City Council approves $50,000 grant - with conditions

Article
By Nicholas Beadle

The Jackson City Council approved a $50,000 donation aimed at pulling the Jackson-Madison County Humane Society out its crumbling headquarters on Tuesday - but only after a bit of wrangling.

In a sprawling debate, councilmen tried to stitch and sew more strings onto the grant, which would match funds from the county to aid the group's move from a cracking, partially sinking building on Paul Coffman Drive to a new home on Quaker Oats Drive.

But when the resolution was approved 7-1, all that stuck amounted to Councilman Maurice Hays' demands that not a cent be ceded to the group before Madison County and an anonymous donor chip in promised cash totaling $150,000. Councilman Harvey Buchanan's request that the building on Paul Coffman Drive revert to city control was also tagged to the resolution.

Councilman Frank Neudecker was the lone "no" vote. Vice Mayor Ernest Brooks II was absent.

Neudecker had said he wanted to review the organization's spending and work before he voted for the resolution. He tried to attach a condition to the donation that the Humane Society take a councilman and county commissioner onto their board. He volunteered for the job.

After the meeting, Neudecker said he had reservations with how the money was going to be spent. He said he is a Humane Society donor.

He said that given the support the Humane Society has received in getting the cash from the council, the group could easily collect $100 donations from a 1,000 people to raise funds.

"That's lunch money to some people," Neudecker said. "There needs to be a stricter guideline in there."

The group's president, Shanie Murchison-Garcia, did agree with Councilman Randy Wallace to help guide the council in crafting a law requiring pet owners to spay and neuter their animals.

But she said other suggested agreements weren't feasible. Councilman Danny Ellis had wanted a guarantee that the group would start a discounted spaying and neutering service, but Murchison-Garcia said that she could not promise the service because it would take the support and donated time of veterinarians to pull it off.

A handful of vets, though, have shown support for such a program, she said.

Ellis' push was tagged as a recommendation, and he voted "yes." He said Tuesday afternoon that he hopes the group follows through with the program he suggested, through vouchers or other means.

"I'm confident they can provide some kind of relief for low-income families," he said.

Humane Society leaders said they were excited about the grant, which, along with $50,000 from the county, shores up the terms of an anonymous donor's $100,000 grant.

"The animals of this county and the people that support them got what they asked for today," Murchison-Garcia said.

Lynn Caldwell, the Humane Society's fundraising chairwoman, said the group would begin a campaign this fall to secure the money needed to buy and remake the $255,000 property.

Caldwell told the council that voting down the resolution could have doomed hundreds of animals.

"Please stop and think if you could sleep tonight if your will let (those animals) die," she said.