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ROOSEVELT — Roosevelt Mayor JR Bird took to Facebook this week to address community concerns about staffing and conditions at the Roosevelt Animal Shelter, days after the city announced it was temporarily closing the shelter to the public to conduct an investigation.
The mayor's post came after resident Charlee Hays claimed on Facebook that the city had drastically reduced the shelter's budget and voiced concerns about staff hours and shelter policy.
In his post, Bird said "a great deal of misinformation has been circulating" about the animal shelter. "I immediately began looking into what had been shared" in Hays' post, he said, "in an attempt to educate myself and address the alleged issues."
Hays, whose daughter works at the shelter, said in her post that shelter employees weren't being given nearly enough hours to sufficiently care for all the animals.
Bird said the city was trying to reduce the number of average weekly hours worked down to 92 after they had increased steadily from fiscal year 2017 to 2020, ballooning from about 96 hours to more than 147 hours a week. That increase caused the shelter to go over budget by more than $45,000 in fiscal year 2020, Bird said. The city elected this fiscal year to decrease the shelter's budget, but most of that decrease can be explained by the elimination of the city's dog catcher position, he said.
City officials met together last week to discuss community concerns about the shelter, Bird said, but ran into a stumbling block when discussing an animal rescue organization that frequently works with the shelter.
"What came to light in that meeting was that nobody really understood the relationship between Furever Buddys, the rescue, and Roosevelt city, and what was going on there," Bird told KSL.com Friday. "Once it started to come to light how they'd been running for quite some time, there were several concerns between others in the group ... of the funds being comingled, and those types of things."
Those concerns caused the city, on the recommendation of its attorney, to temporarily close the animal shelter to the public and place several staffers on administrative leave pending a third-party investigation. Hays said four staff members are on leave.
In the past two weeks, a great deal of misinformation has been circulating about the Roosevelt Animal Shelter. I have...
Posted by JR Bird Roosevelt City Mayor on Wednesday, August 26, 2020
Bird said the Duchesne County Sheriff's Office will handle the investigation unless any conflict of interest is determined.
Melisa Stevenson manages the animal shelter and also founded Furever Buddys. "Therein lies some of the potential conflict," Bird said.
In a text Friday, Furever Buddys said it cannot comment on the matter due to the investigation.
Hays said she feels the city's announcement of an investigation has painted shelter employees, including her daughter, in a negative light without cause. "They make it look like these girls are doing something wrong," she said. "It's ruined their reputations."
Hays said she met with city leaders, including the mayor and interim city manager Ryan Clayburn, and that "the only thing they found wrong was that Melisa was using the animal shelter to store some of her stuff." Hays said Stevenson had been given permission to do so from Police Chief Rick Harrison, whose office oversees the shelter.
Bird said city leaders have "no belief" there was bad intent behind Stevenson's actions. He said investigating the shelter is something he "would rather not have done," but said it was required "because it had to do with public funds."
Clayburn did not return a request for comment; Bird said Clayburn was out of the office Friday.
Bird told KSL.com he hopes to resolve the investigation "as soon as we possibly can."
"Those gals are awesome," he said of the shelter employees on leave, "so, the quicker the better."
He said the city will increase the shelter's employee hours back to 100 or more and that, barring proof of impropriety, he anticipates the shelter and Furever Buddys will continue to have a good working relationship. Bird's Facebook post says in the future there will "need to be policies, procedures and operating agreements put in place" to avoid the appearance of a conflict.
Roosevelt residents like Hays have raised other concerns about the shelter, but Bird says most such problems have already been resolved or are being exaggerated. He acknowledges at least 15 kittens have died this year due to distemper, including four recently (Hays said she offered to care for the four sick kittens herself but was turned down). The number is higher than normal, but Bird said it appears to be simply a bad year for the highly lethal disease. "People want to put a negative light on that," he said, "especially in this type of situation." He said the kittens "were getting the best care we could possibly give."
He also pushed back on perceptions that the shelter is "high-kill," writing that no animal there "has ever been euthanized for reasons unrelated to illness or injury."
He said the city has no intention to permanently close the shelter, as has been feared.
On a more practical level, Hays told KSL.com the city also underpaid her daughter without her knowledge, promising $9 an hour before bumping that down to minimum wage. Bird said he and Clayburn moved to resolve that issue and provide back pay as soon as they became aware of it, though Hays believes the problem was only solved because she took it public and because she found her daughter's new hire paperwork — which, she said, had the $9 figure crossed out with "minimum wage" written over it.
Bird said it appears a previous city employee crossed out the $9 figure.
In conclusion to his Facebook post, Bird wrote city leaders are "appreciative of the issues being brought forward, and are working diligently to make the appropriate corrections."
"It is unfortunate that things were overlooked to the point that it took a situation like this to motivate positive changes and I take some responsibility for that and apologize for my oversight," Bird wrote. "Please understand that this is a painful process for all involved and all are desirous to get everything running better than ever, quickly."
Animal shelter supporters like Hays are planning a rally to begin at the city administration building starting Saturday at 9:30 a.m.
