After an 80 year run the Hope Humane Society (HHS), formerly the Sebastian County Humane Society, closed its doors for good in 2019.
When the City of Ft. Smith decided to discontinue its contract with the HHS it appeared the end was beginning. This contract provided funding in exchange for animal care and housing services.
However, now that the HHS’s IRS form 990 filings are complete for 2018, it appears that the end may have begun well prior to The City cutting ties.
(As an aside, the form 990s for recent years were filed late and seemed to require the prompting of multiple FOIA requests. Yes, multiple requests were made because the original request was made to the then HHS Board President, Sam Terry.)
The bottom line? Mr. Terry passed along the requests which require a response within three days by state law. However, when the filings were not produced, Mr. Terry did not respond to a follow up email. The filings were ultimately provided a couple of months later by another HHS board member.
This is quite ironic now that he is running for a circuit Judge seat. Hope he’s prepared to rule on the law in a better fashion than he followed the law!
In order to make sense of the spending that the filing revealed, the employee staffing levels and animal census numbers have to be taken into account. So with that said, let’s take a look at the numbers…
During 2018 the shelter housed approximately 500 animals at any given time. Sometimes more and sometimes less. This includes both cats and dogs. During that period the total revenue for HHS amounted to $1.4 million. This equals a little over $115,000 a month.
With roughly 500 animals in house that equals about $230 per animal, per month in income. Seems like it would be feasible to house an animal for a month for $230, right?
Well it depends on how much you spend to do so.
Now granted some of these animals do require medical attention, but at the same time that should be an upfront, one time cost.
So where does all the money go?
Salaries were $836,000. Seems on the high side given that this would equate to an approximate average of 21 full time employees earning $40,000 a year. Sure some would make more and some would make less, but you’d certainly think a person earning $40,000 could take really good care of 25 animals, which would be each employee’s share of the total.
Not sure how the pay scale worked there, but this sure seems a little out of line for an agency that touts the heavy dependency on volunteers to help out.
Next up is the veterinary expenses. A cool $334,000 for the year. Of course a 500 animal census would equate to a lot of animals needing attention from a vet, but for this kind of money you could hire 2 full time vets at $165,000 each.
Then you have the office expenses of $92,715. That’s $7,700 a month. Again, it’s hard to know the details of what all that includes but it certainly isn’t running things on a shoestring. Oh yes and the auto expense of $65,000. That’s north of $5,000 a month. This exercise could keep going, but this begins to paint the picture.
Unfortunately, poor expense control wasn’t the only problem plaguing the HHS. Their strategic direction proved to be terribly wrong. The push to become a “no kill” shelter has been reported on quite well already. However, the decision to borrow several hundred thousand dollars in order to add on to the building and upgrade equipment when future funding from the City was not committed proved to be disastrous.
This lack of expense control combined with poor planning and relations with the City proved to be a toxic recipe. (The City’s role and motivation is the subject of another discussion altogether)
This is all water under the bridge now since the doors have been permanently closed.
However, given that the Humane Society had lasted for so long, it would be a disservice to the community if we didn’t at least try to take a lesson from its failing.
Where was the HHS Board (led by Sam Terry) when it came time to develop a solid strategy and place professional management in place to execute the strategy?
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