SPCA ends longtime Wilmington contract

[longnecker]

SPCA ends longtime Wilmington contract

No-kill policy means nonprofit can't afford to house city's strays
For 120 years, the Delaware SPCA handled animal control for Wilmington, finding homes for many strays while euthanizing others.
But as the nonprofit group shifted to a no-kill policy in the past few years, it could no longer afford to care for every animal it brought in, especially pit bulls. It lost more than $100,000 on the city contract last year.
Now, the agency has given the city until June 30 to find an alternative method for dealing with strays. The city does not have many options.
"We have some work to do to determine how we will handle animal-control services beyond that date," said William S. Montgomery, Wilmington Mayor James M. Baker's chief of staff. "We will explore whatever options are available to us based on the cost and quality of the service, and then go from there."
One possibility could be the Kent County SPCA, which provides animal control for all three counties. That organization does euthanize animals not placed in homes.
Many other municipalities face similar animal-control issues, as nonprofit shelters move away from law enforcement.
"The trend nationally is that government entities do it themselves, either they find a company or they just find a way to do it with their own resources," said Patrick Carroll, executive director of the Delaware Humane Association, a no-kill facility.
"We would rather be in a position where we're providing support to an organization that does that," including taking in animals from animal-control shelters when they had too many and then putting them up for adoption, Carroll said.
"It makes it really hard to be a no-kill facility when you have to take in absolutely everything that comes to your door," he said. "You run out of space really quickly. Not every animal is adoptable."
Delaware SPCA Executive Director Anne Cavanaugh said animal control is a government function that is not consistent with the nonprofit's mission of prevention of animal cruelty.
"Instead of using our resources to subsidize an underfunded government contract, this will allow us to focus more on our mission of prevention of cruelty and on reducing the population of unwanted animals through our high volume spay/neuter programs," said Cavanaugh, who laid out her organization's problems in a letter to Jeff Starkey, Wilmington's licenses and inspection commissioner. read more
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[Pramick]

I wonder what the city will do now. There are so many strays.....and evil people.