County Takes Steps Toward Building a New Animal Shelter

Lewis County is requesting statements for engineering and architectural services related to a design for a new Animal Shelter.

Doug Carey, facilities manager with Lewis County addressed the county commissioners regarding the resolution on Monday morning at the Lewis County Courthouse in the County Commissioners’ hearing room.

Carey told the commissioners that the resolution requests interested firms provide statements of qualification to provide Lewis County engineering and architectural services relating to development to the design of a new animal shelter.

“This project has been on the books for a while. It has a lot of public involvement. There’s a steering committee of citizens that have helped raise money and provide guidance to the county for the provision of this building and we are reaching the culmination of this project,” said Carey. 

Amy Hanson, who has been involved with the Lewis County Animal Shelter for 30 years, becoming manager in 2000, said the animal shelter has received several large bequests from members of the community and is expecting two more in 2020 and 2021 bringing them to a total close to $2.5 million to be used for construction.

“Hopefully with those bequests it will be enough to cover construction,” she said. “We have a special account set up at the auditor’s office so the money can’t be used for anything except for building or repairs.”

The current animal shelter, built on land owned by Lewis County, has been in use as the county animal shelter since the mid-80s but it was not originally built to be a shelter, so the airflow and other building functions are not ideal for an animal shelter.

“It just needs to be more functional. We have a small staff and we are hoping to have two separate entrances, one for incoming, one for outgoing. We need more storage, we have holes in the floor, our ceilings are crumbling, we had to have a rotten wall replaced over the summer. We either need some serious repairs or a new building,” said Hanson.

There is a committee of people working toward the goal of building a more functional animal shelter including Hanson, seven community members, J.P. Anderson director of Lewis County Public Health & Social Services (LCPHSS) and John Abplanalp, also with LCPHSS. 

“I don’t know what (plan) we are going to go with. I’ve looked at hundreds of shelter plans but nothing seems to fit our situation and our small staff,” Hanson said. 

Hanson said it makes the most sense to her to build the new building on the same site as the current building, 11 acres of land that is shared with public works, and keep the current shelter building for quarantine and large puppy mill impounds. 

“It’s extremely difficult when we have 36 to 40 dogs come in from an impound, and we have to hold them for an average of six months while it goes through the process. Then to keep up with the other dogs that we have coming in, so it’s a struggle,” Hanson said.

Hanson said she would love to break ground in late spring or early summer of this year but isn’t sure if it will happen.