Lou Whitney, the co-owner of DoggieDay, an animal-care service located in the South End, said his business has helped raise more than $30,000 for the MSPCA in recent years but will not participate in any future fund-raising efforts to benefit the society because the money doesn’t directly go to caring for the animals.
“We’ve severed our ties with the MSPCA for this specific reason,” Whitney said. “We found the MSPCA to be a place where people were looking to secure financial positions for themselves, rather than focusing on helping the animals. I think that instead of paying out those ridiculous salaries, they should use the money to make sure they’re providing a service to the community.”
Two weeks ago, the MSPCA announced the closure of three of its shelters statewide: Martha’s Vineyard, Brockton and Springfield. A spokesman said that those three shelters cared for more than 11,000 animals.
IMO closing these shelters, especially in economically depressed areas like Brockton and Springfield, is basically a death sentence for unwanted animals since more and more people are now forced to give up their beloved pets due to foreclosures.
Still, some animal advocates are angry. Joyce Godsey, of Merricmack Valley Shelter, said of the executive pay at MSPCA, “It’s comparable to what’s happening throughout this country, with the out-of-touch salaries at the top. And when there’s a financial crisis, they start chomping from the bottom instead of the top. There seems to be a misallocation of funds here, a bit of tunnel vision.” She said the closure of the three shelters will probably put a strain on local volunteer organizations and city-run shelters.
Officials from MSPCA replied with the usual clap-trap about retaining employees. If you ask me, working at a non-profit is a value choice. The assumption is that if you wanted to make more money, you would work in the private sector.
David Magnani, executive director of the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network, said most nonprofits are currently looking at ways to cut back compensation to administrators or executives. “I’m not sure what the MSPCA is doing, other than closing the three shelters, to manage the reduction in their budget, but it would be interesting to see what happens at the top, with its highest paid employees.”
http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/s…
It seems the obligation of contracts is sacrosanct in this country. Even the Constitution forbids the federal government from getting in the way. Is there legally any way to fix this before their current contracts expire?
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p>2. Even with respect to state laws, there’s a lot more latitude under Supreme Court case law than the words of the Clause would suggest. Basically, even a law pretty much negating an existing contract can be upheld if the court is persuaded that a reasonable public purpose justifies the impairment.
My question about whether it’s possible for MSPCA to insist on renegotiating prior to expiration still stands.
The conversation goes like this:
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p>MSPCA: We’re going to fire your ass at the end of your contract unless you renegotiate now.
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p>Employee: ok
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p>Perfectly legal.
“You’re fired”
“Don’t forget to pay my severance package!”
“Oh, right”
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p>Or Maybe
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p>”We’re going to fire your ass”
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p>”OK”
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p>(employee picks up telephone, calls headhunter) “Remember when I told you I wasn’t looking for a new job? Well, that was then, this is now”
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p>It all depends.
but why was this front paged? It didn’t have the recommendations, and it adds nothing to the AmberPaw thread. It was put up by a drive-by blogger who went so far as setting up a tip jar, something that’s never caught on here.
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p>So ComicBookGuy: I hope you stick around.
So Bob: Why the promotion?
By the way what is a drive by blogger and what is a tip jar?
Drive-by blogger: one who isn’t interested in being a member of the community… drives in, shoots off, then leaves. ComicBookGuy has posted exactly one diary and exactly one comment, each within 30 seconds of the other. He’s never participated in any other thread, and appeared to not have even seen AmberPaw’s thread, in spite of the fact that AmberPaw’s thread was a day older, front paged, and already had dozens of comments.
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p>Tip jar: in some blogs (including DailyKos), the diarist posts the very first comment as a tip jar. If you like the diary, you reflect that by leaving a “tip” in the form of a high rating for the tip jar comment. It’s never caught on at BMG; we just use the “recommend” button to opt-in to showing support for the thread.
I think the Daily Kos site has some mechanism whereby if you accumulate enough recommendations you are granted the ability to troll-rate comments too. On this blog, any member can give a zero. There is some notion of being a “trusted member”.
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p>Perhaps more committed Kossacks will correct me?
And did add additional details to the previous post. Plus, additional opportunity to comment.
Perhaps this is a little off subject but it seems there is a double standard for animals versus people. In other words, everyone basically agrees that it’s a bad thing to close shelters and pay the people running those shelters in excess of $200,000 per year. But we’re also facing severe budget cuts to the public school system, fire department and police department while numerous members of those institutions make upwards of $200,000 per year.