COUNTY, HUMANE SOCIETY MAY TEAM FOR ANIMAL CONTROL

JACKSON -- Cape Girardeau County Commissioners and the Humane Society of Southeast Missouri may team up to provide animal control services for the county.

City officials in Jackson and Cape Girardeau will also be contacted about the possibility of cooperating with the county on animal control efforts.

Commissioners met Thursday with Larry Tidd, president of the Humane Society's board of directors, and Jhan White, director of the society's Cape Girardeau shelter, to discuss the animal control issue.

Presiding Commissioner Gerald Jones said he had gotten calls about three recent incidents involving stray dogs that concerned him, including a dog-bite case last week in Oak Ridge and a report about several dogs "hanging around" an elementary school in Delta.

"Nobody's in charge of dogs," Jones said. "I don't know what to do about this."

The county does not have an animal control officer per se, but sheriff's deputies are sent out to handle complaints, Sheriff John Jordan said.

Most animal nuisance calls are handled administratively, Jordan said. The animal's owner will be informed of state statues governing animal abuse and its penalties. In the case of nuisance calls, he said, deputies do not try to capture the animal.

"We just don't have the equipment or the facilities to do that right now," Jordan said.

Reports of dangerous animals are handled as emergency calls, he said.

Proffer said the sheriff's department does contract with the city of Cape Girardeau's health officers, who are called out in the event an animal has to be tranquilized.

"Where we have the biggest problem is where we have a stray that we don't have an owner for," Proffer said. Without the equipment to capture or transport the animal, there's not much the deputies can do, he said.

The county also contracts with the Humane Society for shelter services at a cost of $27.25 per animal brought in.

The Humane Society isn't in the animal control business, Tidd said. Like the sheriff's department, it lacks the equipment and the personnel to capture strays or dangerous animals.

Humane Society personnel and volunteers do respond to reports of animal abuse or cruelty, he said, as in the case of the puppy mill reported earlier this year in Birch Tree.

"My biggest concern is the dangerous situations we get into," said Commissioner Larry Bock. "We need to be able to send someone to those calls."

Tidd and White agreed to get together cost estimates on providing an on-call animal control officer for the county, and to see how their members feel about providing such a service.

The county will also contact the cities of Cape Girardeau and Jackson to see if officials in those communities would be interested in letting the county contract with them for animal control or in sharing the salary and equipment cost for an animal control officer.

The city of Cape Girardeau has two full-time employees now handling animal control, and the pending city budget includes funding for hiring a third.

In the city of Jackson, animal control calls are handled by the police, said City Administrator Steve Wilson.

When the county attains first-class status in 1997, commissioners may choose to establish animal control ordinances beyond the scope of the current state statutes, Jones said.

In addition, it may be possible to put animal control under the auspices of the county's health department, he said.

"We have to do something," Jones said. "It's not a big problem, but it is a problem. And it can become a big problem."