Money Biggest Worry For Future Of White Co Shelter

A local volunteer said he does not believe a non-profit could financially take on the challenge of running the White County Animal Shelter.

County Executive Denny Wayne Robinson floated the idea of a long-term plan to put the shelter’s operations into the hands of a non-profit. Robinson said the group could better oversee the day-to-day operations, with a portion of the funding coming from the county. Volunteer Steve Kunze said he worries about the money.

“It’s a possibility, but it would have to come from more of a corporate kind of sponsorship, through like a large pet food company for example,” Kunze said. “Or some other larger corporation that could step in and take over some of that, but I just don’t see anything locally that would be able to absorb the impact of, the financial impact of that shelter.”

Kunze said the shelter currently receives funding from the county as well as donations and support from fifteen to twenty consistent volunteers as well as the local non-profit Pals of the Pooches.

He said the best solution for the problems at the shelter would be to establish and enforce new laws designed to hold pet owners responsible for what they do with their animals.

“We see a lot of people who just don’t care for their pets just dump them out and leave them behind when they move and things like that,” Kunze said. “Irresponsible breeding. People trying to make a quick dollar on breeding dogs and selling them.”

Kunze said he thinks that having a new non-profit run by a board would face the same struggles that the active volunteers are already dealing with.

“There’s a lot of volunteers who have been attending county commission on a regular basis more actively in the last probably eight months, and so far, you know, none of that has paid off for making the shelter situation better as far as taking care of the dogs out there,” Kunze said. “So I mean you say board of directors, but I mean you can consider that there’s a group of people in the form of volunteers that are already voicing their opinions about how to better that shelter, and so far we’ve just not got a tremendous amount of cooperation from the county on that.”

In Robinson’s plan, the non-profit would decide how to deal with the issues.

Kunze said the shelter already receives support from the kinds of fundraising efforts and private donations that a new nonprofit would be looking to get.

“I’m not sure, you know, if we could go any further with any more financial support than we currently have unless we got a lot of donations and volunteers to donate more money or something,” Kunze said.