Betty Irwin, the manager of the Mae Bachur Animal Shelter, has been fired.

She was dismissed Thursday morning by Brent Slobodin, the board president of the Humane Society Yukon.

Slobodin told the Star today that the board “unanimously decided that it was time to go in a different direction.”

He wouldn’t elaborate, saying it’s a personnel matter.

“We just felt that it was time to part ways,” Slobodin said.

“She had done a good job for us, but we felt that moving forward, it was time to look for a fresh perspective.”

The society’s board is relatively new, he noted – he’s been president since April – and the members are looking to put a new model in place.

The board must give Irwin severance pay as per her contract, but Slobodin declined to say what the amount is. He said it would affect the society’s operating costs.

Reached by phone Thursday afternoon, Irwin said she was upset.

She spent the afternoon taking her dogs for a long walk and thinking things over, she said.

“I’d rather been expecting it,” Irwin said.

“But when it happens, yes, it is a shock. I knew that there was a major reorganization going on and I was not really privy to that.”

She declined to say the reasons given for her firing, if any.

Irwin, who is also a city councillor, had been the Tlingit Street shelter’s manager since July 2014.

Two months ago, she received a positive performance evaluation from former president Cris Guppy, she said.

“I loved it,” Irwin said of the job.

“It was always a great feeling when an animal was adopted to a place that you knew was going to be a good home. It gave you a warm, fuzzy feeling.”

As manager of the 17-year-old shelter, Irwin was responsible for its day-to-day operations.

She said one of the responsibilities is to “serve at the discretion of the board,” with the manager passing along information or new procedures to shelter staff.

“That was the way it was supposed to work,” she said.

It wouldn’t always happen that way, she said. She declined to comment further, citing a confidentiality clause in her contract.

Irwin first started volunteering with the shelter’s weekly bingo fundraiser years ago. She said she’ll continue to do that.

“The shelter is so important to the community, and I certainly want to see it be successful,” she said.

“It’s a non-profit organization, and, like all non-profits, it struggles, certainly with governance and with finances.”

Slobodin said the board will revise the shelter manager job description and seek to hire someone in the fall.

In the interim, former board member Linda Priestley will fill the position, he said.

In May, Priestley resigned from the board to take on the role of project manager at the shelter, according to that month’s meeting minutes.

When Irwin became shelter manager last year, her son Hoby Irwin, then-president of the board, stepped down to avoid a conflict of interest.

There has been frequent turnover of the humane society’s board in the last few years.

There was also a highly publicized court dispute over issues that, according to one former president, nearly caused the organization to dissolve.

In October 2012, then-president Shelley Cuthbert and board members Maryanne Baer, Isabelle Cote and Gerald Thompson were charged under the Societies Act with failing to comply with instructions from the registrar of societies.

They’d been ordered to issue memberships the board had denied and to hold an annual general meeting.

The three other members pleaded guilty to violating the registrar’s order, and were sentenced to two years’ probation.

Cuthbert pleaded not guilty and stood trial in September 2013.

She was convicted two months later, and sentenced to two years’ probation.

It was a financially trying time for the society.

In late 2012, the shelter stopped accepting new animals and laid off nine employees.

Territorial funding was withheld while the registrar took court action against the board.

As of June 2013, the humane society had roughly $50,000 in unpaid bills, Hoby Irwin said at the time.

It was able to repay those funds when it received $61,000 in damages as a result of a lawsuit filed by the registrar.

Today, Slobodin said fundraising is an ongoing challenge for the shelter.

The board and staff raise about 75 per cent of their money, because they receive little government funding.

At its annual yard sale last month, the shelter raised $6,000.

“We all care about the animals, of course, so we’re doing everything we can to maintain the service we provide, but it is difficult,” Slobodin said.

He said the public is generous with its donations. The society will also be looking for more corporate sponsorships.