Reality check

I love Daisy Damskey. And I love her grandmother’s wisdom that everyone is entitled to his/her own opinion, but no one owns the facts. Well, here are the facts:
First, contrary to Daisy’s statement that the “board was clear and transparent,” regarding the “building overrides and project management issues,” the board was anything but transparent at its last public meeting. No questions were answered at that time, and the most important of them remain unanswered, despite repeated promises of transparency. For that reason, and seeing no other recourse, since the board has foreclosed the public from its meetings, concerned community members, including former volunteers and donors, asked the city council for help. No one carried torches or pitchforks to the council meeting, ala a Mel Brooks movie – just heavy hearts and loads of exasperation.
Second, belying Daisy’s contention that the shelter Director was hired “to oversee shelter management while the board handled the financial goal setting responsibilities in sustaining and growing the organization,” the Director took credit at the aforesaid, public meeting for bringing the shelter operations from a $250,000 deficit to an $80,000 surplus within one year’s time, reportedly due in part to her fundraising efforts. Wasn’t the Director originally hired to fundraise not only to sustain operations, but also to complete the building project? Wasn’t her salary raise allegedly justified in part by her reported success in securing donor funds? Now she’s hired a professional fundraiser at a cost of over $60,000 to relieve her of that duty. So, she is being paid approximately $120,000 per year for the sole duty of managing the shelter, with a staff of only 7 or 8 people. For a quick reality check, our police chief makes about $10,000 more than that per year.
Third, the perceived “volatility and anger” isn’t coming from “a few volunteers.” This groundswell of concern comes from scores of us within this community and encompasses both current and former volunteers, former donors and those of us who, on general principal, demand that an animal shelter doing business in our name do it with the kind of honesty and integrity that would make repeating promises of transparency, closing board meetings to the public and forcing volunteers to sign an agreement containing anti-disclosure and anti-disparagement clauses, unnecessary. No matter how “standard” these practices are claimed to be, if they’re truly necessary, the organization is in deep trouble.
Fourth, the Director was hired despite refusing to sign a standard waiver allowing her former employers to be interviewed without threat of a lawsuit. There is no excuse for hiring anyone under such circumstances. Nevertheless, she was hired. And now, the same Director, who refused to sign a background waiver on her own behalf, demands that prospective volunteers sign a waiver agreeing to submit to background checks at a moment’s notice and at her whim.
Fifth, with the board’s complicity, a conscientious, much-loved, eleven-year, shelter employee, whose job meant more to her than my words can convey, was fired. If I have to explain why doing so flies in the face of this community’s core values, then the reasons will never be understood. And anyone who attempts to justify that action with some callous excuse citing “the bottom line,” is so far beyond the pale of humanity, that s/he should never be entrusted with life and death decisions concerning helpless animals.
No amount of statistical manipulation or public relations spin can bridge a credibility gap this wide, no matter how much the board pays its consultants and no matter how many well-meaning, yet poorly informed folks may try.
Toni Lisoni is a Healdsburg resident.