Stevens County Ponders Animal Control Sheriff, Prosecutor Developing Plan To Build Anmial Shelter, Impose Fees

Stevens County Sheriff Craig Thayer and Prosecutor Jerry Wetle are working on a proposal to get the sheriff out of the dog-catching and cat-auctioning business.

They want the county to consider establishing dog and possibly cat fees to build an animal shelter and hire an animal control officer.

Thayer and Wetle caution that they are just starting to gather information, and there are many obstacles. One of the biggest is lack of money.

County commissioners say they’re willing to listen.

“They’re two key department heads. Let’s see what they come up with,” said Commissioner Fran Bessermin.

“We’d have to study it, there’s no question about that, because we have a dog problem,” Commissioner Fred Lotze agreed.

Commissioner J.D. Anderson wasn’t available for comment Monday, but he expressed support for a limited dog-control program two years ago - when the budget wasn’t as tight.

Even if licensing proves politically feasible and capable of supporting an animal-control program, some general fund money probably would be needed for startup costs. At the moment, there’s no spare cash in sight.

“This year’s budget is so bad we’re going to be lucky just to hold the line,” Wetle said, noting that next year’s revenue outlook may improve in a few months.

Neither Thayer nor Wetle is sure whether county residents will support dog or cat licensing at a public hearing they hope commissioners will schedule. Both are mindful, though, that voters surprised skeptics a year ago by voting almost 2-1 to tax themselves and build a library system.

Demand for animal control seems to be growing as the county’s human population increases. With no county dog catcher, the job falls to Thayer’s deputies.

“I’d like to get the sheriff out of the dog business,” Wetle said. “We don’t want to have sheriff’s deputies doing animal control. That’s not a wise use of resources.”

No one has pushed for animal control harder than Joyce Tasker, who operates a controversial animal shelter in her home 12 miles southwest of Colville.

Tasker found an old state law that allowed her to flood the Sheriff’s Department with abandoned dogs, which the county had to pay the Colville city pound to handle. When a judge put Tasker out of the dog business, she began taking Thayer boxes of cats instead.

Thayer was forced to auction the cats under a state law that seems to have been written with livestock in mind.

Wetle said Tasker is “an animal advocate who does her best to precipitate animal-control issues and, for that, she can’t be faulted.” However, Tasker has irritated county officials too much for them to consider using her in any animal-control program they design.

“I think it’s mutual that she does not want to work with the county and the county does not want to work with her,” Wetle said. “The fact that the county does not work with her does not exclude seeking solutions to those problems.”

Finding a solution may require delicate diplomacy and compromise.

Part of the problem is that Stevens County has “two cultures,” Wetle said. While the southern part of the county increasingly has one-acre home sites and urban-oriented residents, the northern part of the county is still dominated by rural residents who want to be left alone on their 20-acre or larger properties.

Wetle recalled that commissioners abandoned a proposed noise-control ordinance in May 1995 after protests from north-county residents who wanted no loss of rural freedoms. Many of them feared the ordinance would target barking dogs along with shooting and other noisy rural pursuits.

In fact, Tasker organized some of the opposition, fearing the ordinance would target her Dog Patch dog shelter.

, DataTimes