The Jefferson County Commission is putting forward an animal shelter mill levy on the up-coming June ballot for the sole purpose to establish the needed funds for an animal shelter facility, animal services and to continue the Low Cost Spay & Neuter Program in Jefferson County. The facility will be operated by a non-profit entity under contract with Jefferson County that proposed the best plan to build and facilitate the animal shelter and services.
The mil levy will solely help fund the annual expenses for an animal shelter and its services. The shelter’s other revenue will come from the non-profits revenue of the donations, fundraising, service fees and volunteer work at the shelter contributing staff hours.
Many Montana counties are fortunate to have an animal shelter to temporarily care for the many lost and homeless animals in their communities. They are also fortunate to have the budget for an animal control program and at least one small non-profit shelter facility to improve or build on from the start. But unfortunately Jefferson County needs to start out from ground zero making it that much harder to have the resources to start the process.
Due to shelter overcrowding and the overwhelming added budget burden of caring for the animals from Jefferson County, most shelters do not take animals from Jefferson County anymore.
There are estimates from three Montana shelters, recorded in 2019 of taking in a total of 163 animals from Jefferson County. Many county residents don’t know that the Lewis and Clark Humane Society charges our county $125 per Jefferson County animal they take in. Just LCHS alone annually takes in between 125 – 154 animals from Jefferson County. This doesn’t account for the many that are not taken in from shelters or the 4 Paws Rescue in the Whitehall area that provides foster care homes.
The Animal Shelter and Care Committee have been successfully running a low cost spay & neuter program in Jefferson County for over 12 years. In recent years AS&CC started a foster care program working with Boulder and County law enforcement. In 2019, the AS&CC foster care program housed and cared for 27 dogs, helped seven dogs to be-rehomed for individuals unable to no longer care for their pets and adopted out four additional homeless dogs. Even though we have a limited number of foster care homes the program does all that it can to help our county.
As one of the boots on the ground handling the animal issues for the county the Animal Shelter and Care Committee strongly supports the animal shelter mil levy the County Commission is proposing. We hope you will too.
— Cheryl Haasakker, Vickie Cordeiro, Barb Reiter, Tammy Murray and Salina Barker
