Time to take care

of animals at shelter

We’re not surprised that the some members of the county council want to get out of the animal shelter business. Who can blame them?

For years, the county has run a shoddy shelter operation. It came painfully to light this past year with the release of two reports condemning the lack of resources the county puts into housing and helping the animals in its care.

The county responded, with some cash and another study, but its options are limited, if they exist at all.

King County operates two shelters, a small one in Bellevue and the main shelter in Kent. Both need help.

Fixing the shelter operation isn’t just a matter of slapping some paint on the facilities and trying to do a better job of getting animals adopted. The conditions are the shelters are way beyond that. Fixing them essentially means tearing them down and starting over. And that, of course, means money – lots of it at a time when the county already has cut its budget and must do more.

Council members Dow Constantine, Julia Patterson, Reagan Dunn and Larry Phillips said during a recent meeting that they favored an option for a private agency to run the shelters. Dunn represents part of Bellevue.

The Bellevue-based Seattle Humane Society has the expertise to do this. What it would need is monetary support from King County to allow the society to expand its facility or build more of them elsewhere in the county.

One county councilmember, Dow Constantine, chairman of the Committee of the Whole indicates that this could be the best choice.

“This is a moral issue that we are responsible for the animals and we need to succeed for the animals.”

What’s needed now is a plan – a workable one – to properly care for animals in King County. With proper county funding and the expertise of a group such as the Seattle Human Society, we could do right by the animals in our care.