The skies were sunny and the mood definitely upbeat for the 75 or so area residents who attended the official opening of the Greene County Animal Shelter and Rotary Centennial Dog Park Sunday, Sept. 24.
The animal shelter has been operational for several months, but the majority of the work on the dog park was finished last week.
Don Orris, who was drafted by longtime animal activist Adrienne Smith, to spearhead building a new shelter in 2017, named dozens of people and companies that have donated time, expertise, materials, and money toward the project. (The following list is representative, not inclusive of those Orris named.)
He first thanked the community “for believing we could get this done.”
He acknowledged Dr Bob Telleen for making the first large donation to the project – a $100,000 donation in honor of Paul and Vernice Culter – within a few days of Orris agreeing to work on it.
He also thanked the late Wallace Teagarden who, when the deadline for fundraising was getting close, offered to match all donations made within a two-week time period up to $75,000.
He saluted Home State Bank for funding the cat room, the late Alice Walters for funding the medical treatment room, and Gene and Carolyn Houk for funding the dog area.
Greene County Development Corporation donated the land for the shelter and dog park. Grow Greene County donated $200,000 over three years.
Orris mentioned large fundraisers like Home State Bank did five years ago when RAGBRAI® overnighted in Jefferson, offering to match up to $25,000 in money raised by offering water and bananas to bicyclists and visitors for a free will donation. HyVee donated the bananas and water, and the challenge was met.
He mentioned smaller fundraisers like Chantelle Long sewing and selling masks during the Covid pandemic with all proceeds going to PAWS (People for Animal Welfare Society) for the shelter. Dinners were served, students held bake sales, coin jars were on business counters around town. The community was full “on” working to raise the money needed.
While that was taking place, a committee worked at writing grants. A $35,000 grant from the Department of Agriculture helped cover equipment.
REG donated used fencing and unused fire hydrants for the dog park. Scott Kingery facilitated that donation. Steve Schwaller of Royal Jewelers donated all the engraving on the donor board inside the animal shelter.
Orris noted that Dave Destival did the first CAD plan for the shelter, and Don Labate also worked on structural design, saving considerably on architect’s fees. Greg Carey helped write bid specs when it came time to bid out the project, saving on engineering costs. When bids came in much higher than expected, basically requiring new plans and new bid specs, Bolton & Menk rewrote bid specs at no charge. County engineer Wade Weiss helped with design of the water ways for the dog park and the secondary roads crew fabricated the grates on drains within the dog park.
Orris read from several handwritten pages, acknowledging those who played a role in the new shelter and dog park.
He thanked Greene County High School art teacher Sarah Stott and her students for their interior and exterior murals. They’re also painting metal cut-out dogs to decorate the dog park fences.
He named PAWS volunteers Cheryl Swanson, Ann Wenthold, Shannon Hagen, Marilyn Lane, Mary Kinne, Jill Mills, Celeste Manns, Kimberly Bohnet, Don and Barb Labate, Julie and Kyle Allender, Jim Ure, Margaret Hamilton, Abbie Hamilton, Karen Shannon, Beth Hougham, Fran Baker, David Ohrt, Sebastian Ohrt, Laurie Connolly, Dakota Sheer, “and all the people that came before these people from the time I was in high school 50 years ago. Those people worked tirelessly to get us to this point, with terrible facilities. Now we have a good facility.”
He named Jefferson city council member Dave Sloan, as “the one council member that’s been with me all the way.” He became emotional and needed to compose himself. “I couldn’t have done it without Dave Sloan. He did everything: fundraising, storing stuff, bidding. You name it, he did it. We wouldn’t be here without him.”
He thanked the Rotary Club of Jefferson for its $50,000 donation toward the project, gaining naming rights for the dog park. The club honored the 100th anniversary of its charter in 1922 in naming the Rotary Centennial Dog Park. Orris, himself a Rotarian, noted that’s the largest single donation the club has made in its 100 years.
Rotarians did more, providing volunteer labor to install agility toys and the fire hydrants in the dog park. Orris said Rotarians went through 100 60-lb bags of Kwikrete over two Sunday work sessions.
Orris and Rotarian Chris Durlam also poured the concrete pads on which five benches, also donated by the Rotary Club of Jefferson with partial funding through a Rotary District 6000 grant, are mounted. The benches were installed Friday.
Going forward, Orris said the animal shelter board hopes to hire a part-time director to help fundraise for continuing expenses. PAWS has set up a charitable foundation for the animal shelter. The goal is to grow a $2 million corpus and then draw interest to cover the annual expenses of the shelter.
Orris encouraged people to talk with the animal shelter board, share ideas of how the animal shelter should be run, when it should be open, what fundraisers could be done, how communication with the public can best be done, and how the shelter can be kept accessible.
After Orris finished his comments, the Main Street/Chamber Ambassadors did a ribbon cutting in front of the animal shelter, and then invited everyone in attendance to join in the photo. Dr Telleen and Orris are center in the photo.
Total cost of the project is $1.2 million. Of that, the city of Jefferson provided $400,000.
