Animal shelters changing the guard

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2005:

Phil Morgan, Escondido Humane Society president since 1998,
resigned on March 31, effective June 30. His acting successor is
director of operations Linda Martin, a 30-year veteran of animal and
human health care work, hired on March 16. Nationally known for his
efforts to extend humane services to the southern California
community in Spanish as well as English, Morgan won further acclaim
for rebuilding the Escondido Humane Society after a January 2001 fire
that killed 115 of the 200 animals in the building. In January 2005
Morgan unveiled plans to expand the present $4.2 million shelter,
opened in July 2003, into a $15 million complex including “a career
institute for animal professionals, a 24-hour cable-access pet
channel, a horse show arena and a pet columbarium, which is a vault
for storing cremated remains,” recalled San Diego Union-Tribune
staff writer Craig Gustafson.

John Nix, 66, Houston Bureau of Animal Regulation & Care
chief since 1996, retired in mid-March 2005, two weeks after
Houston Department of Health & Human Services director Stephen
Williams appointed departmental head of quality assurance Deoniece
Arnold to oversee the Houston shelter. Sean Hawkins, founder of the
Houston-based Spay-Neuter Assistance Program, told Houston Chronicle
reporter Bill Murphy that Nix was unfairly blamed for the results of
budget cuts. Houston had 36 animal control officers in 1997, but
now has just 22.

Former San Antonio Animal Care Services director William
Lammers, DVM, 63, resigned effective on April 30, 2005, after 19
years with the department. Lammers was succeeded as director by Sam
Sanchez in December 2004, after the San Antonio Express-News
extensively exposed the shelter death toll of about 46,000 per year,
which at 33 dogs and cats killed per 1,000 human residents is nearly
twice the national average. San Antonio kills 20,000 more dogs and
cats per year than New York City, even though NYC has seven times
more people.

Scots-born veterinarian Pauline Taylor resigned as president
of the Hong Kong SPCA in early March 2005 after six months on sick
leave during a bitter dispute with board chair Lisa Tsui Wing-miu and
other board members. In her first year as president after four years
as chief of shelter medicine, “Taylor, 44, presided over a
dramatic turnaround that saw a $3 million deficit turned into a $3
million surplus,” wrote Simon Parry of the South China Morning Post.
“She claims the society decided to oust her after the turnaround
raised ‘uncomfortable questions about past practices.’ The SPCA
struck a deal with Taylor days before the scheduled start of an
industrial tribunal hearing at which she planned to claim she had
been illegally forced out. Sources said that under the settlement,
the SPCA will pay the bulk of Taylor’s legal fees. One source said
the fees run ‘well into six figures.’ The charity has also run up a
considerable bill of its own.”