Higher fees approved Tuesday for the Lawton animal shelter are designed to help bring down the facility’s population — or at least, lessen costs.
Animal Shelter Superintendent Roy Rodrick said the decisions to increase the fee for owners who relinquish their animals is part of the discussion city officials have been having about managing shelter intake. At a previous meeting, council members debated whether the shelter should continue accepting animals from outside the city limits, something Rodrick said none of Lawton’s peer cities do.
The council’s decision Tuesday means the shelter will continue accepting non-Lawton animals relinquished by owners, but charge a fee twice as high as that charged to owners who live inside the city limits. Both fees were raised: residents will pay $20 to relinquish their animals while those living outside the city will pay $40, and both will pay a new litter fee: $40 for residents, $80 for non-residents.
Rodrick described the fee as “midway” between what peer cities charge, but said none have fees for non-residents because they don’t accept animals from outside their city limits.
City Manager John Ratliff estimated the shelter spent $40,000 to $50,000 last year on an estimated 200 animals accepted from county residents, adding Comanche County Commissioners are not in a position to reimburse Lawton for that cost. Raising the fee will have recover some of that expense, Ratliff said.
“It’s not a perfect outcome, but a pretty good one,” he said.
Mayor Stan Booker said the bigger issue appears to be the shelter is being overloaded with animals from county residents, meaning it can’t serve residents.
“That’s my point,” he said.
Rodrick has said owner relinquishments must be denied when the shelter is at capacity.
Booker said the question may be whether Lawton should continue to accept animals from outside the city limits, an issue that may need more study.
“I may have a problem with even taking them,” he said, asking why Lawton does it when peer cities do not.
Ratliff said the city’s policy eases a problem in the county with strays, adding some fear strays in the county may end up in the city limits.
Ward 8 Councilman Randy Warren said the issue is one city officials have been trying to resolve for years. He said the feeling seems to be that if the shelter refuses the animals, owners will simply release them a few blocks away, forcing animal control to pick them up. He said some county residents will dump their animals in Lawton because they believe their pets have a better chance of being adopted here.
“This is the surface of a problem we see all the time,” he said, adding a solution would be for the county to pay “it’s fair share.”