‘You can’t fight city hall’: Frustrated animal shelter fundraiser calls it quits

Riverhead Move the Animal Shelter will be “closing its doors” after its 50th and final fundraiser in November, founder Denise Lucas announced last night on Facebook.

“I’m done,“ Lucas said in a phone interview this morning. “I intended to do this for two years, it turned into four years and I can’t let it turn into six years,” she said.

Lucas expressed frustration with town officials who she said “dismissed” her plan to have the Pfeifer center in Calverton renovated into an animal shelter by volunteers she recruited from private businesses and labor unions, using materials she said area businesses had agreed to donate.

“I did all the leg work. I handed them everything. I lined up all the labor and materials to renovate the Pfeifer center. Not one town board member followed up on it,” she said.

Lucas delivered a floor plan for the renovation and a contractor to oversee the job in the summer of 2013.

Councilman James Wooten, then the town board liaison to the animal advisory committee — which had been extremely critical of the town’s management of the shelter operation — said he embraced the plan and would be presenting it to the town board. He also said he would follow up with the state Department of Environmental Conservation and the county health department about permit requirements for the renovation.

By then the town had already signed a contract with the North Fork Animal Welfare League to operate its existing shelter on Youngs Avenue and provide animal control services for the town. Under the March 2013 contract, the town pays NFAWL $223,135 per year, plus a cost of living increase of up to 2 percent per year for the succeeding years.

Town Supervisor Sean Walter, in the fall of 2013, advocated building a new shelter at the Pfeifer center in Calverton, at the southeast end of the Calverton Enterprise Park. He proposed to lease the property to the NFAWL, which would also construct a cat shelter at the site, utilizing a donor’s bequest specifically directed for that purpose.

The town subsequently authorized the lease of the site to the organization and last week, Walter and Wooten spoke in favor of a capital campaign by NFAWL to raise the funds it says are necessary to build out its proposed plans for the facility. Lucas was not invited to a press conference at the shelter called by town officials and NFAWL to announce the campaign, nor was she or her group’s efforts acknowledged — an oversight for which NFAWL executive director Gillian Wood Pultz, later apologized.

But the capital campaign announcement and the statement that it will take another two years to get a new shelter built was the last straw for Lucas, who says the renovation could have been done two years ago if town officials had only taken the ball and run with it.

“I don’t need this stress,” Lucas said. The 47-year-old Riverhead resident was diagnosed with cancer late last year. She has undergone surgery and treatments and says her prognosis is excellent. “But you know about stress and health. This just isn’t good for me. I will find another outlet for my volunteerism,” she said.

Walter said this morning it’s too bad Lucas feels that way. “It’s a shame,” he said.

The town has hired a consultant to pursue the DEC permit required under the state’s Wild Scenic and Recreational Rivers Act, he said. He said the town is waiting for the design drawings from NFAWL.

Lucas said she and her group have raised almost $200,000. A portion of that money went toward creating and outfitting two dog parks in Riverhead, one at at the town’s park in Calverton and another at Stotzky Park. The group currently has more than $80,000 on hand, which its attorney will disburse to the town for improvement of town-owned facilities, Lucas said.

She said RMTAS will post an accounting of its fundraising and expenditures on its website. The organization’s lawyer, Laura Dunathan, of the Riverhead law firm Twomey, Latham, Shea et al is preparing a statement, she said.

Lucas said she wants to make it clear she and her board members have no ill will towards the NFAWL, whose “great work” for animals she supports. She recently adopted a dog from the organization and RMTAS board member Lindsay Reeve adopted two dogs from NFAWL.

“I’m not bashing NFAWL or anyone else,” Lucas said. “I feel we’ve done as much as we can with the animal shelter.”

“You can’t fight city hall,” she said.