Friends of Strays Animal Shelter<\/a>, a Pinellas County nonprofit, sought the money to help build a new dog adoption center. Shelter leaders said the expansion would increase space for dogs and help the organization raise annual adoptions from about 2,000 to 2,500.<\/p>\nFriends of Strays takes in dogs and cats primarily from overpopulated municipal shelters.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are able to transfer our animals to our shelter to take care of their medical needs and get them adopted and relieve some of the burden on some of those smaller shelters,\u201d said Dara Worthington, CEO of Friends of Strays Animal Shelter.<\/p>\n
Worthington has been with the nonprofit for more than nine years and said the organization has grown significantly. In 2020, Friends of Strays purchased two buildings to expand adoptions.<\/p>\n
One of those buildings became the \u201cCat Box,\u201d which opened two years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it was important for us to have a quiet, safe space for them,\u201d Worthington said.<\/p>\n
The building next door was expected to be renovated into the \u201cMilkey Bone Dog House,\u201d but that project has not moved forward because of a lack of funding, according to the shelter.<\/p>\n
Worthington said the current dog facility is not large enough for the shelter\u2019s needs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the number of dogs, the size of dogs and we\u2019re just very limited in what we can offer for resources for dogs at this point without the new building,\u201d Worthington said.<\/p>\n
Friends of Strays requested $2 million from the state for the current fiscal year, but DeSantis vetoed the funding, further delaying construction.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout the support from the state, we\u2019re going to have to rely on the support of generous donors,\u201d Worthington said. \u201cAnd, with the economy the way it is right now, that\u2019s a difficult ask.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spectrum News asked DeSantis\u2019 office about the veto, and we were referred to the governor\u2019s budget signing speech. DeSantis said reducing spending was a core priority.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a variety of things,\u201d DeSantis said. \u201cSome of the stuff wasn\u2019t necessarily bad. It\u2019s just I set a target to be underneath the current year budget, so we had to get to that level and some of the things were plausible, but you just have to make decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Friends of Strays said the project would ease the taxpayer burden on funding for local shelters. The nonprofit plans to ask for state funding again next year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis building is so important to the future of Friends of Strays and also to the state of Florida, because we will be able to save so many more dogs with this building,\u201d Worthington said.<\/p>\n
There is no scheduled construction and no completion date set for the expansion project while funding remains uncertain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 A St. Petersburg animal shelter\u2019s plan to triple its capacity for dogs is on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[4318,3140,28,2200,115,596,99,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,2032,1374,835],"class_list":["post-329952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-app-latest-local-state-politics-stories","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-florida","tag-instagram-bn9","tag-news","tag-pinellas-county","tag-politics","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa","tag-trending-topics","tag-tyler-oneill","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}