NEWPORT—The Friends Animal Shelter of Cocke County published a statement on Facebook and sent a letter to Mayor Crystal Ottinger saying they will not be renewing a contract that expired on June 30. The no-kill animal shelter, which has taken in more than 2,250 cats and dogs since beginning their contracts with the county, said in their statement that the county’s recent refusal to increase their annual budget by $11,000 to meet the rising costs of sheltering the animals played a role in the decision.
However, in Thursday interviews with The Newport Plain Talk, Friends Animal Shelter board member Alison Chiaradio and her husband Bob said pressure from the county to begin euthanizing animals also factored into their decision.
In every sheriff’s report involving an animal that gets picked up, deputies write that they delivered the animal to Friends Animal Shelter, where an after-hours run is provided to the county, as well as mandatory spots to be left open should the county bring more. They are extending their service to the county by one month to give officials a chance to find a new shelter before the end of July.
Alison said that last week, on June 24, Bob received a text from Commissioner Forest Clevenger suggesting the county is picking up too many animals for the shelter to continue maintaining its no-kill status.
The text read: “Just my opinion maybe the no kill just isn’t possible with the number of animals we are getting.”
She said that is when they knew it was time to let the county go.
“We’re okay to part ways, because their direction is something we can’t go to,” Alison said. “We just can’t go there. It was an easy decision once we heard that.”
The Friends Animal Shelter, which is a nonprofit organization, is being renamed to Smoky Mountain Humane Society, and they will continue to serve residents of Cocke County, without county funding and without the contractual stipulation that they be able to take in dogs from county Animal Control Officers.
Friends Animal Shelter Vice President Sara Kenney said she and her organization – about 12 employees, not counting leadership – want to continue to educate. She said they will continue to advocate for spaying and neutering pets, as well as vaccinating animals.
“Recently we’ve had comments from the CLB that the no-kill shelter isn’t working, suggesting that we needed to move toward the kill shelter,” she said. “We weren’t ready to do that, at all.”
Kenney said they are optimistic about the future, and that their organization has enjoyed overwhelming public support, so the loss of county money – while daunting – is not a threat to the organization.
The same people will continue operating in the same way, from the same building where they have always been. Only now, they are not beholden to the county and the county must find another way to hold cats and dogs picked up by ACOs.
Alison said the mission of their shelter is more important than county money.
“It doesn’t give us happiness,” Alison said. “This is not any kind of joy for us, because I don’t like the thought of what they might do, but this is what we had to do to protect the animals in our population. We will still help the community and the animal overpopulation, still, but now it can be at our own pace without them demanding so much from us, and then not even funding us properly to do it.”
For just $138,000 per year, Cocke County has received, in exchange, a facility that costs more than $290,000 annually. For less than half of the total operating cost, the county has enjoyed a clean, humane animal shelter where strays and unwanted pets are safely housed, fostered, fed and treated with dignity and respect. Sometimes they are transferred out of county, covered by the operating costs.
Their request for $11,000 in additional funding was not enough to outrun inflation, but was denied anyway, their statement says, because a commissioner said they received enough last year.
A tour of the facility revealed cats living together comfortably, separated by age, with windowsills to sun on, and clean furniture to crawl around in. The dogs outside, although noisy, are clean and protected from the sun, with parallel runs if they want to leave their kennels and go outside, accessed at will, through individual panel doors. Inside, puppies are washed, separated, and many were standing up against the doors, trying to see out the window, each vying to see who might become their new masters.
The rest is covered by fundraising, as well as costs which are not factored in, such as the approximately $32,000 in veterinary costs and surgeries. While fundraisers are the stated, official main sources of income, the Chiaradios have operated the shelter at great personal expense.
Alison said the additional county money would have been used to transport the animals north, to other shelters, so that Cocke County could continue sheltering animals humanely and without having to kill them.
Clevenger first made the suggestion to begin euthanizing animals during a March 2021 meeting of the Public Safety Committee, when the Chiaradios were brought in during an emergency meeting to discuss the shelter, because complaints came in when the shelter was full and could no longer accept unwanted animals. Even now, the shelter is at maximum capacity.
Alison said she asked for guidance after the committee did not entertain her suggestions for new laws.
“I go, ‘Where do you want us to put these animals? I mean we have 43 runs. It’s simple math. Where do you want us to put it?’” Alison said. “He goes, ‘Just bring them around the back of the building, and just shoot them.’ I said, ‘That is very caveman, and we’re not doing that.’ This is the mentality we’ve been dealing with.”
Another witness said Clevenger used the words “put a bullet in them.”
In a text to The Newport Plain Talk, Clevenger said the $11,000 still would not have been enough, a reality that the Chiaradios and office managers at the shelter agree with.
“The $11,000 would have fixed nothing and we would have the same problem overcrowding,” Clevenger writes. “I personally have donated hundreds of dollars. But unfortunately they don’t get enough funding to operate as a no-kill shelter.”
Alison said that during the March 2021 meeting she had been trying to explain to the committee that the solution to unwanted pet population is not euthanasia, but spaying and neutering.
“We have to educate the community and offer free spay and neuter, and maybe this will help our shelter in some way with not being so full,” she said. “That’s when Forest said, ‘No, you just go around the back and you shoot ‘em.’ He was trying to be funny, but it wasn’t funny to me.”
Alison said although the board does not get paid, they take their jobs seriously. She said they are passionate about the shelter.
“We’d just got done working a full day, and then going over there to explain ourselves,” she said. “I asked them, ‘What can we do? Our way is doing this,’ and they were like, ‘It’s not our problem, it’s yours.’”
Now, she says, it is the county’s problem.
She said Clevenger had asked them at the March 2021 meeting to come and talk about what new laws could be put on the books. She described him as hopeful.
“I said one of the laws I would like is maybe we could just say you have to spay and neuter your pets. You have to vaccinate your pets,” she said. “They just laughed, like, ‘That’s insane.’”
During that meeting, Bob Chiaradio extended Clevenger the benefit of the doubt that he was only joking.
“It was probably tongue-in-cheek, to be – you know, the way he is sometimes – to be outrageous in his comments, but it really wasn’t appropriate for that kind of meeting,” Bob said. “I’m not telling you we actually believed he suggested that, but he actually said it in an open meeting.”
The shelter currently controls 160 animals. Alison said on average they have been taking in between 84 and 90 animals per month since last year. On the last day of their contract with the county, the shelter was at full capacity, with signs up informing people they could not take in anymore animals. To combat overcrowding and take in more pets, she said the shelter has been putting animals in foster care to help with overcrowding. Bob said they provide food to the foster families helping out.
Alison said it is a relief to no longer have to answer to the county, but it is also an anxious time as they continue their mission protecting the county’s animals.
“We know how people feel about us. They want a no-kill shelter in this county,” she said. “We have over 13,000 followers, and they’re not all from here, either. They support us and they don’t even live here.”
No dates have been announced yet, but a county meeting is expected to take place mid-July to address the need for a new county animal shelter.
