Possible animal shelter pathway

GOLDENDALE — The Klickitat County Commissioners’ afternoon workshop on Sept. 3 was a much quieter affair than the morning version, but no less passionate for the few who attended (see related story, A2). At issue was whether or not the county should pursue construction of an animal shelter or return a state grant of approximately $824,000, originally obtained by former state legislator Gina Mosbrucker.

Fortunately, the grant timeline was rolled over into the next state biennium, with a June 2027 deadline.  One of the holdups has been that, as a public body, the county would be required to pay prevailing wages for any contractor it hired.

Public Works Director Jeff Hunter has estimated that would inflate construction costs from an estimated $600,000 to between $800,000-$900,000. Using county staff to build the shelter could lower labor costs, but it conflicts with another grant-funded project at the fairgrounds with the same deadline.

The same comments have been brought up for years, but at this meeting, for the first time, a narrow path forward appeared possible.

Proponents, including Sheriff Bob Songer, suggested building the shelter as an add-on to the building on Potts Lane used by the sheriff’s department. The building and land are already owned by the county. Attaching it to the existing building reduces the utilities cost and gives access to a bathroom, removing the necessity to include one in a new building. And the grounds are already surrounded by a chain link fence, removing another costly expense.

Ultimately, commissioners decided there was a possibility — estimated at perhaps 25% — of getting the deadline extended so that county workers could do the construction. In order to convince the state, the county would have to demonstrate significant progress. Hunter outlined the next steps.

“I believe the first thing is the group needs to get together a budget that they’re comfortable with,” he said. “That needs to be done fairly quickly, so I can contact Commerce and say, ‘Look, we’ve got the budget. Our board’s on base.’ And I’ll tell them that we’ll deliver in November, a 501c3, a survey, the maintenance plan, all that stuff.”

Sheriff Songer approved the move and had an observation: “We’ve had double homicides and so forth in the county and we do a good job clearing those up. But when you impound [a rescue] animal, every TV station out of Portland is right there, because people care about it.”