Horry County’s Public Safety Director Paul Whitten reassigned two Horry County Police officers to act as the county’s animal shelter’s executive director and director of operations Friday.
County councilman Bob Grabowski told News13 he supported the move to allow the Horry County Humane Society an opportunity to “restructure its operations and leadership.”
The county entered into a contract with the Horry County Humane Society in June 2006 and agreed to pay the HCHS more than $500 million dollars for the next five years to run the shelter.
The contract increases the annual payment to the shelter each year until the contract ends.
HCHS president Kate Philips told News13 in a telephone interview Dec. 31 that the HCHS was “out of money,” despite the fact that the HCHS received a $535, 613 payment from the county in July 2008.
The contract increases the payment to $554,359 in July 2009.
“We're in the process of looking into doing an audit on those funds and we should have some answers for you on that at the January 20 meeting,” Philips told News13 after being questioned about the status of the shelter’s funding.
“It needs to be addressed and Horry County council needs to have the facts brought out before them,” Horry County Councilman Al Allen told News13.
Allen said he wants Whitten and Grabowski to explain to county tax payers why they decided to place two officers at the shelter, “We're putting county employees, paid county employees to do a job that we've already contracted with the Humane Society that they've been paid to do and if the situation warrants that much involvement, then Horry County should violate that contract today and completely take that shelter back over.”
Whitten said the move was to allow the HCHS to reorganize before the county found the shelter in violation of the contract.
Whitten gave the HCHS 30 days to hire an executive director and ordered the officers to run the shelter through the 30 day period.
Allen said he feels there are too many question left unanswered and wants county council to act quickly to investigate the HCHS finances, “If everything is out in the open, nobody has anything to hide. Nobody can dodge anything whatsoever and the people in this county will get the truth like they should have it from their elected officials,” Allen said.
Allen said Thursday he asked the Public Safety Committee to place the shelter issue on the agenda for the Jan. 12 meeting, but committee chair Bob Grabowski suddenly pushed the meeting back toward the end of the month.
Since Grabowski didn’t notify the council within 24 hours of the change, Allen said he requested Grabowski change the meeting back to Jan. 12.
Grabowski agreed to hold the meeting Wednesday at 9 a.m. and also agreed to place the shelter issue on the agenda.
The HCHS board of directors has planned a meeting for Jan. 20, but a time and place have not been posted.
You can count on News13 to update both meetings as they happen.
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