Animal shelter remains open despite resignation of directors
The seven directors of a local animal shelter have resigned over a dispute with the organization’s founder. However, the Noah’s Ark of Fayette County animal shelter remains open, but with a new board of directors.
Last Friday, the founder of shelter, Robin Moore, and all but one of the seven staff members there resigned, claiming that the shelter’s board members lost sight of caring for animals in favor of seeking power.
Then, after a weekend of running the shelter, the seven-member board resigned Monday. After the board’s resignation, Moore and some of the staff members returned to work.
While the shelter again has a staff to take care of the animals, Moore said the ensuing publicity from the organization’s internal problems would only hurt the animals.
“The safe haven (for animals) is marked now,” said Moore, drawing a comparison to the county’s oft-embattled Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals, the organization from which she split last year to form Noah’s Ark. “No one’s going to send donations anymore, and the animals suffer.”
But, according to former Noah’s Ark board member Mary Jo Brownfield, Moore and the shelter employees, through their actions last Friday, showed no concern for the well-being of the animals.
“For people to walk out and leave those animals like that and just assume that other people are going to take care of them shows a lack of responsibility,” said Brownfield.
The shelter houses about 25 dogs and seven cats.
Noah’s Ark was incorporated in June 2002 in response to the SPCA’s closing a month earlier. The SPCA closed its doors after a jury decided the shelter was liable for $96,000 in personal damages. A county couple filed suit against the SPCA after shelter employees illegally entered their farmland in April 1993.
Moore was a part of the SPCA but quit before the shelter closed.
Shelter manager Chris Vibostak said the employees quit last week because they felt the board members looked down on them.
Moore said she left on her own accord and did not ask the staff members to follow her, but all but one quit alongside her. She said she did so because she was tired of board members dragging her into petty arguments.
“I felt I was in the way, so I stepped down,” Moore said.
Board member George Milne, however, said that Moore split with the board when she tried to turn Noah’s Ark into a “dictatorship” run by her. Milne claimed that Moore refused to sit down with the board to establish bylaws, using her own rules to run the shelter.
“The last thing we wanted to do was get rid of (Moore). She is the one who started the place,” said Milne. “But we have to have accountability to the public. (Noah’s Ark) cannot be run as a private business. This is not in keeping with the way non-profit boards are organized.”
Moore vehemently denied acting as a dictator and said that instead she preached teamwork to the board, even in her resignation letter.
“I kept on them every meeting to get the bylaws written,” she said, noting that board members did little to accomplish that task.
Although a board is necessary in a non-profit organization, Moore said a board of directors inevitably leads to a “power play” in which members lose track of their mission. That is the case in this situation, she said.
Moore and Vibostak also said it was not until the board actually had to run the shelter and see what all went into the process that they decided to resign. Both claimed that several board members rarely came to the shelter to help.
The Rev. Dr. George Hickock cited disorganization as one of the reasons the board members resigned.
“We (weren’t) willing to work without more structure and accountability in this field. I think the township supervisors need to review their contracts with Noah’s Ark, because there is no structure,” he said.
Former board member Lori Coffman echoed his sentiments.
“It is very frustrating when you work so hard and you put so much of your time into something and you think that everything is going well, and the rug is pulled out from under your feet,” said Coffman.
“We all had so many ideas and so many goals we were working on … and we thought we were all working together,” said Brownfield.
Moore said a new board of directors already is in place to run the shelter. She declined to name the new members, saying she did not want them brought into the publicity created by the former board’s resignation.
Both Moore and Vibostak questioned why the former board felt the need to approach the Herald-Standard. The board sent to the newspaper a letter announcing the resignation, signed by Brownfield, Milne, Coffman, Hickock, Jani DiMarco, Daniel C. Shimshock and Wendy Wilson.
Although the events of the past week have been trying, Moore said stressed that the shelter is operating as always.
“I will continue to do what I believe in, and the shelter will run like business as usual,” said Moore.