The long-troubled Mount Vernon Animal Shelter won’t remain closed thanks to a $1 million infusion from New York state that will pay for renovations and enhanced services at the nearly 50-year-old facility.
The state funding was announced Friday by Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard and state Assemblyman J. Gary Pretlow four months after the city’s decision to close the shelter and contract with the Humane Society of Westchester in New Rochelle for the care of stray and abused dogs and cats.
No details were provided as to when the building on Garden Avenue would reopen and Patterson-Howard said the contract with the New Rochelle shelter would continue until it does.
Shelter closing: Mount Vernon Animal Shelter, open since 1974, to close next month
She said the shelter needed “a complete revamp at minimum” and called the decision to close it, “hard and responsible and not always politically popular.”
“We always heard the concerns and the cries of our animal families and our furry friends and the lovers of animals here in Mount Vernon from the very beginning,” she said. “But again we couldn’t continue to put Band-Aids and tourniquets on what needed transformation and transplant.”
But her opponents in this month’s Democratic primary for mayor, while hailing the state aid, said her administration had failed to prevent the closure in the first place.
Andre Wallace, the former city councilman who spent the last six months of 2019 as mayor, accused Patterson-Howard of seeking the closure of the shelter and only backtracking when she faced criticism over that.
“It is disheartening to see how the Mayor has allowed the animal shelter to deteriorate over the past three and a half years,” Wallace said. “The sudden plea for state funding, conveniently times for just two weeks before the primary, raises questions about her leadership.”
Richard Thomas, the former mayor who is waging a write-in campaign, said the city might have avoided the closure if it had dealt with a rodent infestation there earlier in the fall.
“How can they claim to be problem solvers when their neglect transformed the animal shelter into a breeding ground for disease-ridden pests?” he said in a statement. “One would expect the administration to prioritize the safety and well-being of our residents, including our animal companions.”
The mayor said the deterioration had not happened overnight and would not be solved immediately and that multiple administrations before her had let the problem fester. But the funding will give the city a chance to rebuild or fully renovate the shelter that was initially intended in the mid 1970s to hold animals for only seven days and never was able to “keep up with its evolving use.”
She promised more office space for processing adoptions, better living conditions for the animals, a larger area for prospective adopters to engage with cats and dogs and proper cleaning, nourishment and veterinary care for the animals.
Pretlow, himself the owner of a rescue cat, said the upkeep of the shelter had lagged for years and “it was unfit for our animals to reside in.”