Faulkner County still looking to build, fund animal shelter

CONWAY -- Twelve years after Faulkner County began collecting a voluntary tax to build an animal shelter, there is ample money set aside for that goal but still no agreement on how to fund a facility's operations once it's built.

The latest setback for shelter advocates came last week when the county's Quorum Court voted 8-5 against levying a proposed 0.25 mill property tax to finance operating expenses.

Democrats John Pickett and LeRoy Hendricks voted for the measure. The only Republicans supporting it were outgoing Justices of the Peace Johnny Brady, Dan Thessing and Bill Dodgen, who often break away from the GOP majority and side with County Judge Jim Baker, a Democrat who favored the plan.

Thessing, Brady and Dodgen, the tax plan's sponsor, walked out of the meeting immediately after the vote.

Republican Justice of the Peace Steve Goode of Vilonia suggested that the Quorum Court should hold a public forum to address the animal-shelter issue.

The meeting should be in a much larger space with ample seating rather than the courtroom where the panel now meets, should be focused solely on the shelter issue, and should be on a night other than the panel's regular monthly meetings, Goode said.

People should attend with the intent of coming up with "a workable plan" and not leave until they have one, he said.

The 13-member Quorum Court will have seven new members in January, and they may have some good ideas to contribute, Goode said.

Donna Clawson, chairman of the Faulkner County Animal Shelter Advisory Board, said she hopes the Quorum Court will allow the board to take some money out of the fund to help rescue groups and small shelters such as one in Mayflower pay for such things as neutering cats and dogs until the county gets a shelter.

Goode questioned how the county would decide which groups would get the money and how much since there are dozens of them.

David Hogue, the county's attorney, said that voluntary tax revenue could be used for a spay-and-neuter program.

"The operative language is in Section 3 of Ordinance 05-11: 'for the support and operation of programs sponsored by the Faulkner County concerning animal welfare and control,'" Hogue said in an email.

The Quorum Court agreed Dec. 18 to reimburse the voluntary-tax fund the roughly $500,000 that the county had used to buy another building that has been used all along by the sheriff's office, not for a shelter.

In January, the county paid $499,025 to buy property on Conway's South German Lane for a shelter by using revenue from the voluntary 1.5-mill shelter tax that began in 2006.

The county decided to lease the building to the sheriff's office for two years, then turn it over to the shelter. But shelter advocates became upset when they realized that the sheriff's office was renovating the facilities for its use, meaning work on converting the buildings into a shelter couldn't begin for two years.

Advocates later decided it would be best to build a shelter from scratch.

Clawson has estimated it will cost $850,000 to build a shelter. The shelter tax fund has almost $1 million in it, not counting the roughly $500,000 refund.

The proposed millage would have generated up to about $375,000 annually, Dodgen said, That would have translated to about $10 a year on a house that sold for $200,000, according to the county tax assessor's office.

State Desk on 12/26/2018

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