Health & Fitness
Kane County Animal Control is a Real Success Story!
After every election, a good political friend of mine likes to encourage folks to “give back their enemies.” In other words, “It’s over, so you may as well move on.” When you consider the tit-for-tat game that generally permeates all of Kane County politics, it really is sage advice, especially for someone of my ilk.
Now, I really don’t want to disappoint my friend, but I also believe there’s a big difference between going Game of Thrones on someone, and setting the record straight. so taking the inherent voter ADHD into account, there are far too many local politicians who reverse course because they figure no one will remember the direction in which they were originally headed.
A perfect example of what we’re talking about is Kane County Animal control. Because under former Chairman Karen McConnaughay’s regime, it was a utter disaster.
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It all started with an unqualified crony director who made $92,000 year. Contracts were awarded only to folks with the appropriate pull and it was virtually impossible to adopt a pet. When one rescue group attempted to do just that, the adoption was botched so badly, it led to the director’s resignation.
Then we moved to an interim director who also had no prior experience and promptly oversaw citations being sent to people who’s pets had long since been inoculated. It took a slew of $27,000 temporaries to relieve that 60,000 file data entry backlog.
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And their numbers always were a bit suspect too.
The icing on the cake was, because they hadn’t collected those fees, the supposedly self-sufficient department couldn’t make their 2012 $153,000 annual mortgage payment and had to beg the board for those funds.
Finally backed into a corner, McConnaughay and then Health Department Director, Paul Kuehnert, were forced to hire a director who actually had some AC credentials. But after sabotaging her at every turn, she quit after four short months.
You can read the rest at: http://thefirstward.net/2014/04/22/kane-county-animal-control-is-a-real-success-story/
