Brownwood News – Extra seats were brought in for a large crowd that filled the Brownwood City Council Chambers Tuesday, February 26.  The majority of the residents were there as the Council had on their agenda an Executive Session to discuss, with the City Attorney, legal issues regarding the Brown County Humane Society agreement to operate the local animal shelter, the Corinne T. Smith Animal Center.

Mayor Stephen Haynes made comments prior to a half-dozen residents speaking to the Council.  “I think this is a good opportunity this morning for us to listen, to find out what the issues and problems may be,” Haynes said.  He commented that he began hearing about problems at the animal center within the past 12 to 18 months.  The discussion of the shelter lasted about two hours before the Council went into Executive Session.

Some of those in the audience and who spoke were current and former board members, however, the current board president, Debra Dixon, was not in attendance nor was the current shelter director, Butch Lawson

The citizens who spoke commented on the following areas of concern:

• Animal overcrowding in the shelter
• Payroll expenses are increasing
• Support of the shelter is decreasing due to a controversy in what some board members said was a coup to overthrow the old board and replace it with Dixon at the helm on December 16, 2019.
• No expenditures are being authorized by the Board of Directors
• Employees and volunteers are burned out
• The city needs to address back yard breeders
• Residents should be more responsible with their pets

There were many other comments and suggestions made.

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The Council spent about 50 minutes in closed Executive Session, going back into Open Session at 12:00 noon.  Mayor Stephen Haynes announced that the City Attorney will compose a letter to all board members of the Corinne T. Smith Animal Center stating the city’s concerns and give the organization 60 days to address the issues presented by the citizens.  Speaking with Brownwood News afterwards, Mayor Haynes made the following statement.

“We had a number of citizens who came to Council today and expressed concern about how the animal shelter was being operated.  The Council, of course, leases the facility to the Brown County Humane Society.  Really the only thing the Council can do is to take action on the lease and make findings that the animal shelter is not being operated in accordance with good industry standards, then that’s a violation of the lease.  Based on what we heard today, it appears that is the case, it is not being operated in accordance with good operating standards, therefore, we elected to send a notice to the Board of Directors that said those shortcomings need to be remedied in the next 60 days or some explanation needs to be provided to Council as to the action plan to address those issues,” Haynes said.

The second part of the letter to board members will address complaints made by the citizens that board meetings were not following proper protocol and were not being done in accordance with the by-laws and Texas Open Meetings Act.

“Because we (city) do give money to the animal shelter we believe the Texas Open Meetings Act needs to be followed so we elected to send in the notice that they need to operate their meetings in compliance with the Texas Open Meetings Act and to make sure that action is taken in public and not in Executive Session and things along those lines,” Haynes said.

He went on to say there are two sides to the story.  “When the Board of Directors receives the letter, they may come back and report different facts, different evidence to the Council and we’ll have to weigh what we hear from both sides of the equation.”  Haynes added there is definitely an invitation for the opposing side of the controversy to appear before the Council and make their views known.

Board members at the meeting said the next scheduled board meeting for the Corinne T. Smith Animal Center is Wednesday evening, March 4.