How is your local animal control department funded?

[wsmoak]

The thread about tornado damage to a local shelter made me wonder… how are local animal control departments and shelters funded where you live?

I regularly see my local county animal control department begging for donations of cat and dog food on Facebook. I am building up the energy to do something, because I never see the solid waste or tax assessor’s departments begging when they’re out of copy paper. As a county funded department, it should be… funded. It’s the taxpayers’ job to advocate for this with their elected representatives if it’s not happening.

Note that we also have an associated non-profit shelter that works with the county to pull animals for care and adoption as they are able. But if they get full, then the county will euthanize. I do not mind the non-profit asking for donations at all. They have volunteers and do adoption events, etc.

It’s the county department that runs on a shoestring with a couple of employees who clearly are not being given appropriate resources to do their jobs that bugs me.

[Marla_100]

Our county shelter is now funded by the county and after years and years of horrible management it has gone no-kill, just built a nice new shelter and was taken over to be run by the Sheriff’s Dept.
Previously it was a half-ass, poorly managed nightmare where there was zero oversight.

Yes, citizens need to get involved and demand better organization, better management and
adequate funds for it. I hope you can rustle some bushes to implement change in your area.
It took a lot of bad press for the changes to happen here.

[moonlitoaksranch]

Ours sucks too. They tell everyone not to give money to support the shelter because the county takes it and they never see it again. They are supposed to build a new facility because the current one flooded during a recent major hurricane. They ask for donations of items so the county can’t take it away.

[shiloh]

Our animal shelter is pretty abysmal. They used to (and may still) sell animals to local labs for experiments - oh,sorry, medical “research.” They run very limited hours (12-5 four days a week) and apparently only serve as animal control. They take some drop-offs but are fairly well-known as the place to dump animals that are dying and even then they make them wait til their vet gets in once a week. They are a very low priority for any funding. If there is an abuse case they will refer it to the Human Society in the adjacent county but it has to be pretty egregious before they get involved.

[Irish_Ei_s]

Taxes