Vicious-animal housing in limbo

The Saline County sheriff ’s office will determine where to house captured vicious animals “on a case-by case basis” until the department comes up with another solution, a spokesman said Tuesday.

The decision followed approval of an amended resolution by Benton aldermen Monday that restricted space in the city’s animal shelter for the sheriff’s office to house vicious animals. Under the amended resolution, the sheriff’s office will have three kennels to house vicious animals if the Benton Animal Control Shelter has space.

“If they don’t have room, we’ll try Bryant,” sheriff ’s office spokesman Lt. Scottie Courtney said. “Or come up with some solution in the interim.”

So far this year, the sheriff’s office has collected 15 vicious animals, though most of those were in two groups of stray dogs, he said.

The aldermen made the changes to the resolution after interim Sheriff Cleve Barfield decided he could no longer provide inmate labor for the shelter as stated in the previous resolution. In that version, which was passed in 2010, the sheriff’s office could house vicious animals at the shelter at certain rates if the department provided inmates three times a week to help clean the facility.

But Barfield told Benton officials that he couldn’t continue that practice because the inmates would try to return with drugs - methamphetamine and marijuana - or take them at the facility.

Benton Mayor David Mattingly has said the city couldn’t secure the facility, as employees couldn’t search people who showed up to look at the animals.

Under the new arrangement, the sheriff’s office will no longer provide inmate labor to clean the shelter, and the county will pay $20 a day for each animal held at the shelter - a $5 increase. Euthanizations now cost the sheriff’s office $35, disposal is $11, and the cost is $20 for any specimen testing by the state Health Department laboratory.

An environmental officer with the sheriff’s office responds to animal-control calls in unincorporated areas of the county with help from a voluntary animal-control tax. The $5 tax raised $46,834 last year and has brought in $16,731 so far this year, county Tax Collector Joy Ballard said.

County officials have used $5,000 from the tax this year to help with spaying and neutering, County Judge Lanny Fite said. When asked if the tax money could be used to build an animal shelter, Fite said a lot of responsibility comes with a facility.

“I think it’s better to house [an animal] at a facility that meets all of state law,” he said. “We’re not in the animal-control business. We’re in the vicious-animal business.”

Currently, the sheriff ’s office doesn’t have housing agreements with other cities, but the sheriff can enter into new agreements, he said.