http://www.gloucestercounty-va.com/2014/01/gloucester-va-county-services.html
The above is an internal link to that story here on this site.
Here are the latest figures from the county as reported in the Gloucester Mathews Gazette Journal. We have to get the information from them because the Animal Control department seems incapable of keeping it's own figures up to date on their web page. The last entry they have is from 2011.
The month of December, 2013, calls were down from last year, 237 for 2013 compared to 300 the year before. 43 lost dogs were reported, 41 general inquiries, 37 residents responding to correspondence, 35 stray dogs 13 cruelty cases, (May have been filed against one owner of anywhere from 1 to 6 animals), and 11 cat cases. What these numbers say? Nothing other than the secretary answered some phone calls and letters in between filing...... her nails. It says nothing about how many calls Animal Control officers responded to. Gee, was this by design?
The only definitive information that was in the story was that Animal Control officers racked up a hefty 67.5 hours of overtime for the month by going out after hours during the week and calls on the weekend. This we can only imagine that a good bit of it is above their monthly budgeted payroll plan. We have to assume that there is some money held in the budget for OT for nights and weekend calls.
This department is already obviously heavily bloated with way too much personnel that has shown over and over again to not even be capable of following it's own ordinances they are supposed to enforce. The latest is Animal Control Officer Jeff Stihlman driving down Main Street while playing with his cell phone. Was he texting? This was early this morning, January 27th, 2014. If the county is not looking to cut this department substantially, then we have a serious suggestion for at least ensuring that there will by no further OT expenses.
There are 3 full time Animal Control officers and one part time Animal Control officer along with one full time secretary. Why are these people all working a first shift, Monday through Friday if there are calls being answered during the weekday evenings and also on weekends? Why not run multiple shifts and also incorporate a weekend shift? This gets rid of the potential for the ridiculous overtime these folks like to rack up. Put the keystone cops, err.....Animal Control officers to work in a much improved working environment for serving the county if we are going to keep this bloated expense to the taxpayers. $600.00 per doggie caught and incarcerated? Really? The county can't do better than that?
$400.00 to save a life but $600.00 to put a doggie in doggie jail and it takes two days per doggie? $600.00 per animal handled for November, 2013 and about the same for December, 2013. $600.00. Can anyone think of anything better to do with $600.00? How much food would that put on your table? How much gas would that buy? For some, $600.00 pays their mortgage. $600.00 would pay a good amount of bills that keep piling up. How much dog food would $600.00 buy? How much cat food would $600.00 buy? Come on folks, these people are costing us all a small fortune and for what? We do not need these bloated costs and no human lives are being saved?
