The Tompkins County Deficit

UPDATE: Originally Winograd was presented to the Rancho Cucamonga City Council as had leaving a "surplus" at Tompkins County. This was when he was first starting and didn't have his speech down because how easy is it to check and see "What surplus?" This was pointed out to the City Council. Pat Dunaway

First of all, welcome to our world Mike Stark and his new blog http://4k2.org/ , it is indeed exciting to see another new and open blog. I see you don't take comments and turn about is fair play since the Whino doesn't take comments either.

A new favorite blog, http://friendsofbestfriends.blogspot.com/ had a posting this morning taken from Mike Stark's new blog http://4k2.org/ concerning the infamous deficit left by the Whino when he left Tompkins County. This is the link for the original posting in January 09. http://workingtohelpanimalstodaytomorrow.blogspot.com/2009/01/infamous-tompkins-county-spca-deficit.html

I posted a couple of comments to Friends and wanted to share those with my readers and encourage them to visit Friends. These were taken from the original posting.
I believe I addressed this deficit in one of my postings.
http://workingtohelpanimalstodaytomorrow.blogspot.com/2009/01/infamous-tompkins-county-spca-deficit.html
""As you have probably seen there has been a response to the Houston story on Winograd's background. In that response Winograd makes it very clear that there was no deficit when he left. According to the minutes of the Rancho Cucamonga City Council, Winograd was asked about this deficit in operations. A Tompkins County SPCA Boardmember confirmed the deficit to the City of Rancho.

His response was it was due to adding an additional shelter, requiring more services, and stated that the interim director gave himself a raise. The interim director was a board member filling in. In fact, Winograd was the receiver of a generous raise the first year of service."" I do have the link to those minutes but it is now offline. http://www.ci.rancho-cucamonga.ca.us/pdf_agendas/cc040605m.pdf Page 16

In fact, I just recently got an email from the interium director that I posted in the comment section:

Jim Tantillo said...
I was the interim director of the Tompkins County SPCA after Nathan Winograd left. If he or anyone else ever stated "that the interim director gave himself a raise," then that statement is false. Only a board of directors can set the compensation for an executive director, and my compensation for the entire time that I served was in fact set by the board of directors. Fwiw I continued to teach at Cornell for the year I ran the shelter.

Does this show a discrepancy between what Winograd states and Tantillo states?


The Houston story I referred to is in one of these links:
http://www.houstonpress.com/2009-01-29/news/barc-sucks/1/
http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2009/01/winograd_barc_no-kill.php#more

In looking about the deficit, I came across some interesting tidbits: http://www.houstonpress.com/2009-01-29/news/barc-sucks/1/
It is 8 pages long, I came across this tidbit on page 5

""This didn't mean the city didn't have their feelers out, though. During negotiations, Benjamin Hernandez, chief of staff of Health and Human Services, called Abigail Smith, the current director of the Tompkins County SPCA, to get an idea of what exactly becoming "no-kill" would involve.

"I said, 'Don't jump off the edge of a cliff," Smith said. "You're going to need a lot of money. You're going to need a phenomenal facility. You're going to need huge community buy-in. You're going to need a ton of foster homes. And you're going to need a bunch of vets that are going to donate services to you.'"""

And this tidbit on page 7:
"Winograd told the Press he left Tompkins County in order to move his family back to California to be close to his wife's dying father."
According to this website his wife's father is alive and kicking: http://www.petpaccorruption.com/
That would kinda back up Winograd getting the hell outta Dodge (Tompkins County) before the s*** hit the fan. I believe the new website refers to his leaving somewhat suddenly.

I had noticed that the Whino's leaving Tompkins County was out of the blue it seemed. And in a couple of years following his sudden departure, there were four directors. Tompkins should have been a director's dream, a post one would not leave easily yet three of them left pretty quick. I also like the quote from Abigail Smith of what it takes to be "No Kill", a lot of things that most shelters don't have going for them. Particularly the one about community which is the mainstay of the Whino's program. The losing of contracts shows that the community was not so behind his program, they opted out when money was needed to sustain it.

I read in the minutes of a town hall meeting where the Whino actually told them that he didn't intend on raising the cost of their service. Instead he put it on the backs of the SPCA donors and rode them to his claim to fame. He did an injustice to Abigail Smith when she tried to get more money to sustain his program. Instead of gradual increases which he should have obtained while there, he left it to Smith to have to ask for large increases and thus drove away the contracts.

Also it is interesting to know that his father in law made a miraculous recovery. According to the PetPac Corruption site, his father in law must have been suffering from the stress of having charges filed against him. Is stress normally associated with dying? Guess in some cases could be.

Let's wish Mike Stark "Happy Hunting" and let's show support for our new "Best Friends" blog.

HonestyHelps