Here is a list of places where the Hermitage, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, relying solely on funds from the public, makes available to the same public its current financial information:

Hermitage 12-Step Plan

1. Mary Jo Spring departs
2. 2008 Form 990s are published on the website
3. Board votes to overturm policy prohibiting adoptions by former staff, volunteers and sponsors
4. Hermitage sends out a mass mailing to current and former donors, sponsors, staffers, asking for their input on how to heal the organization
5. New board members meet privately with current and former long-term sponsors and volunteers, and also heads of other animal rescue groups to ask their opinions and for input on how to proceed
6. Board retreat where responses are discussed
7. Board issues an open call for new board members and public participation
8. Open public meetings are once again held at The Hermitage and the Ward Council offices
9. New board members join
10. Individual board members send letters to other animal rescue organizations in AWASA, apologizing for the incident at last September's meeting, and ask to rebuild connections
11. Tom Tulowtzski, Taylor Heidenheim and Ron Zack resign from board
12. A new veterinarian with no-kill shelter experience is selected

My attorney has just informed me of the receipt of a communication from the Hermitage Board, which has accepted Mary Jo Spring's resignation as Executive Director.

I'd also like to thank the Board members for choosing the Blue Willow patio for their discussion of the new organizational chart, their personal opinions of Ms. Spring, and the upcoming budget. It totally rocks when you just drop information in my lap like that.

Every other animal rescue and shelter I know is bursting at the seams with kittens, I'd guess they make up 50% of the population waiting for adoption. Mary Jo Spring's welcoming letter on the Who's Who page of the Hermitage website states "The shelter is also rescuing cats from Pima County Animal Care Center and is working with animal rescue groups."
Earlier this spring the Hermitage made a big deal out of hosting a workshop on fostering kittens. And there is a sign at the front of the Hermitage stating they are at capacity. So where are all the Hermitage kittens? When you click on the "KIttens" link on their webpages, it takes you to a link-up with Petfinder specifically for the Hermitage listings. And you follow the directions, select "Baby" and click on "Go", there are no entries. Weirder still, if you select All Ages, only 49 total cats come up, and that includes sanctuary cats. Where are the kittens?

The "old" Hermitage cats, those taken in as sanctuary cats prior to the "New Vision", continue to disappear, and not into happy forever homes. The most recent are Belle, Bowie, Bunny, Comet, Dorito, Quincy and Yang. That may not seem like many, and if this were a large shelter with many animals coming in, some in bad shape, this would be sad, but not unexpected. But this is a facility with less than 100 cats, which is killing 3 or 4 of the remaining long-time resident cats every month; this is whack. It's been a year since Ms. Spring announced the cats were now all getting new and improved medical care at the Humane Society, purged all the staff she accused of animal abuse, and replaced the cleaning volunteers with a paid, outside company. She claims that only cats who no longer have a good quality of life are euthanized. So why do cats continue to be trucked off to the Humane Society to be killed?

The Hermitage is plunging into a financial abyss, yet it continues to deny former volunteers, sponsors, donors and employees the right to adopt. You would think they would see this as the golden opportunity it is to improve their bottom line by having fewer expensive, time consuming, sanctuary cats. But they don't, and they would appear to prefer to kill cats rather than have them go to loving homes. Ms. Spring couldn't even identify more than a quarter of the volunteers she's banned if she saw them walking down the street, but that doesn't stop her from forbidding them to adopt. That's the mark of a true animal lover.

Want to know what kind of people run the Hermitage? If only you could ask Allison.

Allison is a very sweet, gentle, middle sized, creamy white cat with neurological problems that require daily medication. She is the kind of cat who would be instantly put down if she came in at the Humane Society or PACC, but she had a home at the Hermitage. She stayed mostly in the front adoption area, in the cat furniture near the door, so many visitors knew who she was.

Then came the "New Vision", and Executive Director Mary Jo Spring declared that none of the 70 or so former sponsors, donors, volunteers or employees could adopt any of the cats. Simultaneously, she declared to volunteer Sherri Cox that a sanctuary was no longer viable. Ms. Spring called a press conference to announce that sanctuary cats like Allison were put down en masse. Allison had a sponsor in Texas who was willing to drive up to adopt her. Allison had a former vet tech from the Hermitage who knew exactly what her needs were, was used to medicating her, and was willing to welcome her into her home. But the Hermitage will not adopt Allison out to these people. This has been going on for over a year. Now Allison's name has disappeared from the adoption list; the remaining volunteers know better than to ask why, if they wish to stay volunteers.

Since Allison can't speak, I will speak for her, that's my job here at the blog.

"The people who run the Hermitage would rather make me spend the rest of my days in their shelter, instead of letting someone adopt me, solely because they don't personally like the adopter. There are two women who cherish me as an individual, understand and accept my special needs, and want to love me. I would like to spend my remaining days with them in a true home environment. Please help me to convince the Hermitage to let me go."

The decision to put down an animal is an agonizing one. You don't want to do it too soon, and take away time when the pet still has a good quality of life, enjoys their food, likes being with others, their pain is controlled, they still want to play or go for walks, have a good time napping in the sun, or just being with their people. You also don't want to wait too long, and have your companion experience pain or fear. While veterinarians make learned recommendations, based on extensive education and experience, the ultimate decision in all animal rescue groups I know, other than the Hermitage, falls to the person who is the daily primary caretaker of the animal. They know what that pet's normal behavior is, their likely behavior in responding to different treatments, what the home environment is like, and what options are and are not feasible within those bounds. They are the person with best feel for the pet's true quality of life. It is a difficult decision, even when it is very clear that it is time for euthanasia, and that is the way it should be, because life is a precious thing, not to be ended lightly.

Mary Jo Spring has authorized the killing of scores of animals over the past two years. But she is not the primary or even secondary caretaker. In fact, I rather doubt she could pass a visual identification test on more than 5 of the Hermitage cats. I'd like to know, has she ever been present when even a single one of the Hermitage cats was put down? She had no shelter experience at all prior to coming to the Hermitage; has she ever been present when ANY animal was put down?

It's July, 2009. The most recent financial statement of any kind on the official Hermitage website is the 2007 Form 990s. In his court testimony, former Hermitage Board member Vern Alexander stated "There was $350,000 in the Hermitage account when Spring was hired, but when I left, they were down to $32,000. ... She had done no fundraising activities." When a print reporter asked the Board President if things had improved since Mr. Alexander left the Board in October 2008, Taylor Heidenheim assured him they had...and then turned down the reporter's request to see financial documents.

This is particularly interesting in light of Ms. Spring's court testimony earlier the same morning that no one had been denied access to financial records. I'm sure this open access will be news to others as well (see Hermitage Donor Files Complaint With IRS, originally posted on June 19, 2008).

In their filing their now-denied claim against me, the Hermitage claimed I was causing serious damage to their finances. You would therefore think that when they appeared before a judge to plead their case, they would have come armed with specifics: numbers, balance sheets, checking account statements, their current Form 990, demonstrations of specific dollar amounts they had lost from specific donors, or even a summary of the amount of monies lost. But they did not bring forth a single specific number on anything, zip, zero, nothing, nada. In fact, the only numbers they discussed were from this blog, and those (profit and loss statements, cash flow, statement of financial position) were from the public portion of the September Board meeting. In her testimony, Executive Director Spring stated that those numbers were accurate, but misleading. Questioned by her own attorney as to how this could be, she stated that money was coming in and going out every day. I'm sure that upon hearing that blinding logic, the boards of banks all over the country are going to stop sending out monthly statements.

Ms. Spring, Mr. Heidenheim, here's your opportunity to clear the air. I agree with you that a summary covering a longer period of time would be a better representation of the Hermitage's overall financial situation than a monthly summary. You already have a spot on your website where you publish your Form 990s; it's just that it doesn't report what happened to any money after December of 2007. Please, publish the Form 990's for last year, and a balance sheet for the first quarter of this year. It's the 7th month of 2009, so surely you have those documents.

The Hermitage Kitty Store used to be an online store, maintained by the Hermitage staff, which contained items to further the Hermitage mission statement. There were bumperstickers for Spay and Neuter, Adopt-a-Shelter-Cat, Hermitage Cat Shelter t-shirts to increase name recognition, etc. Those have disappeared (along with the staff), and the store has now been outsourced to Amazon. All the Hermitage-specific items have been removed, and instead the site now carries items like Fake Blood and a bumpersticker that says "I like Cats...they taste like chicken". Not what I would expect from a self-described "world-class organization".

So, if you were a nonprofit organization that within the last two weeks had had two uncomplimentary articles on you published in the print media, had your petition to the court denied, and had your appeal of an unemployment compensation also denied, don't you think you'd be putting something on your official blog? Something to try to put a different spin on your growing public relations nightmare, something to give your side of the story. But, wait, you removed your official blog several weeks ago, and your top IT person departed. Well, you'd put something in your monthly newsletter, right? No, wait, you haven't sent out a newsletter since April. OK then, you'd put something on the front of your website right, a fact-filled, stirring response directly addressing the controversy, right?

Continuing its tradition of directly addressing problems and working together to come to resolution, the Hermitage this week has put its best efforts into posting on the front of their website: NEW! Play Circle The Cat!

Ms. Spring went 0 for 2 last week. Tuesday was spent embarrassing herself and the Hermitage Board in their continuing failed attempt to silence dissent (see Tucson Weekly article, "Tables Turned"). She then made time on Thursday to literally phone in her testimony to an Employment Security Commission hearing, where she was challenging the unemployment compensation of yet another former employee, Linda Riley. I received confirmation this Wednesday that Ms. Spring was denied on that attempt also.

The more employees an employer fires, and the more challenges to their unemployment claims are denied, the greater the number of points the employer must pay into the system. As of last October, the Hermitage had gone through 56 employees in 14 months, fairly impressive for an organization that started that time with only 21 employees. I would estimate that number at about 62 now. Although I'm not certain how many were fired outright and how many were pressured out, I imagine the percentage is they're paying to the state at this point is pretty high.

And yet, the Hermitage Board continues to not only employ Ms. Spring, but to support her fully in everything she has done.

Here's a link to the Tucson Weekly article, "Tables Turned", subtitled "The legal crusade by the Hermitage Cat Shelter's executive director backfires"

If the very recently departed bookkeeper or vet tech would like to talk to me, please email the webmaster.