I recently contacted Linda Lugo, Director of the Wicomico Humane Society as I was concerned with all the budget cuts, how have they been affected?
Unfortunately they have been hit very hard and the following is her reply to my question.
"Hi Joe,
Forgive my not getting back to you until today but I have been out of town and just got back. As to the budget cuts, we were cut about $35,000 from what we asked for for the fiscal year that started on July 1st. A couple of weeks ago, we were notified that we, along with everyone else, were being cut an additional 15% from our budget which translates to an additional cut of about $44,000. What that has meant is losing 2 animal control officers. We had 3 and now we have 1. We are prioritizing animal calls so that means that we are hoping people will have patience. We will do the best we can to respond to calls as quickly as possible but it is going to take time. This is a big county and with only 1 officer...
The cut has also resulted in changing what calls we can respond to when we are closed. Right now the ONLY calls our officer will respond to is if a dog or cat is injured or sick. I am hopeful people won't call and say the animal is sick or injured just to get the officer out there... if our officer responds and the dog or cat isn't sick or injured (and not an old injury), they will leave the scene and address the call during regular business hours.
It is not our intent to not provide the best service we can but there is little money to go to a lot of places. We are committed to not cutting back on what we do for the animals that come into the shelter but that is expensive.
We are now vaccinating against canine influenza and that is about $8.00/dose and the dogs need 2 doses. We also don't want to not test for heartworms or feline leukemia/FIV but those tests are over $10.00 each... but it is well worth the cost to help ensure that pets adopted from us are as healthy as we can make them.
It is a hard time for everyone and again, we are hoping for the patience and understanding of people.
Please let people know that they can call and talk to me or any one of my staff and we will do all we can to get their problems taken care of as soon as we can.
Thanks Joe. Hope this finds you well.
Linda"
8 comments:
I will put them at the top of my donation list! Thanks for letting us know how hard they were cut.
Yes, let's take the money we would have spent on various things we don't need and donate it to the Humane Society.
we just donated bags of kitty litter last weekend, also they are in need of canned cat and dog food
Cuts there have our sheriffs department responding to the non emergency animal complainants. That means that they are busy and won't be able to respond to criminal or civil comlainant right away and if they do they may be in another part of the county handling the animal complainant Ie barking dog or dog running loose with a collar. Things the sheriffs department should not be doing in the first place. If they do respond to a animal complainant they have no way to transport the animal. Are you going to put a wild dog into a cage in back of the police car that handles their dogs, NO WAY, you don't know what or if the dog is sick.
Cut some of the frills that the elected county officals have like paying for rooms in ocean city or cambridge so they can get drunk and other things at the county expense. Oh by the way who buys the booze. dulaen
anon 107. Talk about non emergency calls being taken, TRY spd. You should see the calls we have to go on. LOL. Got to help ducks cross the street. Got to help old people find their cars in the parking lot because they forgot where they parked. 1 LT is notorious for sending officer on bogus non emergency calls. WE all know who that is. The only 1 no 1 gets along with . The 1 where no 1 wants to work on his squad. The 1 who wears his hat inside the car while hes driving lol
A woman told me today that she wanted to take some kittens to the Humane Society, they are friendly strays and she and her husband can't afford to give them the proper care (there are 5 of them). She told me that in order to give them to the humane society, she would have to pay $15 per cat. Since they can't afford to do that, they are trying to find homes for them, but have to hope for the best. I understand that there have been budget cuts, but charging people to take an animal to the shelter? That will make people really reluctant to rescue and abandoned or stray animal, having to pay to take to a RESCUE shelter. This is absolutely ridiculous.
With only ONE animal control officer it appears the HS won't have many animals to tend to from now on . Looks to me like other staff should have been cut much much more so then dog control!!
Police should not have to respond to NON EMERGENCY CALLS!! Rather , they should be responding to EMERGENCY CALLS & WORKING WITH THE HUMANE SOCIETY!!
WHO in the Heck makes these Laws?
Are they on drugs---or plain stupid? Salisbury residents are in for some FUN TIMES---and God Help the Poor Animals , especially with freezing weather approaching!!! It's discusting!!!
Joe, Looks like your site will be helping more & more animals. For sure the Humane Society won't be.
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