Greg Smith's Post & Discuss

Greg Smith, of Electric City Weblog, has an interesting blog up here

My response to his last post is here below.

Greg, Wolfpack wrote, "Why was the money that went to the HSCC any different as far as an appropriate city expenditure?"

My response, "The HSCC had an Animal Control contract and received payment for services rendered in that capacity. The Animal Foundation has what contract? Their original sales pitch and printed statement was 'to raise funds to build a new shelter for THE HUMANE SOCIETY OF CASCADE COUNTY.'" I don't believe there was a red herring, but that perhaps you were confused as I didn't refer my answer. Sorry.

Your statement, "Support for the Foundation is a stated goal of the Commission. Agree or not, it’s one of their goals. My question is how we got from a goal to a stated dollar amount", must be looked on in the broad perspective as to how the Commission got the goal in the first place. It must be followed closely by how legitimate are the means by which the City & Foundation achieve that/those goals.

Basing skepticism on the current City Officials' behavior as applies to other goals they've set, it is reasonable to expect questioning by the citizens due to the City's less than stellar openness, honesty and civility, as pertains to its various activities and at taxpayers' expense, all of which have clearly been documented to benefit a named few. This entire takeover of the animal shelter and $5,000 donation, then, stands as an extension of another shining example of that same shell game. Dare I name it? OK.

It looks to me as if the Foundation was not raising funds fast enough, for whatever reason, and this merging or interplay of City & Foundation was a means to accelerate the fund-raising process via passing it off to become the taxpayers' burden. There might even have been some bad personal blood on the part of ex-patriot HSCC Board members which helped make this City/Foundation connection viable. This might have been totally acceptable, but for the closed-door and irregular practices exhibited by the City, the Commission and Donna Stebbins and documented by others.

Here is an abbreviated time line that is interesting.

• McLean in her will donates $400k, I believe to be allocated by the lawyer, in 2002 I believe.
  
• It's offered to the HSCC, they state they cannot with the limited manpower do the fund-raising, and to issue it to their fund-raising arm, the Foundation, as seed money.
• The Foundation promotes & maintains it's their mission to raise funds for a new HSCC shelter. They printed it on EVERYTHING.
  
• About a year later, the Foundation shuts up about an HSCC shelter. HSCC gets the Animal Control bid from the city to expire in 2007.
• Two+ years ago, Gloria LaMott, in direct conflict with HSCC Board mandates, makes a public statement to the Trib. She subsequently is off the Board. She is heard to publicly claim she'll "take the HSCC down and destroy it." She is friends with Donna Stebbins who becomes mayor. They then become highly active in the Spay of the Falls.
  
• Land is granted last year to the Foundation for the shelter.
• Early this year, Melanie Lattin, a city employee becomes a certified trainer. Certification will be claimed to be needed at the future Foundation shelter. (Will this job be opened for public application or, because the Foundation will claim it's a private non-profit, will they simply hire Melanie? Which, by the way, is their right to hire without public application as they aren't part and parcel of the City and don't fall under their hiring practices. But, the Foundation and City are certainly running both sides of the coin here. Private non-profit with what seems to be open access to city coffers and perks).
  
• This year, the bid is opened for Animal Control, only two entities bid - HSCC & Police. $330k+ separate their bids w/the Police the high bid & no infrastructure to implement their bid. (The Police Dept. will subsequently use the HSCC property as they are unprepared to take over the Animal Control. I find it interesting that they are the higher bid, are unable to produce infrastructure and the taxpayers are asked for donations to the shelter, YET they are awarded the bid.)
  
• Corky Grove, along w/Stebbins, sit on the bid review committee and award committee. His dept./he submits the Police bid. (I believe there are laws about conflict of interest as apply to bid procedures)
  
• At a Commission Work meeting, documented by Jolley, Stebbins requests the removal of the HSCC board. It is stated 'Stebbins' people are not ready to take over' and run the shelter.
• The Bid Award date is extended by 30 days on June 19th. I speak about all this on June 19th.
  
• The Trib prints 'allegations' against the HSCC which it states are NOT substantiated. (Now the local paper is in on this on the side of the City & Foundation. I thought that journalism was to promote the truth, not unsubstantiated accusations, particularly NOT to slant support toward an action taken by the City. Oh, well, so much for truth in reporting.)
  
• A private power-point meeting takes place between Bob James, the HSCC Board and a few others. James states he will extend "the considerable equity accrued with the Trib and City to halt the negative coverage of the HSCC if it will merge, in its entirety, with us, the Foundation" (that is very close to a direct quote, though paraphrased). HSCC declines. (Entirety. I take this to mean the money that the HSCC has in its acct. which is a fair sized amount & would bring the Foundation much closer to achieving its monetary goal - and please remember that the Foundation was NOT happy with the fact the HSCC did NOT donate to them. My question is: Why would the HSCC donate to its own shelter? Isn't their financial needs issue one of the primary reasons the Foundation began to raise the money FOR the new shelter?)
  
• The Foundation makes a public statement in the Trib that 'another entity' will run the new shelter. (If it won't be the Humane Society of Cascade Cnty for whom they raised the funds for the new shelter, then whom will it be? And please don't try to tell me they don't already know who that will be)
  
• Spay of the Falls merges with the Foundation. (This would be Donna Stebbins and Gloria LaMott. I predict that the Foundation will state that since Gloria has run Spay of the Falls that it gives her the background to run the future shelter & she'll be named Shelter Mgr/Director - of course, this was openly read by me at the June 19th City Commission meeting, so it's nothing new.)
  
• Considerable complaints against the way the City Animal Shelter is handling animals and their treatment of the public takes place from July 4th to present and NOTHING IS DONE ABOUT IT. However, these SAME kinds of complaints were the basis for Donna Stebbins insisting that the HSCC was NOT doing a good job and needed to be removed.
  
• Bob & Cindy James each make a donation to Stebbins' election fund (Yes, I know they have every right under the sun to do so, and they may exercise that right with impunity. But, in this case, it is interesting. Coincidences usually are.)
• The day AFTER the election the $5,000 donation to the Foundation takes place. (Now why is it if this were on the up-and-up, Stebbins, the Commissioners and the City didn't make this donation public and/or give this to the Foundation BEFORE the election? Why wasn't this discussed in a City Commission meeting? Are there not laws to be followed for this type donation/expenditure? Could it be they needed to insure they were in office again? And, why would they need to insure that? If it's a valid City action and a valid donation, who cares who's in office?)
  

I have a hard time believing it as truth that a person or group claiming they care about animals, does nothing when there are complaints on the animals' behalf - especially by the entity, in this case the Foundation, which promotes how much it cares.

Come to your own conclusions, but I don't think it takes a Mensa member to see what's happening here.