A Sad Catch 22

The year before I retired, I built a nice little workshop next to the house. Its 20 by 28 feet and even sports a cozy wood stove. I knew I might not have time to actually do much woodworking for a while, but wanted to get it completed while I was still working.
And I was right... I didn't actually have time to putter around in it until this year. But in the meantime, the building has served its main purpose of being a good snug secure place for my Dad's woodworking tools. Its also a great place to keep my two freezers... they certainly don't have to 'work' as hard to stay cold out there and of course if the power is out everything will just stay colder in an unheated building.
Its not a big deal that I didn't use my little woodworking shop right away. I paid for it with my own money. Its located on my own land. And before the keyboards catch on fire.... it is an uninsulated building with no running water or drainage. Its only ventilation is a couple of windows and the little wood stove is the only heat source. It is my dream workshop but would be a woefully inadequate space to shelter animals.
Its not a big deal for my little workshop to sit empty on these chilly chilly days. In this weather, if I'm going to be outside, its on the move with my dogs : )))
It is, however, a really big deal for the Kings County SPCA shelter to be sitting empty and unused for the second winter in a row. According to their own website, http://kingsspca.com/ The SPCA Care Centre is not open permanently yet. It is being opened for this purpose at this time only. The building will be closed again at the end of the day. There won't be any animals in the shelter until we are able to operate it. While the Board is actively working to obtain sufficient funding to make that happen as soon as possible, there is great concern over the decision to use the facility at all.
Concern? I would think there would be more 'concern' about the fact that the shelter still isn't open. Unlike my little workshop, this shelter was paid for by donations from animal lovers who had the very reasonable expectation that the shelter would be opened once it was completed. Unlike my little workshop, the shelter has the power to save lives.
Instead, most of the adoption page on the site is devoted to a lengthy explanation as to why the 'quality' of their adoptions is more important than the 'quantity' is. I haven't heard anything quite like that since the interesting and often innovative justifications I would get as to why homework wasn't done/curfew was broken/etc....
Like a stuck record, I often go on and on about how animal welfare issues pass under the radar for so many good people in the province. But here in Kings County, there are very few people who don't know that the lovely new shelter is still sitting out there on Country Home Road like a jilted bride left waiting.
It should be no surprise that the Kings County branch is having trouble fundraising. Support will be even harder to find for a shelter that has sat empty for well over a year now.
Its a shame, because there is an opportunity here for the shelter to be so much more than one of the most talked about white elephants in the county. Its a new shelter, so there are no old protocols to unlearn. There is a clean slate available that could be such a shining star for the society.
Honestly, I could spend half the night writing about the possibilities. But tonight, on this cold cold night, it will still be sitting empty while the animals are left out in the cold.