‘If we could do a joint program with the county, that would be great.”

That was the mayor of Spokane speaking on the recurrent topic of animal control. It was five mayors ago, by the way.

In the decade since Jack Geraghty uttered the above quote, the city has seen a total turnover in its City Council, a transition from a council-manager to a strong-mayor government, and the carving of the city into three council districts.

Throughout all those changes in municipal government, the questions over who will license pets and deal with strays remain stubbornly unchanged – and unresolved.

The job is still contracted to SpokAnimal C.A.R.E., which keeps telling the city it’s not all that interested. It especially doesn’t want to euthanize animals, which is part of the job when you’re dealing with animals that run loose because the owners won’t take responsibility for them – and because in some cases there is no owner. SpokAnimal puts down hundreds of feral cats every year, along with hundreds of unlicensed and unclaimed pets, many of them pit bulls and Rottweilers that conceivably turned out to be more burden than the owners wanted to shoulder.

Rather than enforce license laws and put animals to death, SpokAnimal would prefer to concentrate on an aggressive adoption strategy that saves animals by placing them where they can be appreciated and making sure they get rabies shots and are spayed or neutered.

But the city keeps relying on the agency for the full animal-control package, and the agency keeps charging higher rates to do the work it would like to turn over to someone else.

Someone like the Spokane County Regional Animal Protection Service, or SCRAPS.

The county entity would be a logical choice, in part because it would create more uniformity in the way animal-control policies are handled. Stray dogs and cats notoriously ignore political boundaries in their wandering. The downside, as it has been since at least as long ago as Geraghty’s administration, is that SCRAPS would need to expand its facilities and would expect the city to cover the capital and start-up costs. After that, it wouldn’t cost much more than SpokAnimal’s contract.

That’s why an increase in licensing fees was part of the package the City Council was to address last Monday.

Unfortunately, the council held off on any decision when Councilman Bob Apple pressed for further conversations with SpokAnimal, as if there were new information that would alter an agency attitude that has been consistent for the past 10 years, at least.

SpokAnimal’s contract ends at the end of 2010, giving the city time to work out a deal with SCRAPS and design a reasonable transition, including how to pay the upfront costs. Once the unexpected conversations are over, the council needs to return to the business at hand and resolve this issue for good.

As someone once said, if the city could do a joint program with the county, that would be great.