Agenda - Council - 05/08/1990 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

MEMORANDUM TO: FROM: DATE: SUBJECT: Gary Reimann, Mayor Richard Cich, Councilmember Steve DeLuca, Councilmember A1 Pearson, Councilmember Ken Peterson, Councilmember Mike Auspos, Chief of Police May 2, 1990 Animal Control The present system of animal control for the City of Ramsey is, in a word, minimal. It may, however, also be as effective and practical as the City chooses to have at this time of tight budgets and servicing evaluations. I consider the Anoka City efforts in animal control to be excellent and very encompassing. Not only do they employ Community Service Officers (CSO's) as animal control agents but they also have their own impoundment facilities. They respond to calls of contained, stray animals, patrol problem areas and perform capture services for the non-contained calls. I was not able to obtain figures for their total animal control budget in the city without meeting with them and studying their budget, but they do pay their CSO's $9.99/hour and two-thirds of one CSO's time is spent on animal control. This figures out to be about $13,300.00 per year and does not include equipment, food, euthanasia costs, etc. They also have a Blazer type of vehicle for transport of animals and equipment. They recently remodeled their impoundment facility so that they are "self-contained" for animal control services. Besides euthansia, they also adopt out animals. While I consider this to be a very fine system,, it is obviously expensive and I don't know if it is feasible for us to attempt animal control at this level. At such time as we are able to justify the use of CSO's for the City (actually I feel quite sure the justification is ample now but the cost may be the controlling factor), we could expand our current practice of using the Anoka County Humane Society to pick up contained animals into an operation whereby we still use the Humane Society but expand the services available to the citizens by using CSO's. This would mean that we'd patrol in problem areas, capture non-contained strays and do our own transport. Our previous contracts with the Humane Society do not include these amenities and I doubt that the one which is hopefully forthcoming soon will do so either. There are, I think, still a couple of private contractors in the animal control business but there are none I know of located within a reasonable distance from the City. Private contracting may still be an option but it is not one I recommend due to what seems to be a lack of permanence with these types of businesses, their response time and their facilities as this pertains to animal health. What we are currently doing seems to be working out okay in that it puts some of the burden for animal control on the citizens who are affected by an animal, tame or wild, with the exception of animal bites. Unless there arises an outcry from the citizens to do more, it may be best to leave things as they are. Sometimes the loose dog complaint is more a sign of poor neighbor relations than actual affront at the sight of the dog running loose. Perhaps