MOULTRIE — The Moultrie-Colquitt County Humane Society has asked for a $50,000 increase from the County for its contracted services as the county’s animal control.

County Administrator Chas Cannon told the commissioners at a county budget meeting, “This is funded out of our insurance premium tax. It can only be spent on unincorporated items.”

He said every city and the unincorporated county has a contract with animal control to provide that service. He opened the floor to County Clerk Melissa Lawson, who is a member of the Humane Society’s board.

She told the commissioners she wanted to review a few things with them about the organization. First, she told them that all of the organization’s meetings were held in compliance with the open meetings and open records act.

“We’ve complied with all the funding requirements outlined in the contract for this fiscal year,” Lawson also said.

She said they also facilitated a training via the law enforcement institute to make sure the Humane Society’s personnel were properly trained on state statutes regarding dangerous dogs, responsible dog ownership laws and the Animal Protection Act.

“We had an assessment of our shelter performed by the Shelter Medicine Service of UGA College of Vet Medicine. They came onsite February 25 and 26,” she said.

Lawson then told them that after further research, there may have been old contracts in place with the municipalities but those cities had not been paying for the animal control services. She said they were working with the Humane Society’s attorney to get new contracts in place with the municipalities.

She also said the intake at the shelter for 2024, which came directly from the UGA report, was 73% stray dogs and 3% owner surrender, plus seized dogs. She said the outcomes for those animals were adoption 31%, returned to owner 9% and euthanasia 34%.

Lawson showed slides on the screen of the shelter’s current condition and said, “Our building is in very, very rough shape. We’re in desperate need of a new building and that’s something we would look at as a board.”

She said Cannon — who is also the area’s state representative — told her, if she presented him with a request, he would go to the legislature’s appropriations committee next year,and try to get the Humane Society some state money to start a capital fundraising campaign for a new building.

“Which we desperately need. We can do better than that,” she added. She said the building was old, in a flood plain and there were drainage issues.

Lawson reported to them that 583 cats were trapped, neutered and released through a program that was funded through grants.

“That’s some pretty significant work managing the feral cat population. There’s a need out there for us to continue and ongoing support, via dedicated funding, that’s going to be vital to continue to provide that service and reduce the burden on our animal control services,” she said.

Humane Society Board Member Tonya Dean told the commission a little bit more about the cat trap, neuter, release program and how it worked. She said they had received some grant money and were also brainstorming some more ideas for fundraisers for the program.

“I feel we need to do our part and help our community as much as we can,” she said.

Then, Lawson introduced the rest of the Humane Society board members who were at the meeting: Jonathan Vines, Hannah Cooper and County Commissioner Paul Nagy. She also introduced Humane Society Executive Director Josh Lawson and the Humane Society’s administrative director, Dawn Blanton.

Josh Lawson gave some statistics on how many animals they had picked up from last July to currently. He said 49.8% of all the animals came from the unincorporated part of the county.

He said, “There are a lot of stray dogs in this county. Everybody’s seen them.”

He also said that 31.5% of all of the animals that had come into the shelter since July 2024 were euthanized.

“Euthanasia. If we get it lower than 10%, we can get further grants,” he said.

He also told them that the adoption rate was 31.7% since July and that equals 214 animals out of the 725 they had over the time period. He said 27.2% of the animals, whether dog or cat, went to animal rescues.

“A lot of those were cats,” he added and said that they were trying to increase the number of dogs but it was difficult to move dogs, especially big dogs.

He also said that they were trying really hard to get all of the strays but it was hard when they only had so many kennels and they didn’t want to euthanize animals every week.

“The Humane Society is not proportional to the size of the county, I don’t think,” said Josh. “I think we need to be a little bit bigger and we also need to work on getting live release results. Euthanasia is gonna be a thing but I think we can significantly reduce it.”

Melissa Lawson said, “As a board we want to focus on spay and neuter initiatives.” She added that they were looking into trying to get a mobile spay and neuter unit to come to the Humane Society in Moultrie.

She said anything they could do to be proactive and not reactive because it’s much cheaper to spay and neuter than euthanize an animal.

Dean said that if they got a new facility with a surgical suite, she had a veterinarian who would be willing to come the shelter and do it.

“And that opens it up for people in the community, as well,” she added.

Then, there was further discussion about how the Humane Society stayed full all of the time, even when they sent some to animal rescue and some were adopted and some were euthanized. The Humane Society board members let the commission know that the animals were immediately replaced with new animals coming in.

“If you euthanized … and I’m never going to be for that … every animal in that shelter, it would be full the next day and you’d still be turning people away,” said Melissa Lawson.

She said the bottom line was that they were doing everything they could with what they had to work with but it was just not enough.

Commissioner Mike Boyd asked if they got more funds from the County, could they designate it for spay and neutering and then asked Cannon if the commissioners could do that.

Cannon said, “They (Humane Society) can do it. The board can do it. The board can designate how they want to. We’re just a pass-thru, essentially. We’re giving them money to operate our contract, per our contract.”