Still No Action On Pet Shelter

(Reprinted from Amboy Beacon, Oct. 20, 2010)

PERTH AMBOY — Despite repeated requests by local businesswoman Wilma Matey

for the City Council to vote to accept her proposal to provide

animal-control services to the city, the Council again took no action last week.

Council President Kenneth Balut, who has raised many questions about the

Shelter’s future for the past seven months, was absent from the previous

meeting, at which Councilman Kenneth Gonzalez asked Interim Business

Administrator Gregory Fehrenbach to “review this personally” before putting it on last

week’s meeting-agenda.

Licensed Animal Control Officers (ACOs) Richard and Michal Cielesz, a

husband-and-wife team who are now running the Perth Amboy Animal Shelter, foot of

Fayette Street, under Police Department supervision, have agreed to partner

with the volunteers headed by Matey, who has formed Perth Amboy Happy Home

Animal Shelter LLC.

After meeting at City Hall, High Street, with Matey, Mayor Wilda Diaz and

Councilmen Gonzalez and William Petrick to see if an arrangement could be

worked-out incorporating both proposals submitted to city officials, Richard

Cielesz posed with the group for photographs in the Council Chamber, where an

announcement was made that a tentative agreement had been reached.

The agreement was expected to be finalized at a Council meeting with a vote

by the full governing body.

Interviewed separately after the private meeting, Matey and Richard Cielesz

agreed that it was time to bring the matter to a close and to move-forward

on behalf of both the taxpayers and the animals.

“We’re coming to an agreement for the betterment of Perth Amboy and the

betterment of the animals,” Matey said. “At the next City Council meeting,

we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to get-started.”

“We’re trying to get this finalized real-quickly,” Cielesz said. “City

ACOs and rescue workers can team-up, get this done, and move-forward

very-quickly.”

A three-year lease with Matey’s group has been withdrawn from the

Council’s meeting-agenda at-least three times after Council members had earlier

voted to table a proposed agreement with neighboring Woodbridge Township.