Animal shelters across Arizona are at or over capacity, but state lawmakers have been unable to pass legislation to help. Instead, a legislative panel made recommendations and asked individual counties to offer financial support.
The Joint Study Committee on Statewide Animal Control Standards adopted nonbinding recommendations for shelters on Dec 11.
Among the recommendations, the committee urged shelters to review best practices and utilize social media to reunite pets with their owners. But Sen. John Kavanagh (R-Fountain Hills), the committee chair, admitted those goals are aspirational rather than attainable.
Arleen Garcia is a supervisor at the City of Sierra Vista’s shelter. She said her shelter already follows most of these guidelines, and what shelters really need is more funding and more staff.
“Surrenders, lack of budget, and staffing are, I believe, are the major issues that most shelters from what I hear from other shelter leaders are having. We’re all full. We’re all at capacity,” she said.
Garcia said the panel’s work at least seems like a step in the right direction, and might be helpful for rural shelters, though not all recommendations are cost effective.
“It’s going to be hard to achieve those standards without the proper resources,” she said in the final committee meeting.
Kavanagh said he tried to get similar recommendations passed into law through the state Legislature, but he couldn’t because there was no funding attached to the legislation that would have turned the recommendations into requirements.
Other lawmakers and shelters didn’t support the unfunded mandate proposal, so they approved the committee instead.
Kavanagh said he doesn’t support requiring counties to give a certain amount of money to shelters, and he has opposed legislation along those lines for funding county programs in the past.
He said shelters should look to counties for financial support.
