Curioser and Curioser

At last night's Board of Health meeting I asked for details about the Memphis move to South Dakota. This was the first time I've seen Board Attorney Ricci present for the comments portion; he and Joel Elkins couldn't wait to inform me that the BOH no longer had anything to do with Memphis, since he was the property of Bloomfield's Neighbor to Neighbor Network -- which is "a private organisation with no connection to the BOH."

This despite the fact that Lore, Fitzpatrick, and Ricci were sitting in front of me and clearly knew the answers to my questions -- and despite NTNN's multiple locations on our town's official website. All my questions were answered by Ricci and Elkins with words to the effect of: "You need to ask them, not us." I reminded them that I'm a volunteer for NTNN, but have never had any answers to questions written to either Lore or the Board. In the 6 months, I've been associated with them, I've seen no news of meetings or updates on their activities.

Anyone for tea?

We later learned that the Health Department is negotiating with Neighbor to Neighbor to give the group total control over the Bloomfield Shelter as well as Memphis. As one of the fired volunteers explained it:

"...in a nutshell, Karen Lore went into an agreement with herself, basically, and all of the (current) volunteers who have made consistently derogatory statements about Memphis, to anyone and everyone. Presently, Karen Lore (the Health Dept) has agreed, at the direction of the Board of Health who has repeatedly stated they cannot direct the Health Dept (Karen Lore) on what to do, to enter into negotiations with Karen Lore (NTNN) to take over control of the Animal Shelter. And if Karen Lore cannot negotiate with Karen Lore by December 31, 2012, control of the Animal Shelter automatically goes to the Town Council (Mayor and Council members)."