Humane Society to hire director

For the first time in its 30-year history, the Kootenai Humane Society plans to hire an executive director.

Advertisements locally and nationally have attracted about two dozen applications, said Debbie Jeffrey, the agency’s treasurer.

“We’re stepping out of the box a little bit,” Jeffrey said.

“A volunteer board just can’t do everything.”

The six-member board recently agreed to hire a director to oversee the agency’s dozen staff members, its $600,000 annual budget and its mission to provide refuge to about 150 dogs and cats a month.

The position likely will pay an annual salary around $45,000, Jeffrey said.

The director could be hired within three months.

The application deadline is March 31. The hire will be a long time coming.

“We’ve been talking about it for several years,” Jeffrey said.

The Kootenai Humane Society was chartered as a nonprofit in 1975 and opened its first shelter in 1978.

It operates under a “no-kill” policy in cooperation with other shelters in Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls.

Sex offender fails to register

A man with a history of sex crimes against children is being held in the Kootenai County Jail on a charge of failure to register as a sex offender.

Scott Van Brunt Morgan, 49, told Magistrate Eugene Marano he didn’t register with authorities because he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to live in Coeur d’Alene or Spokane Valley.

According to police reports, Morgan told Coeur d’Alene police he had moved to the area about a year ago.

“There was some procrastination there,” Morgan told Magistrate Eugene Marano during a court appearance Monday.

“I wasn’t absconding from anything.”

The crime of failing to register as a sex offender is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

Marano set bail at $50,000.

Morgan was convicted in Oklahoma in 1995 and sentenced to prison for rape and additional sex crimes against children.

– Compiled from staff reports