Northwest Animal Companions has dissolved, and all board members have resigned, former NAC vice president Eileen DeShazo told the Idaho Statesman on Tuesday.
“The company is no longer operating. We will have no further comment,” she wrote in an email.
No other board members, or the group’s executive director, Troy Jackson, responded to requests for comment Tuesday. The corporation was administratively dissolved in January because an annual report hadn’t been filed with the state, according to the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office.
“It kind of breaks my heart,” said Nina Trenwith, a veterinary technician who is a former president and longtime volunteer with the group. “NAC filled a niche that nobody else was filling. If people couldn’t find help anywhere else, we’d do our best to help with whatever animal problem they had.”
The grassroots group was founded in 1998. It helped people who couldn’t afford spay/neuter services or other emergency pet care. It had about 1,000 people on its mailing list and about 100 active volunteers in 2011, Jackson said last year. In its 2010 filings with the IRS, the group reported total revenues of $900,000, including $843,000 in grants and contributions.
In the early 2000s, the group had as many as 200 active volunteers, including local veterinarians who offered their services for free, Trenwith said.
Northwest Animal Companions’ downfall came after an aggressive growth phase and plans to raise $1 million to build a no-kill sanctuary on 160 acres north of Boise. In early 2010, the group opened a huge thrift store and veterinary clinic in a 61,650-square-foot building at Chinden Boulevard and Glenwood Street in Garden City.
For a time, the group also operated a thrift store on Fairview Avenue near Kmart.
LEGAL PROBLEMS
NAC moved out of the Garden City site in late December 2010, after contract issues arose with its landlord and the contractor hired to do tenant improvements in 2009.
The contractor, R Squared Construction, sued NAC over the work it did remodeling the old grocery store into a thrift store, clinic and event center. Last month, a judge ordered NAC to pay R Squared $420,000.
That was the biggest financial blow to NAC, but there were others over the past year.
MWI Veterinary Supply Co. sued NAC and Jackson. A default judgment for MWI was entered in September in the amount of $13,930, according to court records.
Eight state tax liens against NAC total nearly $40,000. The first was filed in May, the last in December, according to the secretary of state. There’s also an $8,190 lien against Jackson for unpaid sales and use taxes.
The thrift store was incorporated as an entity separate from NAC in December 2010. The store re-opened in June 2011 as Re-Style Rescue Thrift Stores Inc. at 5326 Overland Road in Boise.
Re-Style is still operating, doing business as Northwest Animal Coalition, according to state records. In a December 2011 filing with the state, Jackson was listed as director of Re-Style. Veronique Borbonus of Boise was listed as president, and Ray Erickson of Emmett as secretary.
Three months earlier, Borbonus sent a letter to the state saying she had resigned as president. She didn’t return a call on Monday seeking clarification.
LAND FOR SANCTUARY
Trenwith, who left NAC in 2010, helped arrange the donation of land west of Bogus Basin Road to be the site of a no-kill animal sanctuary, a smaller version of the sanctuary run by Best Friends Animal Society in Kanab, Utah. The donation was made over four years; in 2010, NAC estimated a 25 percent interest in the land was worth $210,000.
The donor was physician Kirk Lewis, an animal lover who liked the group’s vision.
“I feel like I should give him a kidney or something,” Trenwith said. “I made a promise to him and to the other people who helped ... that it would be successful. I feel like they should give it back to him.”
Lewis told the Statesman on Tuesday that he is concerned about NAC’s financial and legal problems.
“I donated the land to provide animal welfare and not have it be in the hands of some sort of contractor-developer,” he said.
Lewis and his attorney, Terry Copple, said they were unsure about the future of the donated land now that NAC has been dissolved. A copy of the land deed provided to the Statesman by a former board member shows that the land was donated with several conditions.
Those conditions include that the land shall be used for prevention of cruelty to animals, such as an animal sanctuary; it shall not be used for residential, commercial or industrial use; and may not be transferred to anyone else by NAC. The deed also says “no lien or encumbrance shall be created or permitted to attach to the property.”
If NAC failed to meet the conditions, according to the deed, the land was to pass to Best Friends in Utah.
Lewis hadn’t anticipated that would actually happen. He said he named the Utah group as a beneficiary mainly because he admired the no-kill sanctuary it developed.
“I hadn’t identified anyone else locally who had that vision,” he said.
Katy Moeller: 377-6413
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