Yesterday I issued a formal directive to Dog Warden Julie Lyle to, in conjunction with the Dog Warden Advisory Committee, develop and implement a number of immediate steps that will lower euthanasia rates, increase public safety, and give the community, and dog owners in particular, the value they deserve from Lucas County government.
Those steps include the implementation of an adoption outreach program and the hiring of an adoption coordinator, modifying the physical structure of the dog warden department, purchasing new cages, building a vet suite on premises, increasing hours that the department is open to the public, and purchasing software to improve tracking of the animals.
Despite repeated declarations by County Administrator Peter Ujvagi and my colleagues on the board that there are not sufficient resources to implement these measures, the fact is that the Dog Warden reserve fund has swelled to nearly $900,000 this year (the total budget for the department is only 1.6 million). The fact that the reserve fund of the department has grown to nearly sixty percent of the operating budget is illogical.
While dogs are dying because of lack of space, lack of medical care, and a lack of a comprehensive adoption outreach program, the department's reserve fund has quadrupled since 2007, apparently due in large part to the license fee increase strenuously advocated for by previous Dog Warden Tom Skeldon. This swelling surplus in conjunction with the continuing rate of euthanasia is an unconscionable misuse of taxpayer revenue and a prime example of how county government is broken.
