Volunteers in the town of Von Ormy, Texas were reportedly operating a no kill animal shelter. (I could not find any statistics posted online to verify the no kill claim so if anyone has additional info, please leave a comment.) Earlier this week, the city council voted to suspend its animal control program:
The town of Von Ormy has a $4,000 budget for animal control, and for the past two years they have had volunteers work as officers for no pay.
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Michael Suarez, Von Ormy animal control officer said, “Last night the Von Ormy City Council voted 3 to 2 to eliminate animal control.”
At issue – and I had to re-read this article (as well as the one linked above) several times to make sure I was understanding it correctly – were low cost vaccination clinics offered by the non-profit which Mr. Suarez operates called Hope for Dogs. One member of the city council questioned whether the vaccines being used at the events were purchased by the city, with the profits going into the Hope for Dogs bank account. Von Ormy mayor Art Martinez de Vara ordered an audit and found no discrepancies:
He said audits showed that there were more shots used than the city actually paid for and that Suarez’s receipts showed that he was buying 3 to 4 times more inoculations than the city, paying for them out of his own pocket.
So an internal audit showed the volunteer ACO was personally buying 3 to 4 times the number of vaccines as the city in order to get the community’s pets vaccinated at his low cost shot clinics. And to express its thanks, the city council showed him the door.
The city is currently without animal control services.
Um. Yeah. Cause you’re costing us money. Or…something.
Maybe they said “thank you” before shutting it down?
Out of all the bizarre crap that we have read on here this has to be in the running for stupidity of the year. With the end result of a good program like that I can’t make any sense out of their reasoning.
Having worked with my own city government I can almost guarantee that this individual has angered someone on their city council and that person has set about making it impossible for him to continue his work. I wonder who initiated the audit in the first place? I’d love to hear Mr. Suarez take on why this happened.
The citizens need to vote them all out! If Mr. Suarez lives in the city, he needs to run for City Council.
Of all the stupid things. The council should be help accountable for their ridiculous action!
Michael Suarez sounds like a person doing great work. Maybe the city needs to dump the council members and hire Michael Suarez.
Wow…just when you think you’ve heard it all, you haven’t.
sounds like something my county would do…