The Limestone County Commission on Tuesday voted to increase funding for veterinary services at the county animal shelter by more than $150,000 per year, though the decision was not unanimous or without debate.

Dr. Robert Pitman of Limestone Veterinary Clinic, who provides services for the Athens-Limestone Animal Shelter, approached the Athens City Council and Limestone County Commission earlier this year to request additional funding. He said he was paying thousands each month out of his pocket to cover what was not being covered by funding from the city and county.

At its Feb. 10 meeting, the city council agreed to increase its annual funding by $38,000. The commission, meanwhile, was still debating the issue months later, with District 4 Commissioner Ben Harrison and Commission Chairman Collin Daly continuing to voice concerns during Tuesday’s work session and meeting.

Pitman spoke during the work session but left before the vote. Harrison asked about discrepancies between a profit-and-loss statement and Pitman’s claims of $25,000 out-of-pocket expenses each month, which Pitman couldn’t immediately explain.

Harrison also asked about reducing costs at the shelter instead of increasing funding. To this, Pitman said he’s already given less funding than surrounding areas, and some options are just as expensive or generate more negative community response than current methods.

“If you decide not to (approve the increase), somebody is going to have to incur this expense. Even with the increase that I’ve asked for, we’re almost $100,000 less than other facilities,” Pitman said. “If we don’t renew this, we’re going to have to go another direction.”

One of those directions involved limiting the amount of time an animal can spend in the shelter before it is euthanized. State law requires animals be kept seven days, but Pitman said they are sometimes kept two or three weeks while the shelter waits for an owner to reclaim their pet. In some cases, owners show up to reclaim their pet but can’t afford the full redemption fee, according to shelter director Priscilla Blenkinsopp, so the shelter recoups some of its costs by only charging the cost of vaccines.

“It’s either give it back to them or put it to sleep, and there’s a lot of adverse publicity to putting somebody’s pet to sleep,” Pitman told commissioners.

Harrison questioned why the seven days required by the state wasn’t long enough for owners to reclaim. Pitman said if they want him to go back to euthanizing after seven days, “we can do that, but I’m going to defer to the commission. I’m not going to take that heat again.”

Among the other ideas floated during the work session: asking the Limestone County Sheriff’s Office to take animals picked up in annexed portions of the county to the city that annexed that portion; asking the cities of Huntsville, Decatur and Madison to contribute to the shelter to cover the costs of services provided to animals picked up in those annexed areas; building a new facility and hiring a veterinarian to operate there; and even incorporating a portion of East Limestone, as cities with more than 5,000 are required to contribute to a county shelter or build a shelter of their own.

“East Limestone has almost 10,000 people out there, and they don’t pay anything,” Pitman said, “… but if they were incorporated, they’d be required to.”

Daly said he didn’t know all the answers he wanted to know Tuesday, but he planned to continue researching. District 3 Commissioner Jason Black said before the vote that he was supportive of an audit to confirm Pitman’s claims regarding out-of-pocket costs and other expenses, but he did not want to end up in a situation where the county had no vet at all because they refused to provide the funding necessary for services now.

“Whether this passes or doesn’t pass, I think we need to do the audit, as Commissioner Harrison was talking about,” Black said. “I think this is something we need to look into. We’re doing this for everybody in the community — those who have animals and those that don’t.”

Harrison called for the audit during the work session, and he echoed the request during the meeting, saying there didn’t need to be a vote until one was completed.

“He says he’s losing $25,000 per month and he didn’t seem to know where it was coming from,” Harrison said of Pitman. “I have a hard time believing a person is losing $25,000 per month and doesn’t know where it’s coming from. … If we do the audit and the costs are that real, then we need to look at ways to reduce that cost.”

He noted that Pitman was already under a three-year contract with an 8.5% increase in funding each year. Pitman had said the contract was approved before he had the most recent data from surrounding veterinary facilities or care providers, but Harrison said it “doesn’t make any sense whatsoever” for Pitman’s funding needs to require such a large jump when the number of animals being taken in by the shelter has decreased from 5,600 animals in 2004 to 3,413 in 2019.

“There are other ways to manage this cost that we aren’t doing now,” Harrison said.

Ultimately, commissioners voted 3-1 to approve increasing the contract by $154,864 per year, with Harrison being the lone vote against. Since it wasn’t a tie, Daly did not vote, but he took a moment at the end of the meeting to share additional thoughts on the topic and warned that the increase in funding for animal services may result in a decrease for someone else’s department or project later this year.

“You got to have a revenue stream for this,” Daly said. “Where are we going to get the money? Somebody is going to lose somewhere.”

Other business

In other business Tuesday, the commission approved the following:

• Claims totaling $915,842.58;

• Amended guidelines for accepting credit cards as a form of payment at the Limestone County License Commissioner’s office;

• Awarding a bid to Ergon Asphalt and Emulsions Inc. for scrub seal;

• Hiring Susan Hudson as office assistant for Council on Aging;

• Hiring Joshua Gentry as a deputy, pending drug screening;

• Transferring Justin Brown and Bill Bolding from the engineering department to District 2;

• Merit increases for one employee;

• Combining two lots in Walkers Enchanted Forrest into one lot, 23314 Christie Drive; and

• Selling a 2006 JD7220 tractor with brush cutter on GovDeals.