Feb. 12, 2002 – Hubert Brumant, St. Thomas Humane Society shelter manager, is aware of a pack of wild dogs running loose in one sector of the island, but there's nothing he can do about it.
"It's terrible, but my hands are tied," Brumant said. "I had to lay off the person who is on the road … Once I get the check, we'll employ somebody on the road full time."
The check Brumant referred to is part of the $160,000 the Legislature appropriated in the Fiscal Year 2002 budget more than four months ago to fund public services provided by the territory's three animal shelters. The St. Thomas organization and the St. Croix Animal Shelter are each to receive $75,000, and the St. John Animal Care Center is to get $10,000.
In a Feb. 8 release from Government House, Agriculture Commissioner Henry Schuster was cited as saying the administration "released $160,000 in recent weeks through the Department of Agriculture … As a result, the St. Thomas Humane Society and The St. Croix Animal Shelter received $75,000 each and the St. John Animal Center redeived $10,000."
"Not yet," Schuster clarified Tuesday.
He explained the bureaucratic maze the funds must go through to get to the shelters' bank accounts: "The problem is with the contract between the shelters and the Agriculture Department. The contract is with Property and Procurement right now, and the governor's office is trying to get them to hurry it up." From P & P, the contract must go to the Attorney General for legal checking and thence to the Office of the Governor and back to Schuster's department from where it finally will be sent out to the shelters. Somewhere along the way, there also is a stop at the Planning and Natural Resources Department.
Still, "It could be done in a week," Schuster said.
Meantime, the shelters are struggling to provide desperately needed services without needed funding. No funds were allocated by the government for Fiscal Years 2000 or 2001, Brumant said. "Last year, we received the funds appropriated in 1999, under Gov. Schneider's administration," he said. The shelters have received no funding under the current administration.
Joe Aubain, chair of the Humane Society board, said, "A lot of what we could be doing we're not able to do without the funds. I know there's a process in order for the funds to be released, but when you're given a certain time and you make plans and it doesn't happen …" He noted that the organization had hired an employee to pick up stray animals, but then had to let the individual go for lack of funding.
"We were promised the funds in December, and then told we would get them in January for sure," Brumant said. "I just wish we wouldn't have to go through this."
The private, not-for-profit society operates on a minimal budget of about $300,000. Most of its income comes from the annual Valentine's Day "Doggie Ball," an annual golf tournament, private donations, and proceeds from the shelter's weekly Sunday flea market.
Neither Brumant nor Mary Edwards, director of the St. Croix Animal Shelter, turns any animals away. Each year, they plead their cases with the government, begging for the funding they have been promised. Both shelters contract with the Agriculture Department to provide stray animal pickup, adoption and euthanasia services, and to testify in court cases, supply animal traps, provide for animal licensing and investigate reports of feral animals, such as dog packs, on the loose.
For Brumant, continually faced with not being able to do all the shelter could do to help the islands' animals, it's not a rewarding job. The year before last, he investigated a scene of appalling animal cruelty. Someone had abandoned three dogs, leaving them to die on the ropes around their necks, with no water and no food. "It really gets to you," he said.
All of the shelters have programs to instruct children in the proper care of animals, but these outreach efforts, too, are suffering from lack of funding.
Schuster said his department doesn't receive enough funding to cover its contracts with the animal care organizations. "All I get for my department is $500,000," he said. "After salaries, security, phone and all other things to run the department, I'm left with about $300,000 to run the department all year. If I had to give $160,000 to the shelters out of that amount, I'd be left with $140,000 and we might as well close the department then. If they'd up my budget $200,000 more, I could easily do it. It's not right. It's rough."
Brumant said he doesn't know what the proceeds were from this year's Doggie Ball, held last weekend, or what his budget for the rest of the year will be. But he remained hopeful: "Maybe our funding will come in February," he said.
