Hi Tor Animal Shelter To Receive $500,000 From New York State

ROCKLAND COUNTY, NY — The Rockland County Department of Health has won a $500,000 grant to help replace the current Hi-Tor Animal Care Center in Pomona. The money comes through the New York State Companion Animal Capital Fund, the first state-funded program in the nation to support critical improvement projects at animal shelters.

Hi Tor is the only animal care and control shelter in Rockland, taking in more than 2,500 animals each year. The County of Rockland has traditionally provided some funding to and made county facilities available to Hi Tor for animal control and care. But the shelter has suffered for years from overcrowding and underfunding, in a facility basically unchanged since 1972.

The shelter has been recovering from a self-imposed crisis.

It started in November when the shelter manager, Michael Santucci, announced he was leaving work to go to Rockland County Executive Ed Day's office to protest the board's actions and inactions, including work conditions. The nonprofit's board called it job abandonment. They fired Sanducci on the spot. Two other staff members quit in protest.

That gave the board an operational crisis on top of its personnel crisis. The following weekend, the board compounded its problem. After what it dubbed a massive clean-up by volunteers, the shelter had a massive outbreak of ringworm.

Debbie DiBernardo, president of the Hi Tor Board of Directors, blamed the former staff. But opponents of the board said ringworm is a constant problem for feral and shelter cats, handled by proper separation and cleaning routines which had been followed by the previous staff and volunteers. They said the board caused the problem when it took control after the firing and shifted cats, bedding and cages around in the shelter without taking the ringworm into account.

While the Hi Tor board blamed the departed staffers for all the operational problems, former board president Sharon Needleman said they had failed after the shelter had been made efficient.

Moving forward, the plan is to build a new shelter on county-owned land with better enclosures, surfaces, drainage, air quality, lighting, and noise control.

The county will pay for most of it.

In January 2018, Day signed a resolution, passed with the support of the Legislature, to bond $1.2 million to finance the construction of a new building for the Hi Tor Animal Care Center. This money combined with $350,000 from Hi Tor's fundraising and $500,000 in state grants means a new $2,050,000 facility would be built in Pomona on the existing animal shelter site.

County officials and Hi Tor officials said that plan is progressing. The shelter board expects a needs assessment report from consultant Shelter Planners of America early in 2019.

The shelter will continue to be privately run, under contract with the county and municipalities for whom it handles strays.

SEE: County Lends Dilapidated Building To Troubled Animal Shelter

PHOTO: Hi Tor/ Kim Tran