The Columbia Board of Aldermen, citing citizen concerns about the Columbia-Marion County Animal Shelter is looking to for a citizen board to recommend actions and seek funding for the facility.
Several volunteers met with county officials recently to discuss concerns about the county-owned facility. The city handles the day-to-day operations and Marion County owns the building and pays the utilities.
“If we could get a group of people to be on a board to help with the animal shelter, they might help with volunteers, they may help with fundraisers or whatever,” Ward 4 Alderman Mike Smith said. “We’ve got people that would do it and if this board thinks it is a good idea, I think we should do it.”
City Attorney Lawrence Hahn said it was legal to set up a board to help the city govern the animal shelter.
“It would be under your parameters,” he said. “You would determine who and how many and what they are going to do.”
Smith said there had been a great deal of interest in the animal shelter recently.
“We’ve got a lot of concerned citizens,” he said. “If we could get a half dozen that would want to get in there and work on it, it would be great. This would be more official than just them volunteering. I think the whole community would look at it as not just what we see, but what they see as far as the needs.”
Smith offered to speak with some of the volunteers and people in the community that had shown interest in the facility.
Ward 3 Alderwoman Anna Evans asked Smith to have members of the group that approached the county board with concerns to come address the city board.
“We want the city and county to get together and work on this,” she said. “I know there were some from the city and some from out in the county.”
Smith said when he heard about the efforts of the group he wanted to get them together and let them serve and help seek grants and even attend training.
“I would love to take them all a trip to Louisiana like we did before and let them see what can be done,” he said. “A lot of this whole thing has been a misunderstanding, for example the lack of prisoners helping at the shelter as they did before. We didn’t pull them, the state did.”
The board agreed and Smith will talk with potential volunteers and encourage them to attend a future meeting.
