Hello and thanks for your continued interest in Boulder City Paws ‘n’ Claws. Following the Boulder City Animal Shelter’s decision to have the shelter animals spayed/neutered and microchipped subsidized at a Las Vegas clinic rather than through the 501c3 organization we created for this purpose, there are no longer shelter animals in need of our support.
To understand why the Boulder City Animal Shelter made the decision to stop working with our organization and refuse the support of the Boulder City-based sponsors with whom we had partnered, please scroll further down this page and read our response to the Boulder City Review's July 14th, 2016 article, which we believe assisted the animal shelter staff in delegitimizing both our organization's purpose and integrity.
In light of the removal of the charitable purpose for which we were formed, our Board of Directors requested and received permission from the Nevada Secretary of State to dissolve our nonprofit organization and will notify the IRS of our 501c3's termination within the filing of our annual return, per their instructions.
Our sponsors have been wonderfully supportive throughout our organization (and now, our dissolution) and we are eternally grateful for the donations they so generously contributed to our programs, refunds for which have been issued in full.
Because we have over 2,400 Facebook fans, we had intended to maintain our Facebook page to help spread the word about lost and found pets in Boulder City, but as the Boulder City Animal Shelter staff is unwilling to share information about lost/found pets on our page to further that effort, we have taken it down so our community has no confusion as to where to post.
Boulder City Paws 'n' Claws continues to believe that reuniting lost pets with their families should be the top priority, so encourages everyone to post all lost/found pet notices on the Facebook page administered by animal shelter staff by clicking here. Thank you!
With regards to Max Lancaster’s article regarding our organization’s relationship with the Boulder City Animal Shelter, we wish to make a few corrections and clarifications for the newspaper’s readership. Unfortunately, the information from some important documents we provided to him was excluded and we would like to rectify that here.
On May 19th, Ms. Ann Inabnitt, Boulder City Animal Control Supervisor, sent a text that she wanted sponsorship for the medical care of a dog that she accepted into the shelter’s care. However, it was a request that we were obligated to decline, as the City of Boulder City pays for ALL operational and medical costs of the animals at its shelter. Quite simply, it would have been a misappropriation of our nonprofit’s funds to have accepted donations for our spay/neuter and microchip programs and then use them to pay a city expense.
In a phone conversation I had with Ms. Inabnitt the following day, she informed me that she was cancelling my future scheduled volunteer shifts and that she had terminated my volunteer privileges at the city’s shelter. She also relayed that she was launching a Facebook page for the Boulder City Animal Shelter and lastly, that she was terminating the shelter’s relationship with Boulder City Paws ‘n’ Claws.
I wish to be VERY clear that the decision not to work together – whether to promote adoptions or extend the number of people reached with Facebook posts about lost/found pets – was absolutely NOT a mutual decision and that Ms. Inabnitt ended the animal shelter’s relationship with our organization. It has never been our desire to operate independently of the animal shelter and to that end, a member of our board even visited Ms. Inabnitt at the shelter on June 7th, to ask that personal feelings be set aside and that the focus remain on the animals, but to no avail. We are very disappointed that the shelter staff refuses to collaborate with us and it is our hope that they will change their position in the future. {Please see above for updated status.}
Despite the challenge above, we launched both our Spay & Neuter and Microchip Programs as scheduled on June 11th – only to see a June 27th post on the shelter’s Facebook page that shelter staff had “every animal in the shelter spayed or neutured [sic] and vaccinated” at a Las Vegas clinic. While we applaud this seemingly magnanimous act, its combination with shelter staff’s refusal to provide our Rebate Request Form to new owners of shelter animals (provided to them in the June 7th meeting) has indeed left our organization with no spay/neuter surgeries to fund in the four weeks since the program’s launch. However, as we are unclear as to whether or not shelter staff intends to have all future shelter animals spayed or neutered and vaccinated going forward, we are waiting to see if this is a temporary obstacle for us or if we need to broaden our rebate qualification parameters to include adoption and license fees, veterinary costs, etc.
We do not have ‘members’ in our organization other than our board members and we can unequivocally state that no board member is in disagreement with our decision not to misappropriate our funds. Councilwoman Peggy Leavitt was a founding board member, but when indications arose that our challenges involved city employees, the appropriate action was for Ms. Leavitt to leave our board in order to avoid a potential conflict of interest with her role on the City Council. Both she and we look forward to her return when her council duties conclude in 2019.
We are strong believers in full transparency, and to that end, our financial expenditures have always been detailed on our website and we invite everyone to review them by clicking here.
We hope that with these facts, Boulder City Review readers will understand the sequence of events that have placed our organization in the difficult position of trying to help the Boulder City Animal Shelter’s pets without the support of shelter staff. And we hope that our fledging organization will continue to have everyone’s support in helping get our city’s shelter pets adopted and lost pets find their way home.