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No pet control clinic in budget
Council members point to tight budget year
MICHELLE CROUCH
Staff Writer
POLL | Should pet control be a budget priority this year?
After learning about the thousands of animals killed annually at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg animal shelter, City Council members pledged last year to make changes.
But the city's proposed 2004-05 budget doesn't include the $482,000 Animal Control officials requested for an in-house spay-neuter clinic -- a key step that could reduce the death toll.
And council members said Sunday it's unlikely the clinic will get added in a tight budget year.
"It's something we definitely need to do because it will save us money over the long run," said council member Susan Burgess. "But there's been almost no discussion about it that I know of. So I don't know if it will happen this year."
Burgess and her colleagues will spend the next three weeks making changes to City Manager Pam Syfert's $1.56 billion budget proposal.
The community will have its last chance to comment publicly on the budget tonight. The council will vote June 14.
The Observer's "Death at the Pound" series reported last summer that Mecklenburg has a high animal euthanasia rate compared with other counties its size. Council members received dozens of calls and e- mails from constituents pressing for change.
Charlotte kills about 15,000 animals every year by lethal injection.
Experts say that number will continue to grow unless the city takes steps -- by spaying and neutering -- to reduce the increasing population of unwanted pets. Charlotte now spends no public money on sterilization.
Charlotte's Animal Control bureau asked for $482,000 to build a spay- neuter clinic at its shelter, which serves all of Mecklenburg County. The request included $282,000 for the building, and about $200,000 in annual operating expenses.
Syfert said the city can't afford the clinic.
"We really didn't have the money to add any new things this year,"
she said.
Councilman Don Lochman said he didn't even know it was left out of Syfert's proposal. "It's regrettable," he said. "That's one thing I thought we'd get a pretty good bang for our buck out of."
Spaying and neutering has saved money in other parts of the country.
In New Hampshire, for example, a statewide low-cost spay-neuter program saved $3 in animal control costs for every $1 spent on the program. And it saved animals' lives: Between 1993 and 2001, the state recorded a nearly 75 percent drop in the dogs and cats killed.
Capt. Tammy Williams, who oversees Charlotte-Mecklenburg Animal Control, said she's still hopeful the clinic will be included in the final budget. "We've made the best case we could make," she said. "All the experts agree that spaying and neutering is the secret to reducing the unwanted animal population and the euthanization rate."
Supporters of the spay-neuter clinic are not the only ones pushing for a change in Syfert's budget proposal. Arts backers are lobbying hard for approval of the Arts & Science Council's $88 million request for cultural facilities, council members said.
Though they are still frustrated that the ASC won't rank its projects, several council members said Sunday they plan to look for a way to pay for at least part of the request.
"Their proposal is a valid one," said council member Nancy Carter, a Democrat. "It's something we ultimately need to do; I'm just not sure we can do all of it this year."
However, Republican Lochman said he thinks arts council supporters are in "la-la land" if they believe the city will fund all $88 million.
"We're using all the hotel-motel tax money on the NBA arena, and we knew that when we voted on it," he said. "But in Charlotte, we don't like to live with the results of our decisions."
Most council members say they're not willing to hike the city tax rate, which hasn't risen for 17 years. That leaves a difficult task to those who want to change the budget:
"If the council wants to add anything without raising taxes," Syfert said, "they'll have to make some cuts somewhere else."
