The hearing on the restraining order was July 3rd. The Taos Mesa Animal Sanctuary’s founder showed up alone and I was with my co-defendants and their attorney. The part involving the sanctuary was dismissed outright due to one board member not having the authority to act alone in filing the application–something that was pointed out in a comment on social media. Another hearing was set for the part involving TMAS’s founder. TMAS has the option of refiling if they do it properly as a board and hire an attorney. In this case they were not doing it right and one person just assumed the authority to act on her own as the non-profit. It’s actually reflected in the application where she refers to it as “my non-profit”. It things were being done right, she would have used “our non-profit”, not because of the legal question but because in a properly functioning non-profit organization, there would be a natural sense that they are functioning as a team and no one person would even think of it as mine.
My perspective in criticizing this non-profit for not doing things right comes from being involved with the West Rim water association since its incorporation in 2002 and having been on its board of directors since 2008, I’ve witnessed the whole process and all of its growing pains. We didn’t just start dispensing water after incorporating, it was a process that took years. At no point did we ever operate out of regulatory compliance or fail to get the necessary state and county permits to operate. We first obtained a planning grant to hire an engineering firm to design our facility, we then obtained a federal grand from the USDA to pay for its construction, we obtained our current site through a land donation and the well was drilled in 2007 and our water facility opened at the end of 2007. It took five years from incorporation to actually operating a water facility. If Taos Mesa Animal Sanctuary was doing it right, they would be on a similar plan and right now would be seeking funding for planning a facility and acquiring a site for it, not taking in animals on a site they do not own completely out of compliance with state regulations on animal sheltering and without the consent of the surrounding community or the required special use permit from the county. They would also be completely transparent with their finances and display them on their website so each donor knew where the money was going. It was my familiarity with the process that made it such a surprise to me that Taos Mesa Animal Sanctuary was actually operating in the neighborhood out of school buses. I first assumed using the property in the related Golden River quiet title suit for an animal shelter was just a proposal.
I’m also familiar with board dynamics and it’s obvious that the TMAS board is dominated by one person and she is calling all the shots. That is not a healthy board situation. In sixteen years on the West Rim board, I’ve seen all kinds of board dysfunction and having a board dominated by one person leads to that person making decisions for the whole board and if they’re bad decisions, the whole board and the organization bear the consequences. I’m still dealing with the consequences of bad decisions regarding water rights made by one person who dominated the board before I was a board member. If TMAS wants to get their act together they need to have a properly functioning board that makes decisions as a board. They need to listen the surrounding community and not file restraining orders against their critics. They shouldn’t be taking in animals at all at the site currently litigated in a fraudulent quiet title suit, period. We, the residents of Tres Orejas were neither informed of this nor gave our consent in any way to it. The noise it creates and animals getting out are real issues that need to be addressed. I hear the noise daily and I live a mile and half away. For the immediate neighbors, it’s a serious issue and no consideration was ever given to them by TMAS’s founder and their quality of life is threatened by both TMAS’s current operations and the founder’s fraudulent quiet title suit under the business name of Golden River LLC. Her response has been to try to file a restraining order to try to silence her critics. It was a very bad decision on her part and one a properly functioning board in a properly functioning organization would not have made and that she had no legal authority to file on behalf of TMAS as the court ruled Wednesday.
What would doing it right in the case of TMAS look like? It would mean having a full board of around five directors and also having officers, a president, secretary and treasurer. It would mean financial accountability and transparency of which I’ve seen none either on their website or Facebook posts. It would mean that they would be in the planning stage right now looking for a site for their proposed facility not operating out of a couple of school buses on land that they don’t own. It is confirmed that the Taos County Sheriff’s office is giving them animals which effectively makes our community a dump for the county’s stray animals completely out of compliance with state regulations. There is a way of doing that right as well that isn’t out of compliance with both state and county regulations. Simply network a group of volunteers who can each deal with a small number of animals and have the non-profit focus on finding homes for them while it searches for a site to build a shelter.
2 responses to “A Day in Court and Doing It Right”
Hello all,
As the owner of the sign “Ravens rift” that has been kicked down and broken, I am sad to think someone would take pleasure to destroy a work of art. I will have to notify the artist john miller as to what has happened.
Good work.
Your tenacious efforts are appreciated by many.
Thank you.