Volunteers push for oversight of animal shelter
Anderson County Animal Control Officer Damon McKenna, who also is director of the county’s animal shelter, holds shelter cat Tippy at the facility on Blockhouse Valley Road in September 2022. McKenna took over the position in August 2022. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
The proposal has been put on the agenda for a vote by the commissioners at their meeting that begins at 6:30 p.m. Monday (Feb. 24), and those seeking the appointment of the board are asking for help from the community to persuade the commission to approve the resolution.
County Commissioner Joshua Anderson, who also is a past chairman of the commission, posted this comment on Facebook Monday:
“The current shelter is housed near the Blockhouse Valley recycling collection center. We’ve purchased property from the city of Clinton and secured a USDA loan to build a new animal shelter.
“The current resolution being considered on Feb. 24 is for the creation of an animal shelter oversight board. It failed to pass last year, [but] will be up for vote again in front of [the] full commission.”
In a post on Facebook on Monday, shelter advocate Amy Wright-Starkey said, in part: “Please! I’m Begging You! Email your commissioner and ask for a ‘Yes’ vote on Feb. 24 for an animal shelter oversight board.”
This was in connection with a series of posts by Norris resident Jill Eschman Startup that also advocated for the oversight board, and detailed her interactions with McKenna and the reasons she’s supporting the measure.
She is the wife of Norris dentist Dan Startup, and said she and her husband began going to the shelter in early January to take some of the dogs out for walks.
But after questioning some of the conditions at the shelter, which is in the middle of the recyling center on Blockhouse Valley Road, she said she and her husband were banned from volunteering at the shelter by McKenna.
She has posted email addresses of all county commissioners and has asked animal lovers in the county to contact their commissioners before Monday’s meeting to urge them to vote for the oversight board.
Anderson County Mayor Terry Frank and shelter director McKenna could not be reached for comment on Monday, as it was a holiday for government workers.
But anyone interested in seeing the proposal get approved by the full County Commission should either contact their commissioners or attend the meeting, or both, advocates of the oversight board have suggested.
