UPDATE: Healdsburg Animal Shelter's Visit to City Council Moved to April

NOTE: This story was updated on Wednesday, March 7, 2012.

Healdsburg city staff have rescheduled a  presentation from before the Healdsburg City Council from this month to the April 2 meeting.

Healdsburg Mayor Gary Plass said today the switch to the first meeting in April was to accommodate a schedule conflict.

"We were shooting for March 19, but (Councilman) Jim Wood asked if we could change it because he won't be there," City Manager Marjie Pettus said Tuesday. "He said he wants to be there for the presentation."

City staff approached shelter management after the Feb. 21 City Council meeting, where a group of  long-time a conflict over transparency of finances for the

Volunteers at the meeting said they were refusing to sign a volunteer contract that included a shelter in the media. In refusing to sign, they acknowledged they would be prohibited from working at the shelter, according to the new contract.

Speakers also decried the lack of public information on how money raised for the new shelter has been spent, and the

Neither Julie Seal, Healdsburg Animal Shelter chief executive officer, nor Kathleen McCaffrey, board president, responded to an email from Patch asking for their reasons for instituting those actions.

Healdsburg Mayor Gary Plass said Monday night that he had a telephone chat with Seal "for about an hour" on Feb. 27. He didn't elaborate, but Pettus said today that her understanding of the call was that it was just to brief Seal on why the city was inviting them to a meeting.

"He just wanted to explain to her why the council would like her to do a presentation," Pettus said. "He explained that all these people came to us saying, 'please help us.'"

At the Feb. 21 meeting, Plass said he felt it was appropriate for City Council to get involved in mediating the conflict "in some fashion" because the shelter was "a very important part of the community."

Healdsburg Animal Shelter is a separate nonprofit agency from the city, but the city does finance animal control operations at the shelter at a cost of more than $100,000 annually.