Macon to add one animal control position
Macon County Courthouse. File photo
During a Feb. 11 Macon County Commissioners meeting, Interim Manager Warren Cabe announced that the county would be hiring a new position for animal control, a department that runs largely on the work of volunteers.
“As of this afternoon, on our Facebook page and our Macon County web page under our human resources section, there is an animal shelter attendant position that has been posted,” Cabe said, eliciting applause from the large crowd gathered during the regular February meeting.
In December of last year, Public Health Director Kathy McGaha and Board of Health Chairman Jerry Hermanson came before the county commission to address concerns brough to them by the army of volunteers that keeps animal control up and running.
“We very effectively use these large groups of volunteers to do a lot of work at the shelter, it keeps our staffing very low and of course our costs very low,” Hermanson said at the time. “But they pointed out a number of things of concern to the members of the Board of Health and so we asked the staff to do a complete dive into the operation, look at all the items that were brought up and look at in general where we’re going, what changes we’ve seen in the animal control effort that we’ve had in the last five or six years of so.”
McGaha and animal control staff sat down with volunteers and found that their main concerns were with staffing, building infrastructure, community spay and neuter programs, the animal control ordinance and training for employees and volunteers with staffing being the most urgent need.
So, in December, the health department requested one full-time employee to be a shelter attendant. That employee was to be responsible for feeding, cleaning and generally taking care of the facilities, as well as the animals.
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The county commission did not approve the additional position in December, but commissioners said they would consider the request during the upcoming budget process.
The issue came back before the board in January.
“One of the topics that was brought up at the last meeting, we talked about animal services and the shelter operations and whether that could be facilitated by another outside agency, by contract, or some other method,” Cabe said during the Jan. 14 commissioners meeting.
Cabe got a consensus from the board to move forward with exploring what options were available to the county and whether there were any interested parties.
However, in just one month, at the commission’s February meeting, Cabe announced that the county was seeking to hire an additional shelter attendant.
“[Kathy] McGaha needs some credit for that because she was able to use some funding for a contractual position through a staffing agency to hopefully help with some of those issues, at least until the end of June until we can research the issue a little bit more,” Cabe said.
This announcement, early in the meeting, did not stop eight Macon residents from speaking publicly against the option to privatize or contract out animal control services in Macon County and in favor of additional staff.
“The mission of Macon County Animal Services is to protect human health, safety of residents, safeguard animals and promote human treatment. It’s meant to encourage the adoption of healthy and non-aggressive animals and promote responsible pet ownership,” said Constance Kneely. “But to achieve that we need adequate human, financial and infrastructural resources. An animal’s wellbeing is dependent on having appropriate staffing. With staffing shortages, we’re going to see a decline in animal care, increased overcrowding, higher rates of unnecessary euthanasia and a slower response to animal control issues that put the public at risk and the staff — they’re going to burn out.”
