A crowd of members and prospective members listens during the annual general meeting of the Lincoln County Humane Society. Bullet News photo by Annie Silvester.
ANNIE SILVESTER/Bullet News
ST. CATHARINES ? About a hundred people showed up at the Lincoln County Humane Society Wednesday night for an Annual General Meeting that was anticipated to officially accept new board members as well as discuss key issues like the shelter becoming no-kill.
The exceptionally large group which included some 50 people seeking new memberships was largely in response to a public appeal by individuals like St. Andrew?s Councillor Mat Siscoe, who forwarded a no-kill policy motion in council. He indicated that folks needed to apply for membership and get involved to affect change at the shelter that currently sees more than 70% of its healthy animals euthanized.
Get involved they did as they packed to overflowing the small room allocated for the meeting on fourth avenue. But anticipation, turned to confusion turned to outrage as it became apparent there would be no new members accepted that evening.
The first signs of trouble happened when vice-president of the Board of Directors Thomas Manney stepped out from behind closed doors to announce to the crowd that lawyers were present and advising that the Annual General Meeting to be held afterwards at the First Canadian Superstore be open to members only as ?the Humane Society is a ?private corporation. ?
With so many new hopeful members present who had filled out the extensive application form and paid their $50 fee, it became apparent that the evening was going to take on a different twist.
Manney disappeared again behind closed doors as the crowd waited another half hour at which point he announced that all new memberships had officially been deferred that evening.
Manney spoke to Bullet News about it.
?The board did meet, absent from the members of the public here. A vote was held. A motion was made that we consider all new memberships this evening but the vote did not carry.?
When asked why membership was deferred when such a large group of volunteers would go out of their way to support the well-being of the animals Manney said it would ?not do the Board any good right now for me to speak of that.?
Hopeful members had their opinions about the situation however. One of them, Dr. Brad Davis, a professor of marketing at Wilfred Laurier University and owner of many animals, felt strongly about the situation.
?This is just Board politics. They?re in a siege mentality. I sort of anticipated that they would likely do this just in terms of trying to restrict membership. This is the most restrictive Humane Society in the province in terms of restriction on membership. It is the only society in the province where you have to be nominated by a board member and it?s a very standard tactic to avoid board members who are for change accumulating too many member votes.?
Davis says in his opinion this just continues the cycle of the Board being allowed to vote in members who advocate the status quo.
Overall the mood in the crowd after the announcement was a general state of disbelief that their good intentions to get involved were rebuffed.
After it became apparent new membership was not going to occur the crowd moved on to the official AGM to be held at the superstore.
With the tensions high from the previous meeting, member hopefuls chose to attend although it seemed apparent they were not welcome as an announcement was shortly made upon arrival that people would have to leave due to fire code violations.
Angry attendees yelled out to see a copy of the fire number restrictions which was claimed to be 49 . Another suggested everyone meet in the parking lot where everyone could stay.
After much back and forth yelling and what seemed to be a great deal of stalling, the meeting was adjourned with absolutely nothing accomplished on behalf of the animals, the supposed common thread that brought everyone together in the first place.
Board of Directors President Anne Davidson spoke to Bullet News after the AGM and commented on some of the events of the evening saying ?we are very excited about the fact that people are finally taking an interest in the association. This room had traditionally been used for the last couple of meetings and we usually get between 5 and 13 members attending so there are a lot of empty seats and there was no reason ahead of time to expect this kind of number.?
As far as the deferral of the new memberships Davidson said that they could all still be accepted eventually in due process.
?That is our practice. We?ve never approved members before an AGM. We traditionally approve any renewals and defer all new memberships and of course particularly tonight because it was an unusual situation where we had nearly 50 new members come out.?
To conclude the evening, although the meeting had been adjourned it was announced a presentation from the OSPCA would still occur for members about the new spay and neuter clinic at which point most attendees filtered out, exasperated at the turn of events of the long and uneventful evening.
Please watch Bullet TV today for video coverage of the event.
Source: http://www.bulletnewsniagara.ca/2012/10/18/st-catharines-membership-controversy-swirls-during-lincoln-county-humane-society-agm/
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