By LESLIE EIKLEBERRY
SALINA — Friends of the Salina Animal Shelter this week started a petition to encourage City of Salina officials to reinstate suspended Animal Services Manager Vanessa Cowie.
By 2 p.m. Wednesday, more than 300 people had signed the petition.
Cowie was placed on paid administrative leave and escorted from the Salina Animal Shelter on August 15. When questioned about the incident, Interim City Manager Mike Schrage told Salina Post that he was “not able to respond to inquiries about personnel matters.”
The petition, directed to Schrage and the Salina City Commissioners, begins with the following.
“Our beloved Animal Services Director, Vanessa Cowie, has recently been suspended, pending her termination. In a move that surprised many people, including shelter staff and Volunteers, Vanessa Cowie was escorted from her office at the Salina Animal Shelter on August 15. She is suspended from all of her duties, pending a hearing with Interim Salina City Manager Mike Schrage.”
The petition can be found on change.org at https://www.change.org/p/mike-schrage-reinstate-vanessa-cowie.
According to information on the Bring Vanessa Back! Facebook page, Cowie’s hearing is scheduled for September 5.
Additionally, the Friends of the Salina Animal Shelter have created a gofundme page to help Cowie with legal expenses. That page can be found here: https://www.gofundme.com/cover-vanessa039s-legal-fees.
Cowie herself has declined to speak to media about the incident. When contacted by the Salina Post on Thursday, Cowie responded, “it’s against policy for me to elaborate and I respect the process. It is upsetting and I hope a fast resolution can be determined, so that I can return to my role serving the citizens and the animals.”
Shelter volunteers and friends of the animal shelter, however, have not hesitated to comment.
“When I heard of Vanessa’s suspension, my heart sank,” Aarynne Struble, a shelter volunteer who fosters kittens and helps with spay/neuter events, told the Salina Post. “I have a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for the work she does. Losing her would be an enormous loss to our community. I have never met someone with the skill-set and dedication that she has. Vanessa is irreplaceable.”
Struble praised Cowie not only for her hard work and dedication but also for her efforts to improve the shelter in Salina.
“She has made Salina Animal Services one of the best-run animal shelters in Kansas. She works harder than anyone I know. Her workday does not end when she leaves the shelter in the evening,” Struble noted.
She continued that Cowie doesn’t leave her caring for animals or volunteers at the office.
“As a volunteer with foster kittens, she was always willing and eager to provide me with help and support, even when she was out of the office. And she doesn’t just provide excellent care to shelter animals, she cares about ALL animals,” Struble told the Salina Post. “I have contacted her regarding my owns pets, wildlife, and strays – she is always eager to provide support.”
Shelter volunteer Bruce Moore, wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday, “Vanessa’s supervisor claims Vanessa exceeded her authority by responding to the Saline County Sheriff’s request for assistance when it seized scores of animals that appeared to be neglected. She was then accused of being insubordinate for insisting that Kansas statutes provided a means for recovering the costs of boarding the seized animals, and offering to bring in outside attorneys experienced in animal welfare cases to shield the city from that liability. Instead of following Vanessa’s lead, the city got stuck with the bill, and may have little chance of recovering those costs from the animal owners. To punish Vanessa and the shelter, for her “insubordination,” her supervisor arbitrarily, and without notice, cut off all of the shelter’s spending authority, going so far as to cancel her city credit card. The shelter was briefly unable to buy animal food or to pay Dr. Braun, who performs spay/neuter surgeries at the shelter. When Vanessa received inquiries from a city commissioner, she was accused of violating chain of command rules (that preclude any city employee from speaking directly to a member of the commission about a matter of city business – no kidding, that’s a rule) and her supervisor didn’t care that Vanessa didn’t initiate the contact. Vanessa’s supervisors then audited ALL of Vanessa’s expenditures over the last 2 or 3 years, looking for anything amiss. Nothing was found. She’s been called demeaning names by her supervisors and told to “shut up” when she attempted to defend herself and the shelter. Some of the comments directed to her referenced her gender, as if that was somehow relevant to the discussion, implying that her opinions lack credibility because she’s a female. There is more, but that’s a good start. When the dust settles, the city will look like chumps for the way Vanessa was, and is, being treated. With all the grant money Vanessa has secured, for the benefit of the city-owned shelter, she has instituted a number of programs to encourage spaying/neutering of Salina pets. If those programs, tolerated but not supported by her supervisors, are discontinued, the city could have to repay some or all of that grant money. To thank Vanessa for obtaining grant funding to renovate the shelter building, the city cut her budget. Anyone see anything wrong with this picture?”
On Friday, Moore told Salina Post that he stands behind everything he has written on Facebook concerning the Cowie matter. Although he declined to say how he came by some of the information provided in the Facebook post, Moore said the information was garnered through personal observations and interactions.
“I’m over here every day. I see things. I hear things. Everything on Facebook I intend to stand behind,” Moore said.
Moore praised the work Cowie has done on behalf of the animal shelter. He noted Cowie’s work to change the shelter to a no-kill shelter, including establishing a foster program for cats and kittens in which volunteers take kittens and feral cats home to not only free up shelter space but to also socialize the animals and get them ready to be adopted.
“Vanessa has given the animals a chance to thrive,” Moore said.
He added that the no-kill aspect of the shelter was key to most of the volunteers assisting the shelter.
Moore, who was working in the shelter’s cat room at the time of the interview, noted that the renovated cat room was paid for by a grant from the Petco Foundation that Cowie had secured for the shelter. In fact, Cowie has been able to secure $350,000 in grant funding from the Petco Foundation for various shelter projects.
Moore also said that Cowie is also well-respected outside of Salina and has been sought out for consultation on a number of occasions.
That fact was evident during the public comment portion of Monday’s city commission meeting when a representative from the Clay Center Animal Shelter praised Cowie for her assistance with getting the shelter in Clay Center started.
“Everyone we talked to directed us to Vanessa. She met with us outside shelter hours. So many of our best practices were adopted from the Salina shelter,” she said.
State Senator Randall Hardy, who represents the 24th District, also spoke about the respect people outside of Salina have for Cowie. Hardy said that during the last legislative session, he attended a luncheon and educational event sponsored by the Kansas Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
“When I arrived, I found out that Miss Cowie was providing the program for the legislators. Miss Cowie was chosen for the presentation because her shelter is considered by the state society to be a model program that includes best practices that could be considered by shelters all over the state. I was sitting there thinking how proud I was to be associated with a city with an animal shelter that has a statewide reputation of excellence,” Hardy said.
Additionally, Dr. Brad Crauer, assistant clinical professor in shelter medicine in the Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine also spoke in support of Cowie.
“I developed and oversee the shelter medicine program. We take students across central Kansas and Nebraska to shelters to provide free spay and neuter and medical triage. I also consult and visit shelters nationwide,” Crauer said. “When we look at the shelters that I have been associated with, I can tell you that Salina Animal Shelter is one of the highest performing shelters anywhere, and that’s because of Vanessa Cowie.”
“Other shelters want her badly because she does such an outstanding job,” Sue Voll, president of the Friends of the Salina Animal Shelter, told the commissioners. “I want to let everyone know that the volunteers stand behind Vanessa 100 percent.”