Following Vote on Plans, Shelter Donors Speculate What Commission Might Spend $1 Million on Next

SOURCE: County gives go-ahead for animal shelter design by Michael D. Bates, Citrus County Chronicle, 4/27/22

County commissioners Tuesday voted 3-2 to award a contract to TOCOI Engineering for the design of the new animal shelter.

Cost for the design: $986,737 and funding will come from unrestricted donations specifically earmarked for the shelter. Those donations total $2,478,294.

The commission has about $1.5 million left in unrestricted donations, even after about a million is used on just the architectural design. These funds are completely at the discretion of the commission as long as there is a majority vote.

"Miami just put up a cyber bull like the one on Wall Street but all tech-y looking. About six months before that someone put a golden statue in front of the Facebook headquarters of that gorilla Harambe that was shot and killed a while back," one person speculated. "Maybe what we need is a giant animal statue. We could probably get one of those for a million, right? If not, we still have about a million-five. I bet we could get it done. All it takes is three commissioners and the will to want that statue."