The Athens City Council unanimously approved a one-year, $480,000 contract with the Athens-Limestone Animal Services, Inc. to continue the city’s veterinarian services and animal control during a special called meeting Monday, Sept. 30.
Under the new amended 12-month contract, effective Tuesday, Oct. 1, the city will pay ALAS $40,000 per month until Sept. 30, 2025.
“For a variety of reasons, everything has gone up in the last few years to include what the city has to pay for,” Council President Dana Henry said after the meeting at city hall. “It is higher than we had anticipated. It’s higher than we would like. However, we have to do the right thing.”
During the meeting in the council’s chambers, District 2 Councilman Harold Wales noted the large sum of money as a result of the county choosing not to accept ALAS bid and to open their own animal shelter — the Limestone County Animal Care and Control.
“Yes, it’s a lot of money,” Wales said. “But, really what has caused this change more than anything is the county has decided to go a separate way. So, now we are on our own.”
Wales did emphasize that he was in “full support” of the resolution, noting the state law that requires the city of Athens to have a contract for animal services after the meeting.
“We can not afford to put the dogs and cats back on the street,” Wales said. “We are on our own, I have no clue why the county pulled out, I guess they just wanted to go at it alone. We’ve got a year now to correct that, and we’ll go to work on it immediately.”
Athens Mayor Ronnie Marks, who is now authorized on behalf of the city to enter into the amended contract, explained the negotiation process which led to the $480,000 contract and how they will evaluate what’s best for the city going forward.
“We resolved by settling on this price for a year,” Marks said. “They are going to evaluate their cost during this time. We’ll evaluate our cost and the number of animals that are actually from the city limits of Athens. I want to form a mayor’s task force in the next couple of weeks, with five or seven members throughout the community to evaluate this.”
Marks explained that the initial offer from ALAS was shy of $600,000. The agreed upon $480,000 is still more than the original $200,000 they were paying for the previous year.
“Not an ideal situation, but one that we are required to do on a very sensitive and passionate issue,” Marks said. “We’ll resolve. We’ll take charge. We’ll handle it.”
Marks highlighted the 60 day termination clause in the amended contract. He also left the door open for a future partnership with the county in which they would build a joint animal shelter, which he said he would prefer to do.
“I talked to Chairman (Collin) Daly today,” Marks said. “(I) expressed that we would’ve both went out with a RFP (request for proposal) to see what direction we were going together. That’s their business, we are going to deal with ours right now and hope we can work together.”