Walter campaign video has animal shelter fundraiser seeing red

Riverhead Move the Animal Shelter founder Denise Lucas is steaming mad about what she perceives as an attempt by Supervisor Sean Walter to derail plans to relocate the town animal shelter to the Henry Pfeifer Community Center in Calverton. Lucas is also irate about a campaign video produced by the Walter campaign in which the supervisor says it’s been his goal to move the shelter.

Lucas said she’s planning to attend today’s town board work session to let the supervisor know how she feels — whether she’s on the agenda or not.

Riverhead Councilman James Wooten, the town board liaison to the animal shelter advisory committee said he asked the supervisor to put the subject of the animal shelter on today’s agenda. But it’s not on the agenda published yesterday afternoon. That won’t dissuade, Lucas.

No one was talking about moving the shelter until she launched the campaign that became the Riverhead Move the Animal Shelter nonprofit organization dedicated to raising funds for that purpose, Lucas said in an interview last week, sitting on the porch of her Riverhead home, where a political sign for Walter’s opponent, Angela DeVito, stands on the front lawn.

In the video, Walter says, “In 2010 we set a goal to privatize the animal shelter, and
in privatizing it a secondary goal was to move it from the location it is up on Youngs Avenue behind a town landfill and a garbage processing plant.”

That’s the claim that’s got Lucas seeing red, because, she says, the supervisor is trying to take credit for political purposes for something he didn’t support until very recently.

In fact, endorsement of the move by the supervisor came well after Lucas had been trumpeting her plan — and began holding a series of fundraisers aimed at financing the cost of a new shelter.

At first, Walter pursued a deal with Brookhaven Town that would have Riverhead’s stray dogs sent to the Brookhaven shelter. He then endorsed privatizing the shelter by entering into an agreement with a private group such as the North Fork Animal Welfare League, as the Town of Southold had done, to run the animal shelter.

Councilman James Wooten had already engaged in discussions with the NFAWL, but no agreement materialized until December of 2012, when Walter announced he’d struck a deal with the organization to take over managing the shelter and providing animal control services in Riverhead.

The town agreed to pay NFAWL $223,135 per year under the three-year deal, plus a cost of living increase of up to 2 percent per year for the succeeding years. The contract which took effect in March.

In an interview on Tuesday, Walter acknowledged “it was never my intention” to build a new shelter until he started talking with NFAWL director Gillian Pultz Wood.

“It was her smile,” he said of Wood. “We were sitting here talking about the shelter and she’s smiling at me and suddenly I heard myself saying, ‘How about moving it to the Henry Pfeifer center?’ and I’m thinking, ‘Now where did that come from?’ and they said it sounded like a great idea,” Walter said.

Lucas, meanwhile, has continued fundraising and securing donations of labor and materials for the Pfeifer renovation project. Builder Richie Cox drew up a concept plan for the project and a host of labor unions and companies have provided Lucas with letters stating their support with donations and volunteer labor.

But Walter says it might make more sense to build a dog shelter and convert the Pfiefer center for use as the spay/neuter clinic and cat shelter the NFAWL is looking for.

“It just makes more sense, since the Pfeifer center is already an office building. It could easily and efficiently be converted to veterinary offices and a cat shelter,” he said. “It’s a lot easier and more cost-effective to build a new building, maybe a metal building, with the indoor-outdoor runs required than to retrofit the Pfeifer center and build a new veterinary clinic,” Walter said in an interview.

A second second building could be constructed next to the Pfeifer center for sheltering dogs. The funding of that construction would come from a payment by the NFAWL for a 99-year lease of the Pfeifer center building, Walter said. The organization has a bequest from a feline-loving benefactor to build the spay/neuter clinic and cat shelter. The town and the NFAWL would essentially trade buildings, under the supervisor’s plan.

Wooten, meanwhile, wants to present the plans to convert the Pfeifer center to the full town board and said he had intended to do so today. He said he asked on Friday to have the subject put on this morning’s meeting agenda.

The councilman says he understands the NFAWL bequest won’t allow the money to be invested in a town-owned property.

Walter says the NFAWL is on board with building the spay/neuter clinic and the cat shelter on the town-owned property where the Pfeifer center sits.

“Gillian told [Walter’s secretary, Carol Sclafani] that she took the conceptual site plan to her board of directors and the board of directors is OK with it,” he said. “Now we have to put it on for a work session discussion. If we can do it this week, we will.”

Walter, an attorney, declined comment on whether the NFAWL’s bequest would prevent the group from using town land, as Wooten argues.

“That’s for them to sort out, not the town,” Walter said. He said the NFAWL has not raised it as an issue. “I assumed it’s something that would have to be approved by the surrogate.”

“My opinion right now is let the North Fork Animal Welfare League build what they think will best work for them, in terms of the site and their bequest.

Referring to Lucas he said, “Hopefully the young lady who’s raising money for the RMTAS will put money into the Pfeifer center to renovate it in a way that works for North Fork Animal Welfare League,” he said. “The young lady doing Riverhead Move the Animal Shelter has not been running things either through the town board or North Fork Animal Welfare League, so we have to try to get that communication to work better,” Walter said.

Photos: RMTAS founder Denise Lucas and Councilman James Wooten at the Henry Pfeifer Community Center in August. RiverheadLOCAL photos by Denise Civiletti