A one year fix: Campbell Co. Animal Shelter gets more county funding, but work still remains

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) - The Campbell County Commission voted to boost funding for the Campbell County Animal Shelter Thursday evening.

In an 11-0 vote, the commission supported sending $380,000 to the shelter controlled by Friends of Campbell County Animals.

”I was a little shocked, we’ve been working hard on this for several weeks and that proposal we submitted yesterday was kind of a last-ditch effort,” said Director Patricia Siwinski.

Siwinski was the animal shelter director and a board member for FCCA.

Initially sounding the alarm on how critical a boost in funding would be, she knew it was just help to an overall, more immense monetary need for the shelter.

”I’m still quite nervous that would put FCCA to raise $137,000, approximately a year which is a heavy ask,” said Siwinski.

County Mayor E.L. Morton supported the shuffling of county dollars to the animal shelter.

”If you have an animal shelter you need to do it and do it well and our community has that reputation now and we’re going to continue to do that, I feel it’s vital,” said Morton.

Thursday night’s vote was to fund the shelter at the $380,000 for a single year. While not a usual five-year boost as normal, this moved signals the commission was willing to do this again, for longer.

”We need to do our jobs and do it well and our animal shelter is part of that,” said Morton.

FCCA was tasked with raising the nearly 40% left to make the budget hole, while a task that they’ve done before, Siwinski said it’ll take a full effort to get done.

”You do a lot of fundraising, a lot of door knocking, a lot of grant writing, and a lot of praying,” said Siwinski.

The current contract between FCCA and Campbell County expired at the end of June.

This is the end of a five-year contract that saw the county providing just more than $150,000 in monetary help on a budget that was nearly $500,000.

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