Animal shelter manager Rachel Parris is resigning Friday. But the work she started won’t quit.
The rescue programs will stay. The dog-walking will stay. Even the post of shelter manager, which was endangered by budget cuts last year, will continue to be filled.
“At first, it looked really bleak,” shelter volunteer Connie Coleman said in an interview last week. “But tonight, for the first time, Jen (chief volunteer Jen Meier) sounded positive.”
“I’m feeling much better,” Meier agreed.
Lt. Pat Ford of the Emporia Police Department, Parris’ supervisor, said that things may slow down a bit until a new manager is hired. That could take four to seven weeks, he said.
“We plan on doing all the programs Rachel has started,” Ford said. “But we may have to put some on the back burner or slow down until we get someone else hired. But we’re planning on maintaining business as usual.”
Parris said she plans to go on to veterinary school and she is glad that things have worked out as well as they have. One of the reasons she initially turned in her resignation earlier this month, she said, was the apparent lack of support for the shelter by some city employees.
“I think they think we’re kidding when we say how hard we work down here,” she said. “The public has been wonderful about support, but ‘thanks for everything’ only goes so far.”
She said that she preferred not to get into specific issues.
“I don’t want there to be any animosity or hard feelings,” she said.
Meier agreed that support was sometimes an issue.
“I have seen support from staff members out there be not as good as it could be,” she said. “Not to bad-mouth, but if volunteers are willing to help and not get paid, we should be getting respect for what we do.”
A lot of the shelter’s future may depend on how active the next shelter manager is. Parris frequently spent a lot of her off-hours working with Meier to find animal rescue groups and get a dog or cat to them. One trip last weekend took the two to Auburn, Neb.
“It’s hard to find someone like Rachel who is willing to hold on to animals who may be there longer than three days,” said Meier, referring to the minimum amount of time the shelter in required to hold an animal before euthanizing it. ‘I just want to do everything we can until we’ve exhausted all of our options. That’s all I ask. If they’re in a shelter, they deserve a fair chance.”
There are still concerns, of course. The shelter has never had quite enough people or quite enough money. Right now, in addition to the shelter manager, the city has one full-time animal control officer and one half-time animal control officer.
“There are a lot of things we could do if we had more people,” Ford said. “We do the best we can. The dream is to have the shelter manager, a full-time assistant and three animal control officers. Then we’d be in business.”
That would be the equivalent of adding 2.5 animal control officers to the force, Ford said. According to the city administration, that would cost an additional $78,836 per year.
Volunteers help, but there’s always more work than hands.
Still, things have happened. One of the best examples is the dog-walking program, which gets the shelter dogs out for a little exercise four nights a week and draws a large number of volunteers.
And of course, there are the rescues. When that program started in mid-2005, seven animals from the shelter were placed with rescue groups. In 2006, that jumped to 50 animals.
“I’m going to take it over because we don’t want it to end, but I’m definitely going to need help with it,” Meier said.
Three days remain until the transition starts. And while the signs look good, Coleman is still waiting to see what happens.
“I don’t know what the future of this is going to be,” she said. “I hope it’s positive. I want it to be.”