The Village of South Jacksonville’s Board of Trustees are unhappy with the service provided by Morgan County Animal Control.
The trustees discussed the annual renewal of the agreement between the village and the county last night.
The trustees accused the Morgan County Commissioners of pawning questions about the contract off on Animal Control Director Lisa Ladely, according to Village Treasurer and Office Manager Mindy Olsen. The trustees said they found the service inadequate in a number of ways including the fact that animal control officers only operated 8:30AM to 4:30PM Monday through Friday.
Trustee JW Coleman laughed at the idea saying that stray dogs and cats don’t operate on banker’s hours, calling the $11,000 annual renewal “ridiculous.” Trustee Paula Belobradjic-Stewart said that the draft of the contract, which she said didn’t look like a contract at all, appeared to be written more like a letter without any legal binding language or set regulations that a normal contract or intergovernmental agreement would usually contain. The agreement said that beyond the normal business hours, animal control would only respond on an emergency basis. Stewart said that the emergency definition was not contained in the language of the document, and appeared to be up to animal control’s discretion.
The trustees were told by Village Police Chief Eric Hansell that Animal Control only deals with domesticated animals and not wild ones. He says that his department usually has to deal with wild animals on their own as well as domesticated animals after hours, often time having to put the captured animals in his own squad car. Hansell says that, by law, the only after hours calls that animal control has to take is in situations where a bite to a person has occurred.
Village President Dick Samples says that village residents aren’t getting what they pay for: “It’s $10,000 being spent that we get nothing out of. It’s just giving [the county] $10,000 on a very limited return on an investment, so to speak. If you pay the $10,000 (and that’s what they are going to charge us), they are only going to be there 8AM-4PM Monday through Friday. So, what do you do on the weekends? You’re back to doing it yourself.”
Samples says that the village is not equipped to handle the costs of operating its own animal control: “Not at this present time. I guess we are going to get equipped to handle it.”
Village Treasurer Olsen says that another attempt to engage with the commissioners on the issue is going to be made before getting Village Attorney Rob Cross involved on what the village has the ability to do as far as amending or changing the agreement. Olsen suggested during the meeting that several of the other municipalities in the county are likely in similar situations.