HI Tor out, Four Legs Good in

BY: Keith S. Shikowitz, Investigative Reporter

            In parts one and two of this series of stories on the changeover of administration at the local animal shelter the reasons for the change over were discussed. This part of the story will focus on the Hi Tor side of the story and their response by Board members Hilda and Gary Kogut to the allegations made by officers at Rockland Green as to the reasons for the changeover.

            Gary Kogut began by stating that this is an open story. “As you saw from what I wrote, I’ll start there. Hi Tor Animal Care Inc. has had the relationship and the contract to manage the animal shelter for decades. During that time there was a constant push for creating a new shelter. Building a new shelter because that one is dilapidated, doesn’t meet code in many ways. Certainly not the agricultural code which relates to the management and running of animal shelters. Finally, the county I guess maybe a year and a half ago agreed to build a new animal shelter. There was a groundbreaking which made the news. Not that long after that Hi Tor was informed by county administration, Ed Day and his office that the county was no longer going to contract directly with Hi Tor for the management of that shelter but was going to use Rockland Green as the intermediary if you will to hold the contract and Rockland Green would in turn contract with Hi Tor for the actual management of the shelter itself, pending Rockland Green building a brand new shelter up in Haverstraw. It was a year-to-year contract, but it was a two-year arrangement, to be determined what happens after two years.”

            According to Kogut they were in the first year of this contract beginning January 1, 2023. “I guess the broader context is there are many members of this community who lobbied and used social media to denigrate Hi Tor or the Hi Tor organization, my organization. The people who worked there. The quality of work that they did. The nature of the health care of the animals and just on and on and on and on. A lot of it quite frankly was not true at all.”

            As was reported in part one of this series of stories, not all of the comments online about Hi Tor were denigrating although many of the comments and denigrating of the shelter dealt mostly with the administration. The comments were not only from the public. Former employees and volunteers also had not good things to say about the place.

             A few specific things Gary Kogut focused on that he said were not true were the deaths of animals, healthcare of animals, and refusing to take animals. “You name it. Abuse by staff of animals. Just on and on. Very little of it if any of it was true at all.

            His statement admitted that some of the things being said were true, yet they refused to defend themselves and the organization against the criticism. The reason he gave for this lack of defense was, “We’re a voluntary board. All of us have real jobs and for us to respond tit for tat for what went on in social media was just not what we had the time to do or the inclination to do and frankly when the county made the decision about Rockland Green, we realized that our future was limited as an organization, Hi Tor. We were not going to be successful in responding to anything being said about Hi Tor’s operating of that shelter.”

            By successful, Kogut meant rebutting it tit for tat, story for story. “We wanted to run a shelter. Social media warfare is not what we’re about. We were running a shelter. We hired an executive director, who is the same individual who helped us negotiate that contract with Rockland Green.

That person would have been Rick Tannenbaum who was later fired from the position. “Correct. Because of the social media attitudes that were out there, it became very difficult for us to raise money through just donations. People shied away from the organization, those who had been involved with it before. MAJOR donations just didn’t happen. We couldn’t find anyone who wanted to participate. It became very difficult for us to hire staff because they were being lobbied as I understand it not to work for Hi Tor. It became difficult for us to find leadership and people who wanted to work there. Mainly because of what the reputation. When you google Hi Tor, what do you see? That’s what people were seeing when they google Hi Tor. They’re seeing all this stuff that was written about us.”

This argument for not being able to hire and retain staff would be stronger if not for the $989,000 base money Hi Tor was getting under the contract with Rockland Green that GARY KOGUT himself signed.

“They were fully funded. We were responsible for the maintenance of the physical facility. That cost was on our shoulders not in their operating budget.” Jerry Damiani explained.

About two years ago, a family went in to Hi Tor because their youngest son was screaming that he wanted to get a pet, a dog. When they went in there and the young lady who was there said to them, “We don’t have any family friendly pets.”

If people are telling people that, that could make people shy away from going there to get a pet because they’re being told we don’t have any family friendly pets. A lot of people go in there with their families to get a pet.

“Let me respond. I certainly don’t know that circumstance. I will tell you that the staff there really made a conscious effort to understand all the animals that were there all the time, every time. In point of fact, we would investigate, interview individuals who showed up to adopt to make sure that the animal we suggested fit the people who wanted to adopt.”

He did say that in some cases, they may not have had a family friendly pet there at the time. “It’s possible. Again, it’s two years ago. I know we made a very deliberate effort to not place animals in homes that we know it’s not going to be successful. Because one, you don’t want the animal to come back. Two you don’t want that animal to harm anyone else in that household. Again, I don’t know the circumstance to know if that was the right thing to say or not. That’s how Hi Tor conducted itself when we went to do adoptions.”

Another accusation by the Rockland Green administration was that there was a lack of accountability from the board to Rockland Green on a number of issues. Not the least of which was: Failure to operate the animal shelter in accordance with applicable law and best management practices. Failure to maintain sufficient resources. That would be employees, staff, records.

“My response is as you saw what I wrote. The Hi Tor board received absolutely NO communications from Rockland Green in any official capacity that they had problems with what we were doing at that shelter. ZERO. There were no emails, no letters, no certified letters, no lawyer letters. There was no communication whatsoever that anything on that list troubled them. Period. What you just read to us. ZERO. Can’t cure anything if you are not aware that the other party is concerned about it. That’s why that clause in the contract was written. If there were any issues, we need 30 days’ official notice to address what it is are concerns. We have nothing. That list you just read was new to us when we read it as well as you.

Jeremy Apokether, Executive Director at Rockland Green contradicted this statement by stating, “I dealt with Rick Tannenbaum frequently in his capacity as executive director of the shelter. So there was communication with somebody in charge at Hi Tor. If not Rick people in office of dog manager.”

Taking Apotheker’s statement as fact that he was in contact with Tannenbaum, and Kogut’s as fact that the Hi Tor Board received absolutely no communications from Rockland Green, the question is, did Tannenbaum in his capacity as executive director, even relay any of the information he and Apokether spoke about to the board?

Hilda Kogut said “If that problem was with Rockland Green existed, they never would have made an appointment to renegotiate the contract.”

Jerry Damiani responded to this statement by stating that the appointment was not a renegotiation of the contract but to review the submitted proposed budget for 2024. “We didn’t have to renegotiate the contract at that time because it was through December 2024.”

Schedule A-1 – page I of the contract stipulated,

            In order to establish the Service Fee compensation for the subsequent Contract Year

(2024), the Contractor will submit a proposed budget to Rockland Green for its review and approval on or before August 1, 2023. The Parties will work together to finalize the maximum Service Fee amount for 2024 on or before September 1, 2023.

“Rick Tannenbaum did reach out to set up a meeting to discuss budget for 2024. The meeting never happened due to vacations overlapping. We responded to set up a date and were supposed to meet on September 6 for him to make budget presentation for review and Gary Kogut contacted us about requesting additional time to present budget due to their recent administrative changes at Hi Tor because Rick Tannenbaum’s budget was unacceptable to them. We Received proposed budget after Rick Tannenbaum’s firing which occurred sometime between August 30 and September 5, 2023.”

The budget included the base fee and pass-through charges which covered any expenses required to operate the shelter that are not in the base fee. These included Trainers, Behaviorists, Medical/Vet fees, Repairs/cars, Sanctuaries, Animal supplies, medical supplies and Marketing totaling $411,000.00.

The Koguts maintained that they were not able to run the shelter as efficiently as they needed to because of the lack of money and inability to get things they needed.

One thing Hilda Kogut complained about was the length of time they had to wait and fight to get another dumpster for all of the trash. “How long did we have to fight to get an additional dumpster for trash on a regular basis? There’s no washer or dryer at that facility so everything that’s used is disposed of.

            When asked about why Hi Tor had to fight for a long time to get a dumpster, Phillips replied, “If they needed another dumpster all they had to do was pick up the phone and get another dumpster.”

Gary Kogut fell back on the days when the county was funding the shelter as a reason for the problems there, not mentioning the $989,000 the current contract which he signed gave them. “Go back a bit. The county provided, funded the contract to about $380,000 per year per se and left it to Hi Tor Animal Care Inc to raise the rest. When we actually put together a budget for staffing and supplies, the medical supplies and so on, that got out there towards 1.4 million dollars which Rockland Green did not push back on because they realized when we went through the budget that that’s what it took. We NEVER had enough funds to do what we needed to do. There was no way we were going to be able to raise a million dollars. We never got close to raising one million dollars just to run the place. So, the idea of neat and orderly was a fiction.”

Upon looking up the information on the finances of the shelter, it was discovered that for a number of years the shelter was running deficits spending to the tune of 10’s of thousands of dollars. To which Gary Kogut replied “Exactly.”

The next logical question is How were they able to operate in a deficit almost every year going back to at least 2015? Kogut’s answer was, “We didn’t pay all of our bills.”

He added, “What you find is a lot of good-hearted people. Veterinarians for instance who related to the cause. Did the work for us. Took a lot less than what they billed us for or never got paid. They understood where we were and what it was about. I’ll also tell you, pardon me for saying. I’m a businessperson and we won’t go into what I do for a living. That’s not how I would ever, ever run a business is to not cover my expenses. That’s where Hi Tor was and had no choice.”

Hilda Kogut put some of the blame for the lack of money to operate on some municipalities. “There’s another part to this equation too because in addition to Rockland County providing funding, the municipalities who regularly brought their strays to Hi Tor failed to pay their bills. Spring Valley and the town of Orangetown and there might be others. They continued to bring animals to the shelter and there was a contract and they failed to live up to their end of the contract.”

He was saying that Spring Valley and Orangetown didn’t pay their portion of the bills for the shelter, but they were being forced to take animals that people brought in from there.

“This is how it worked. The county collected money from the towns in order to fund Hi Tor. Spring Valley and Orangetown just refused to pay. Yet we were still obligated to take the animals.”

            Kogut shrugged his shoulders, “It was our charter. It’s our mission. If we didn’t take those animals, where would they have ended up? They’d wind up in the street or dead and so we took them.”

On the topic of finances and the inability of Hi Tor to raise enough funds to operate, Phillips said, “We didn’t do this (canceling the contract) until September. They took over our contract and began getting paid in January. They hired an executive director. He hired a shelter manager. They had no excuse for anything. They had MORE THAN EHOUGH FUNDS. Let me say, let me reiterate. They have well over $100,000 of taxpayer money that they still have that belongs back to Rockland Green.”

He added that they had an outbreak and Rockland Green wasn’t getting records. “So, we went way overboard to make sure they would be successful. We gave them two months of budget up front the first week in January. We said, here’s two months of your budget but then beginning in March we would request that you submit a report to us with all of your accounts receivable, payable and what’s outstanding so then we would forward you March. We gave them this money, knowing that they still had many vacancies they had not filled. So, they had a surplus of money to start with. When we got to March, the beginning of March, they demanded that we give them the payment immediately.”