Pima Animal Care Center

The Pima Animal Care Center on North Silverbell Road. The current average length of stay of animals is 10 days.

Sahuarita officials said the town is considering breaking ties with the Pima Animal Care Center as early this summer.

The town is considering contracting with other groups โ€” including the Humane Society of Southern Arizona โ€” after county officials earlier this week rejected a customized contract โ€” known as an intergovernmental agreement โ€” from the town. Marana voted recently to drop its contract with PACC in favor of a new agreement for sheltering animals with the Humane Society and hiring its own animal control officers.

Teri Bankhead, an assistant to the Sahuarita town manager, said the town contracts with the county to provide animal control services and wrote the proposal to meet the townโ€™s animal control codes. The contract with PACC expires June 30.

โ€œWhen we made our recent proposal for the IGA we added a cost in there that we felt represented what our costs were to enforce our animal codes,โ€ Bankhhead said.

The cost of the proposal for the town is capped at $35,000 โ€” about $14,000 less than what Sahuarita paid in the last fiscal year. The countyโ€™s IGA puts the cost for PACC services at $88,000.

The town proposal included paying for community education courses, day-to-day enforcement calls, licensing, shelter and veterinary services.

But the town balked at paying for other services, including operations and management, administrative services and specialized services, including a program to spay and neuter feral cats.

For a small town like Sahuarita, Bankhead said, having a service contract that could increase in cost every year made it difficult to anticipate in terms of the annual budget.

โ€œThere is no containment โ€” so each year we werenโ€™t sure what we were going to be looking at in terms of expense,โ€ Bankhead said. โ€œIt jumped from โ€˜13 to โ€˜14 by 140 percent.โ€

County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry acknowledged that the townโ€™s intent is clear โ€” it will only sign an agreement on the expressed terms and conditions outlined in the townโ€™s proposal. But he is unwilling to offer custom contracts for each city and town in Pima County that uses PACC services.

โ€œThis proposed IGA is a significant departure from our present animal care practices,โ€ Huckelberry wrote in a recent memo. โ€œThe county views your proposed IGA as a retreat from the present animal care policies of the county that favor adoption over euthanasia.โ€

Part of the townโ€™s proposed changes is that it calls for the financial responsibilities for the townโ€™s sheltered animals to be transferred to the county after a five-day holding period. The current average length of stay at PACC is about 10 days. โ€œThis creates a financial incentive to euthanize Sahuarita animals after the five-day period,โ€ Huckelberry said in the memo. โ€œSuch is unacceptable.โ€

However, Bankhead left the door open to working out an agreement with the county.

โ€œWe are doing our best to look at our options,โ€ Bankhead said.

She added the talks with the Humane Society were in the earliest of stages.


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Contact reporter Joe Ferguson at jferguson@tucson.com or 573-4197. On Twitter: @JoeFerguson