Board OKs hike in employee count, hears construction details
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SARAH CAVACINI/Palatka Daily New. A design of the Putnam County Animal Control dog kennel buildings is shown Tuesday morning at the Board of Commissioners meeting.
Putnam County’s Animal Control Department will see two new officers and one more administrative dispatcher to help ease the agency’s understaffed facility, officials said Tuesday.
The Board of County Commissioners unanimously approved adding three more Animal Control officials to the eight employees currently working in the department.
“The number of calls coming in right now, the demand, is simply far greater than what the current employee staffing ratio can handle,” Deputy County Administrator Julianne Young told the commission Tuesday.
She said the additional employees do not require any more county budget money, as the department already has enough money to fund additional employees.
“I do not need budget dollars,” Young said. “We have enough attrition that it will not impact the budget but the board sets FTE, my employee counts.”
After today’s approved additional positions, she said the department will have two administration dispatchers, four shelter attendants, five Animal Control officers and one department manager.
The annual salary in Putnam County for a department officer is $26,013 to $48,028, according to governmentjobs.com, and a shelter attendant’s annual salary would be $25,350 to $36,991.
“Everybody should understand that this is the first step in many changes that we’re trying to make (in) operations of the animal services facility,” board Chairman Terry Turner said.
Shelter construction timeline
Speaking of changes, the board also heard from members of C&R Technical, the St. Augustine construction firm in charge of building the new Animal Control facility.
Company president Bart Gast told the commission that the new facility, once the design is approved, might take up to seven months to complete. He also said final approval of the facility’s design could take up to six weeks. No exact start date was given at Tuesday’s meeting.
The new Animal Control facility will be located on land between 120 and 130 Orie Griffin Blvd. in Palatka near the Sheriff's Office and county school district transportation building. The estimated project cost, according to C&R Technical officials, is $880,000 to $890,000.
The new kennel is designed to have 88 dog kennels – two buildings with 44 kennels each – and an office building, which is also where the cats will be kept.
The dog kennels are each designed to be five feet by five feet and made out of HDPE, thick plastic, Gast said. He added that the kennel sizes could be adjusted.
Commissioner Paul Adamczyk questioned the ability for air to flow through the kennels, and Gast said the kennel buildings will be open on the end. The building could also have wall fans at either end of the kennels, Gast said.
Adamczyk also noted that the kennel design shows no way for the dogs to go outside on their own – meaning, someone would have to physically take each dog outside for them to use the bathroom.
“I think part of the goal in my mind was to create a situation that lessened the labor burden on the little staff that we have so they can be spending more time helping the county, addressing issues with dogs that are loose,” Adamczyk said.
Young responded saying that the county tried to keep the contractor’s budget “as efficient as we could” and county staff will take on the task of fencing in the yards for the animals rather than the construction firm.
Adamczyk also said he did not see any area in the design plans for sick or aggressive animals to be isolated if they come into Animal Control, but Young said there will be a designated area within the new facility.
Commissioner Larry Harvey said once the new facility is finished and open, he hopes volunteers will be coming out to the new building to help. He said county officials have been working on the Animal Control facility since he got elected. The money has been sitting in the Better Place Plan fund ready to be used, he said.
“I wish we weren’t in the animal business, and I applaud all our staff for the hard work they did,” Harvey said Tuesday. “I wish our citizens took responsibility for their animals and it wasn’t put on the back of the taxpayer … but I applaud this.”
Four county commissioners gave the construction firm and county staff the nod of approval to continue with the Animal Control facility plans, while Adamczyk did not.