Jersey City Extends Liberty Humane Society’s Contract for Six Months

By • Dec 21st, 2010 • Category: Blog, News

The City Council last week unanimously voted to extend Jersey City’s contract with Liberty Humane Society (LHS) for another six months.

LHS has been providing shelter services to the city since 2004, with the City Council approving a number of routine contract extensions during that time period. But this extension comes as the shelter is the subject of several bitter legal fights stemming from disagreements over the shelter’s euthanasia policy and whether LHS should pursue a stringent no-kill policy, which has led to major board and leadership shakeups at the shelter over the past half a year.

While the current LHS board told JCI last month that it believes a group of animal advocates (New Jersey Animal Advocates, New Jersey Animal Rescue and the individuals Donna Lerner, Lisa Coons and Brad Levy) is trying to wrestle the city contract away from them, the contract extension was approved with little in the way of public comment or discussion amongst the council members.

The contract extension, which is retroactive to November 1 and runs through April 30 of next year, is for $141,753. All City Council members voted in favor, except for At-Large councilwoman Willie Flood, who was absent.

Liberty Humane Society/Jersey City Contract Extension (December 2010)

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is the founding editor of the Jersey City Independent; he now works for a public-policy nonprofit in Trenton.
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  • Conflict

    6 months, 6 days, 6 weeks really does not matter. His Chief of Staff is a current Board member of Liberty Humane.
    This is a conflict and Councilman Fulop could have abstained from the vote. Any Councilperson who has on his staff a paid or unpaid worker or family member that has the authority to makes decisions for their council office as well as this proposed vendor the City where that Councilperson holds office, should in the interest of transparency and fairness, disqualify himself in voting on this type of proposed contract

    Definition of Chief of Staff:
    In general, a chief of staff provides a buffer between a chief executive (a CEO of a corporation or even the President of the US) and that executive’s direct-reporting team. The chief of staff generally works behind the scenes to solve problems, mediate disputes, and deal with issues before they bubble up to the Chief Executive. Lots of politics, egos, and issues to deal with. Often times Chiefs of Staff act as a confidante and advisor to the Chief Executive, acting as a sounding board for ideas. Ultimately the actual duties depend on the actual position and the people involved.

    Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_the_chief_of_staff_do#ixzz18lTNINnD

  • let’s be clear

    Oh dear, why only six months?? Has the city lost confidence in LHS? Word has it that all the council members and city employees are not too happy with the fact that Nikki Dawson, the so called “acting” ED is till around, that the Neu foundation walked away in disgust and that LHS has brought a 250,000 $$ lawsuit upon themselves. They are lucky they got six months and not three, which is about the amount of time they have before they run out of money entirely!!