Questions surround town animal shelter

A former volunteer at the Hempstead animal shelter said that she paid thousands of dollars for cat disease testing and animal adoption ads out of her own pocket because the facility wasn't doing enough.

A current volunteer said that when town residents wanted stray cats trapped and removed from their property, shelter officials called her to do the job.

There's nothing wrong with public-private partnerships, especially in hard economic times. But why were volunteers doing so much and using their own cash for so well-funded a public shelter?

Who was doing the work? Was it an overgenerously paid -- and politically connected -- staff? Or volunteers who accuse the town of animal abuse?

The town and the Nassau district attorney are investigating. More information will come from the volunteers' lawsuit.

Bring it out. Bring it all out. Because, something was -- still is? -- going on at the facility.

The county branch of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals just concluded its own investigation. The result? "I need direct knowledge and there was nothing I found that I could bring to the district attorney," said Bob Sowers, the SPCA's board president.

Does that mean there are no problems at the shelter? Not at all, said Sowers, noting that he, too, has personally paid for medication for several dogs at the facility over the years.

"I know that shelter and what they need is a no-nonsense, animal-oriented person to kick butt," said Sowers.

A town spokesman, Michael Deery, said the volunteers never raised allegations of animal abuse to town authorities until they were barred from the shelter in October.

Not so, the three -- Diane Madden, Lucille DeFina and Frances Lucivero-Pelletier -- said in an interview.

They said they complained to town and shelter officials for years. They considered conditions so bad that they worked aggressively to push dogs and cats to foster homes and rescue groups for adoption.

"There is no question that we worked to move them," said Madden, who volunteered for eight years.

DeFina, a volunteer for 13 years, said she spent more than $60,000 of her own money on advertising and medicine for animals, including tests for feline AIDS and leukemia.

Deery said the shelter ran ads, too, and that, like many other shelters and rescue operations, it does not routinely test for AIDS or leukemia. "The cost would be prohibitive," he said. Deery said volunteers had the option of spending their money as they wished.

Lucivero-Pelletier, a volunteer for two years who was allowed to return to the shelter after her October ouster, said that town shelter workers routinely would give her cell phone number to residents seeking to get unwanted cats removed from their property.

Deery said the town, until recently, did not have a formal program to trap, neuter and return feral cats to the wild. Now, an employee has been assigned the job.

That's in addition to hiring -- or planning to hire -- two part-time vets, an adoption coordinator, a rescue liaison and an animal behaviorist.

Deery said the town -- still reeling from a 1990s video made at the shelter that recently went viral on YouTube with an off-camera voice heard saying "kill the kitty" -- also is working with a local cat rescue group.

And, Deery said, the town will accept an offer of help from the Humane Society of the United States.

That's a lot of change in a short time for a single shelter, which is also looking for a new director. Which raises yet another question: Why did it take so long for the town to get moving?