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Councilwoman Nowick In The Dog House With Task Force Members
Wednesday, October 7, 2015 at 10:58PM Transparency in Smithtown’s Animal Shelter -
In what should be a surprise but isn’t, three members of the Animal Advisory Task Force created by Councilwoman Lynne Nowick resigned. The task force was created to look into practices at the animal shelter with the goal of increasing adoption and improving quality of life for the animals.
Councilwoman Nowick, liaison to the Animal Shelter, appointed Diane Madden, Elizabeth Stein and Lucille DeFina, hand picking them from the many animal advocates who appeared before the Town Board. The women served for nine months working with the Councilwoman and George Beatty, former director of the Smithtown Animal Shelter.
During the nine months they served, the task force members worked to establish polices and procedures to clean-up and improve the operation of the shelter. There have been successes at the shelter. According to all those involved many of the polices brought forward by the task force were implemented resulting in the shelter being cleaner, record keeping has greatly improved as has medical care for the shelter animals. A change in the Shelter’s name was seen as reinforcement of the Town’s commitment to adoption.
Director George Beatty retired and eight weeks ago a new director Sue Hansen was appointed. With Mr. Beatty’s retirement came a sense that the animal shelter was moving in a new direction.
According to Diane Madden, a major component their work was the hiring of a full time animal behavorist. It is this demand that has lead to the resignations of the three women. All of whom have expressed their anger and frustration and directed it to Councilwoman Nowick whom they say has lied to them.
According to Ms. Madden an animal behaviorist would be responsible for developing programs to ensure that the shelter dogs would get the care and training necessary to become adoptable finding a forever home. The behaviorist would provide shelter, staff and volunteers tools they needed to work with the animals so that the dog would succeed when reintroduced into family life.
All parties agree that a dog, living in a shelter spends too much time in a cage and not enough time being socialized and trained to fit into a family. Proper training teaches a pet how to interact with children, other animals, deal with food issues, leashes and housebreaking. The behaviorist envisioned by the three task force members would develop procedures and programs to encourage and increase adoption for the cats, dogs and birds at the shelter.
Currently the shelter houses eight dogs and sixty cats. Some animals have lived in the shelter for years. The longer an animal remains in a shelter the more challenging it is to find homes for them. A behaviorist, according to Ms. Madden, is the key to improving the adoption rate.
According to Councilwoman Nowick she tried hard but was unsuccessful in finding a way to hire a behaviorist. First and foremost because there is no existing civil service title for a behaviorist and a working out-of-title is not an option. Ms. Nowick says she worked with the Town Attorney and looked for funding for the position with the Town’s Comptroller. Unsuccessful in her attempt to come up with any feasible way to hire a behaviorist, Ms. Nowick went back to the women and told them it wasn’t happening at this time.
The problem for the three women was they could not imagine that the town could be so shortsighted. “We said from the outset that a full time behaviorist was necessary,” said Ms. Madden. “All the work we put in was predicated on our belief that the Town wanted better for the animals and that Ms. Nowick was advocating for this position. When we heard that the Board was not going to agree to it we were angry and frustrated.” said Madden.
The women went to the Town Board meeting to express that frustration and to tell the Town Board members how shortsighted they were being. It was at the Town Board meeting that they learned that Ms. Nowick not only did not discuss their most important request, but hadn’t relayed any of their concerns to the other members of the Board.
To say that Elizabeth Stein, Lucille DeFina and Diane Madden were horrified when Councilman Wehrheim said he had no idea that there was a discussion about an animal behaviorist would be an understatement. They arrived at the Town Board meeting placing blame squarely on the backs of the town board members. After they addressed the board they were left with an intense feeling of betrayal by Councilwoman Nowick. “To find out at an open public Town Board meeting by the other Town Officials that they would have approved this and have been supportive of us and anything we felt was necessary within reason, but they were never informed about this request pretty much tells us that Lynn is more interested in climbing the political ladder than she cares about animals and this was all an act.” Said Lucille DeFina in an email to Smithtown Matters.
The supervisor released his 2016 budget on Monday and it were additional funds that could, if Director Susan Hansen chooses, be used to hire a behaviorist. Ms. Hansen is trying to acclimate herself in her new position. She has been in contact with Michael Gould, a highly respected trainer. Mr. Gould has volunteered to help the developing strategies for success for the shelter. She asks that the focus be on the animals and not on a disagreement.
Councilwoman Nowick is pleased with Ms. Hansen who she said was recommended by the task force members. She will remain liason to the animal shelter but “I will not micro manage. Ms. Hansen, by every indication is quite capable of making decisions at the shelter.”Said Nowick. At the work session Tuesday, Oct. 6th Ms. Nowick criticised the task force members for misleading Town Board members. She implied that they were focused on one particular trainer/behaviorist being hired by the town. In an earlier conversation Ms. Nowick defended herself against the accusations made by Ms. Madden saying ” I would not bring a proposal before the board without knowing that it could happen. Why would I ask to hire a behaviorist if there is no such title?”
Councilmen Creighton and Wehrheim stand by their position that IF they were given the proper information and IF it was presented at a work session and IF there was money in the budget they would have supported it.
Reader Comments (3)
Wake up people. The time for change is way past due.
"Take, for example, the professor of the science of government at Harvard. He’s a distinguished liberal scholar, government adviser. He’s writing in Harvard’s prestigious journal, International Security, and there he explains that unlike other countries, the "national identity" of the United States is "defined by a set of universal political and economic values," namely "liberty, democracy, equality, private property, and markets." So the U.S. has a solemn duty to maintain its "international primacy" for the benefit of the world. And since this is a matter of definition, we can dispense with the tedious work of empirical verification, so I won’t spend any time on that." Noam Chomsky
Modern Feudalism in the Town of Smithtown NY, corporations and influential, wealthy building owners are bulldozing residents neighboring the Hauppauge Industrial Park, largest on the east coast, second in the nation. The New York government support this invasion by enabling acoustic military applications of massive environmental noise to hide zoning violations, which local government denies. This acoustic application is affecting the wild life, children, senior citizens, and hard working people who need rest to function on their everyday preoccupations. This government, the owners of these buildings and their tenants are being selfish out of greed, breaking the law with the protection of the government. The Town of Smithtown, the Suffolk County, Senator Flanagan, Legislator Kennedy, Representative Fitzpatrick, Senator Gillibran, Senator Schummer, The Distric Attorney Spota, The Attorney General Affais Mr. Hatter, The EPA director P. Scully, Governor Cuomo' office Smithtown Rep. Martella, EPB Washburn, are aware of this abuse and not one of them is willing to stop it.
Noise is a pollution, which if I am not mistaken contributes to climate as microwave frequencies create heat.
The seep mentality of government officials is what makes governments corrupt, the degeneration of democracy into anarchism. Blind obedience to misguided authority.
"Respect to others' rights is the meaning of peace" "Your freedom ends where others begin"
Corporations and big money are deciding for us! Democracy is only a label in the same manner zoning codes at the Hauppauge Industrial Park are. The light industry zoning codes are not being reinforced and most frustratingly they are using acoustic military applications through satellite technologies (Advanced Acoustic Concepts, Noisecom) to add massive environmental noise targeted at residents to hide the loud violations by influential building owners.
The hypocrisy of this democracy, criticizing abusive governments elsewhere in the world, while they are doing this to Americans in the USA. Attached, kindly see the town of Smithtown's agenda to purchase microwave technology, which is the type of technology used to manipulate radio and sound frequencies:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10206071431359037&set=a.1138368853630.2021495.1059632052&type=3
See small sample https://youtu.be/h_fWUCILbV8
Thank you for any assistance you can provide to stop the use of this technology against residents, citizens and taxpayers of America.
A society, (and town) can be judged by the way it treats its animals. Cant our elected officials come together on this?
Great reporting, you said what needs to be said