EVERETT — The city of Sultan had no way to deal with stray animals.
Five years ago, feral cats and stray dogs roamed the small town’s streets. One loose dog even attacked and bit a city councilman and councilwoman out for a walk.
Sultan leaders decided to do what just about every other municipality in Snohomish County does: They paid Everett to deal with their strays at its animal shelter.
The relationship lasted about a year.
Sultan ended the contract partly because it became too expensive. The city couldn’t predict or control how much the bill would be, said Deborah Knight, Sultan’s city administrator.
For instance, the city’s bill one month came in nearly double, at $3,300, after a Sultan woman took it upon herself to go on a feral cat roundup and drop off the animals at the Everett shelter.
“We had no way to manage the contract effectively,” Knight said.
Now Sultan’s strays are kept in a kennel in the public works building.
What happened with Sultan illustrates a bigger problem for Everett — and the entire county.
Caring for the county’s unwanted animals is an expensive venture, one that’s gotten pricier for everybody involved.
A dozen cities as well as the county have contracts with the Everett Animal Shelter. Each entity pays a fee for every animal from its area that ends up at the shelter.
In the past five years, the per-animal fee doubled to $164 this year from $80 in 2006 — even though the number of unwanted animals has dropped.
Earlier this year, Arlington also canceled its contract with Everett because of the cost. Officials figured they’d have to send Everett a check for around $35,000 next year.
Monroe, too, stopped sending most strays to Everett; now only aggressive animals are shipped to Everett. The rest are kept at a private kennel for three days, then sent to a private shelter in Woodinville.
Other cities dealing with tighter budgets complained, too.
In response, the Everett Animal Shelter dropped the fee to $155 per animal next year. They did that by budget trims and holding open vacant positions at the shelter.
“We are in a great position to take care of animals and a terrible position if no one wants to pay for it,” said Deborah Wright, a city administrator who serves as a liaison to the Everett Animal Shelter board.
Fees are up mostly because of the new $6.2 million shelter that opened in 2009, Everett’s Chief Financial Officer Debra Bryant said.
It’s a shelter the city felt it had no choice but build.
In 2006, city leaders wanted to get out of the shelter business. The old cinderblock shelter was cramped and ill-equipped to handle the nearly 10,000 animals the city was taking in annually. It also was located on prime land the city set aside for its multi-million dollar Riverfront development.
Mayor Ray Stephanson sent county leaders a letter asking them to start a shelter that would serve the region. At the time, he said responsibility for providing animal shelter service belonged to the county — not Everett. County leaders didn’t agree.
It’s unusual for a city to have its own shelter. Virtually everywhere else in the state, either a county shelter takes care of unwanted animals, or cities contract with a nonprofit group.
In Snohomish County, nonprofit rescue groups such the Progressive Animal Welfare Society in Lynnwood help. The Everett Animal Shelter bears most of the burden for the county and it can’t turn any animals away.
After the county said “no,” Everett decided to build a larger shelter on Smith Island, but it got the county to chip in $2.5 million. Everett paid $2.1 million.
The remainder is being paid for by those increased animal fees. Of the $155 Everett charges, $105 goes toward the care of animals and operation of the shelter and the other $50 goes toward paying for the new shelter, Bryant said.*
“No one wanted to be in the animal shelter business, but somebody had to do it,” she said.
The shelter’s operating budget has also gone up by more than 60 percent in a five-year period, to $1.4 million this year from just under $900,000 in 2006. That’s mainly because the city hired more people to work at the shelter — something the city said was necessary.
“We had 10 employees trying to work seven days a week,” Wright said.
The new workers included a city veterinarian, a vet tech, and other positions that have helped the city run a larger shelter and decrease the number of animals that have to be euthanized.
Costs have gone up even though an army of 200 volunteers help by providing extra attention and care. A nonprofit group called the Animal Rescue Foundation chips in time and money, too.
Putting down more animals isn’t necessarily the solution either. Euthanization and disposal of animals costs money as well, city officials said.
Reporter Debra Smith: 425-339-3197 or dsmith@heraldnet.com
*Correction, Nov. 29, 2010: An earlier version of this story contained an incorrect breakdown of animal contract fees.
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