CALAIS – A power struggle has developed that could threaten the existence of the city’s no-kill animal shelter and the animals it was built to protect.

Board members of the PAWS shelter will be asked to vote Thursday on two slates of officers. The winners will set the direction for the shelter for the next few years.

Board member Ed Nadeau is leading the charge. In a letter to society members, he said that during the past two years he has seen some “serious mistakes” at the shelter. He said the shelter is operated by just a few board members who he believes have violated shelter policies.

But board members Rodyn Dufour and Ronda Cobb, who operate the shelter, say they are doing what local residents have asked them to do: taking care of stray and abandoned animals.

In the middle is Marcia Carlow, who sees the power struggle as “growing pains.”

It was Carlow who approached the city more than five years ago and convinced officials that the city had a responsibility to do more than just warehouse dogs and cats on their way to the gas chamber.

The Calais businesswoman organized volunteers.

That led to the construction of a shelter on South Street. The shelter was built to house 25 cats and eight dogs.

In his letter to board members, Nadeau said the shelter had a policy of not taking aggressive dogs, but that it has been violated many times.

“Presently PAWS is taking in any animal that comes to the shelter regardless of temperament. They not only can cause harm to the public and staff; if the dog is not adopted, it is taking the place of another perfectly fine dog,” he wrote.

Nadeau said a policy concerning the housing of kittens also is being violated.

He said that as a result of kittens being allowed to run free, a kitten suffered a broken leg when it was stepped on. He said another kitten was caught in a closing door. Still another was killed by one of the dogs housed at the kennel, he said.

He has proposed his own slate of officers.

Recently, the shelter accepted several dogs from another part of Washington County. If the shelter had not accepted the 10 dogs, Dufour said, the animals would have frozen to death. Some of the dogs have been adopted; one died of pneumonia.

She said the dogs are boisterous but not vicious. “The reality is, we have dogs that have been abused and neglected,” Dufour and Cobb said in their letter to board members.

The two women said the shelter’s veterinarian decides whether a dog is aggressive or not.

Addressing the issue of the kittens, the women admitted that mistakes have occurred.

They said one kitten was accidentally stepped on by a volunteer who was cleaning the shelter.

“The [other] kitten that was killed was playing with a boy … [who] was with the kitten in the isolation room [when] the door was opened, and a dog grabbed the kitten in his mouth,” the letter said.

If they are re-elected to the board, the women said, they will continue to provide “relief and comfort to lost, stray, neglected and abandoned animals.”

If they lose the battle, they said, they will leave the shelter. They have proposed their own slate of officers.

Another board member, Marcia Rogers, wrote a letter to the editor of a local newspaper last week to urge the board members who will vote Thursday to “look at Nadeau’s decision-making skills … .”

Nadeau and Carlow said they do not want Dufour, Cobb and the other volunteers to leave.

Carlow said she believes that regardless of the people who are elected, the shelter will survive.

She said she believes both sides have valid points, and she hopes they can reach a common ground. “We have come from the garage to the shelter, and now we have policies and guidelines and differences in how they should be followed. It is like any corporation: You have to move on to get better,” she said.