longer.”
“The lack of funding [without an increase] has finally caught up to us,” he said.
McKamey, according to Times Free Press archives, operated in the red for a time shortly after it opened following a huge influx of animals and with a downturn in giving during the Great Recession but eventually righted its ship under former Executive Director Karen Walsh.
Two years ago, when both agencies were leaderless, officials related to both didn’t exactly embrace a merger but sounded positive about working closer.
“There is an opportunity for more cooperation between the two shelters,” Dr. Tai Federico, the longtime HES board chairman, said, according to newspaper archives. “What form that will take in the future remains to be seen.”
“I’m up for anything that is going to help,” Karla McKamey-Valadez, a McKamey Animal Center emeritus board member said at the time. “We all need to be together and raise money and raise awareness. We’re all on the same side.”
In fact, whether both agencies are on the same side might be the sticking point, but it is a sticking point that should be worked out. HES has existed locally since 1907 and handled the bulk of city and county animals until McKamey was built, but McKamey was built with two-thirds private money.
Lacie Stone, a spokeswoman for Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke, said she is aware of past conversations on the feasibility of combining the two organizations, but the independent agencies must make their own decisions.
Yet, she said, “if a merger of McKamey and HES is something that the boards and leadership of both organizations wanted to explore, the city would certainly be open to the discussion and provide whatever help and support we could for it to be successful.”
In the past, Chattanooga and Hamilton County have merged their school systems, their landfills, their jails and their emergency services. Now, combining their animal services — slowly and carefully since they are independent of the two governments and in order to minmize hurt feelings and turf battles — makes sense.