This past Monday Knox County Commissioner John Schoon “de Vil” maker continued on his attack on the animals that need assistance.
After questioning, Chris Caldwell the Knox County Finance Director and Assistant Chief of Staff to the County Mayor Glenn Jacobs revealed that the annual contract (July 1) was delayed because the Knox County Finance Department thought the contract didn’t end until June 30, 2023 NOT June 30, 2022. Does the County Finance Department not check the contract dates and/or have a spread sheet with actual and accurate contract ending dates?
The week before at the Commission Work Session, Schoonmaker had asked Janet Testerman CEO of Young Williams about alleged twenty times in sixty days that the shelter was on emergency only status. Testerman correctly identified that the clinic only put itself on emergency status twice and one of those times because they were treating 4 dogs that were Parvo positive. All of the other emergency statuses were created by Knox County Sheriffs Office and Knoxville Police due to their own staffing shortage. The Sheriff’s ongoing staffing dysfunction is clearly within the purview of the County Commission to monitor.
By the way, the increase in this contract was a $50,000 annual increase. However, the Knox County Commission approved in excess of $23 million in line item transfers and in excess of $13 million in budget adjustments. With no questions asked at the voting meeting and only questioned two line item transfers at the work session.
I recorded the portion of the meeting about Young Williams and posted it on my youtube page, you can watch it here.
