BEDFORD, Va. – The Bedford Humane Society has a goal of opening a new adoption center, but the project has not come to fruition for years.
Established in 1993, the Bedford Humane Society has wanted to build a physical animal shelter for years. In fact, on multiple occasions, the organization had fundraisers and created plans for the new center.
After years of thought and plans, the project has still yet to break ground.
10 News sat down with the nonprofit’s Vice-President, Marc Nevin, to talk about the delays and where the project stands.
“Well I think it’s because of a lot of wishful thinking in the past. People thought, ‘Oh sure we can do this,” Nevin said. “We want to do it right!”
The delay is causing some volunteers with the organization and the community in general to grow restless.
Now, a group known as the Citizens for a Transparent BHS is calling on the Humane Society to be more forthcoming about its plans for the shelter. The group has started a petition to ‘hold board members accountable.’
“We feel that several of them were. We brought up some issues that are going around with volunteers, fosters, some toxic volunteer work environments. That got discussed. We had some really good solutions for that. We were told they raised $1.2 million and they need to raise about $300,000 more and that they may possibly break ground in the fall,” Shana Sayers said.
One of the concerns from several people involves financial transparency.
“We want to work with them. We have volunteers from 15 years ago that have joined our group of about 10-12 people to look for the transparency of the Bedford Humane Society,” Sayers said.
The Humane Society is having a public meeting on Thursday, June 6 at the Moneta Library at 13641 Moneta Road from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.