AR-News: (NJ - US) Bergen County: Panel to pick new animal shelter director

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BERGEN COUNTY  
Panel chosen to pick new animal shelter director    

Thursday, February 19, 2004 

By SHANNON D. HARRINGTON
STAFF WRITER 
 

Bergen County officials on Wednesday assembled a four-person committee to find a new animal shelter director.

The bipartisan committee - composed of two freeholders, the county health director, and the leader of a volunteer group that supports the shelter - will search for someone to replace Marianne Gallagher, the shelter's director and chief veterinarian who submitted her resignation last week after three tumultuous months on the job.

"I am confident [the panel] will work with me to find the best person to run the shelter," County Executive Dennis McNerney said in a written statement.

The panel members are County Health Director Steve Tiffinger, Democratic Freeholder Bernadette McPherson, Republican Freeholder Elizabeth Randall, and Carol Burrows, president of Friends of the Bergen County Animal Shelter.

By seeking broader input, county officials are hoping to avoid the controversy that surrounded McNerney's first two picks to run the Teterboro shelter.

Shortly after taking office in January 2003, McNerney hired Bob Nesoff, a longtime Democratic operative and enforcement officer with the Bergen County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

But after a surprise state inspection found substandard conditions at the shelter last year and after volunteers and others criticized Nesoff's leadership style, McNerney reassigned him to another department.

Gallagher was hired in November. But she, too, was criticized by volunteers, who questioned her leadership abilities and her commitment to animal care. Those questions grew louder after a fire in Gallagher's Pennsylvania home killed 48 of 49 animals that she had been keeping there.

Gallagher, who gave her two-week notice Friday, has defended the job she did at the shelter, saying she beefed up the shelter's disease-control program and brought order to the volunteer system.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for the search committee will be finding a veterinarian with management abilities willing to take the $80,000-a-year job. Industry experts say a non-administrative veterinarian could easily earn that much in the private sector.

McNerney said Wednesday that he is hoping the committee will have a prospective candidate within two months. 

Tiffinger will serve as acting director until then.

E-mail: harrington at northjersey.com