Possible site for animal shelter alarms residents

The city has been without a local animal shelter since the one located south of town on Dog Pound Road was closed several weeks ago because of an outbreak of parvo at the shelter.

During a special city council meeting Wednesday night the city council is scheduled to hold a public hearing and consider a resolution approving the city applying for a $55,000 community facilities grant from the U. S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development Agency.

The March 22 special council meeting was scheduled during the Feb. 7 council meeting because of a schedule conflict for Mayor Brian Leonard. Leonard is golf coach for Nevada High School and March 21, the normal day for the council meeting, is the annual spring sports Meet the Players night at the high school.

However, on Monday afternoon, when word spread of the city's apparent intent to list Davis Park as the location for the proposed animal shelter on the grant application, several local residents -- including Christina Davis, whose grandfather, Burrell E. Davis, donated the park to the city in the 1950s -- took it upon themselves to try to stop the city from locating the shelter in the park.

Davis said that she thinks the city needs a new animal shelter, but it should not be located in Davis Park or any other residential area. There are other city-owned sites where it could be located, she insisted.

These efforts appear, at least temporarily, to have met with some success.

Davis Park is located on the east side of Centennial Boulevard, directly south of the Elks Lodge and is the only city park that is open 24-hours and permits overnight camping.

"If there are concerns, we need to slow down," Craig Hubler, city manager, said Monday afternoon.

The city is always sensitive to the neighbors concerns, he said.

"We haven't decided on a location yet," Mayor Brian Leonard said late Monday night.

Hubler said that since the cost of operating an animal shelter is higher than the construction costs, it will be important to have a large volunteer base to make it successful and if the location is controversial it could adversely affect the number of volunteers.

He said that it would take three to six people to operate a shelter, which may cost more than can be generated from fund-raising. This will make a strong volunteer base essential.

Hubler said that a privately owned and operated animal shelter like Wayside Waifs in Kansas City has dozens of volunteers working in various jobs ranging from building maintenance to following up on people who adopt pets to assisting people whose pet is not in the shelter, but is still missing.

Davis said that Hubler told her and her son Brian Hansell during a meeting Monday afternoon, that the city had talked to all of the property owners surrounding Davis Park. However, she said that as far as she could determine the only property owner the city had contacted was Dick Meyers, who is running for the city council and owns the property at the southwest corner of Hickory Street and Centennial Boulevard.

Brian Hansell, who owns property south of the park, said that the city had not contacted him. Hansell recently built two houses on the property and lives in one of them and sold the other one.

Hansell said that he is concerned that an animal shelter across the street will hurt property values in the area.

Davis said that Hubler told her Monday that they were going to bring up the resolution for the grant, as well as the possible location for the shelter, during the Wednesday council meeting.

She said that Hubler told her that the city did not have any other possible locations identified for the shelter.

Davis said that although she has personal objections to using Davis Park for a animal shelter, she also objects to the way she believes the city tried to push this through without the public knowing about it until it was too late.

"The city needs to stop hiding things under the table from the public," she said.

"The public needs to know what is going on with the city and needs to have some way to know if it is worth their time to attend a city council meeting," she said.

"That's what the media is for, to let them know," she said.

Davis said that Burrell Davis, who was a member of the city council, mayor and chief of police, lived on the property that is now Davis Park and established a private park on the property in the 1940s for the children on the east side of town, which was considered the poor part of town and had no parks in the area.

Davis said that in the 1950s, when Burrell Davis sold the park to the city through a third party for $1 and other valuable considerations, he had his house moved to Ash Street.

His intention, she said, was that it remain a park for neighborhood children. She said that he had to sell it through a third party because of his position with the city.