Vote in favor of the Pocatello Animal Shelter bond
Nothing is more relaxing than coming home from a long day of work and sitting in front of the TV to enjoy your favorite show. As you sit down with your late-night snack and turn on the television you are immediately greeted with the sweet adorable face of a puppy.
As the camera zooms out you notice the puppy is in a cage surrounded by other puppies in cages similar to its own. Then you realize that this commercial isn’t just a cute ploy, but a devious guilt machine. Before you can change the channel, the song begins to play.
“In the arms of the angels…”
Your eyes well up as you see these one-eyed cats and two-legged dogs wail for freedom. It is too late; you have already dialed the number and donated all of your money to make sure that Barkley, the one-eared, two-and-a-half legged bulldog, can get a new chew toy.
While Sarah McLachlan may be able to guilt you into a financial landslide for these animals, there is a similar cause that will require only a signature and pennies a day. The solution lies in the Pocatello Animal Shelter’s plan for a new building.
The current shelter was established in 1970 and received a much-needed renovation in 1996. Now, sixteen years later, Pocatello has changed to an almost unrecognizable town. Our population has increased by approximately 3,500 people since 1996.
With that many more people, Pocatello has also had an increase in pets, leading to the shelter seeing around 4,000 animals a year. The job of the shelter is to make sure that workers can take care of those 4,000 animals well and find them loving and kind homes. However, the current state the shelter is in prevents workers from taking appropriate care of these animals and does not allow for any increase in the amount of animals they can take in. This means that shelter employees have to euthanize more pets every year it doesn’t have necessary equipment and space.
While a mere upgrade was sufficient in 1996, taking a similar approach this time around would be inefficient and costly. The upgrades that would make the shelter a sufficient facility for at least the next 5 to 10 years would cost $100,000. This $100,000 would only support the shelter temporarily and would end up costing Pocatello more in the long run because a third upgrade would be needed again in 5 to 10 years.
This would burden the taxpayers and the shelter unnecessarily to accomplish the same goal. If the new facility is built, it will be sufficient to serve the community another 50 years. It doesn’t take a business degree to realize that it saves money to build the new facility in the present instead of upgrading and then having to shovel out the money again in the future.
What about this situation calls for the attention of the collegiate population? While it may seem that on-campus housing holds a majority of the students, according to www.petersons.com, a college preparation website, only 7 percent of undergraduate students stay on campus. That means that 93 percent of students will live off-campus at some point and have an opportunity to own a pet.
This 93 percent may not have that opportunity if the shelter’s current issues of dangerously slick floors, molding roof, deteriorating entrance, cramped spaces, insufficient kennel equipment and insufficient space to allow for human and pet interaction are not addressed.
All of these are nagging issues to the availability, health and overall wellness of the animals currently residing in the shelter, as well as the people trying to take care of them.
To be able to make the necessary changes, the Pocatello Shelter is asking for city residents to vote yes to the releasing of a $2.8 million bond.
This bond will be borrowed by the city of Pocatello at a 3 percent interest rate, making the actual payment by taxpayers mere pennies. The bond is up for public voting Tuesday, Nov. 6. To be able to participate, an individual must be a registered voter.
Once registered, you can participate in the vote early by going to the Bannock County Court House annex, or check idahovotes.gov to find out where to vote on Nov. 6.
By voting to allow the funds from ordinance number 2912 to be released, you will be changing the lives of thousands of pets and hundreds of caretakers. So take this chance to make a four-legged difference.
Kalen Medina is a sophomore at Idaho State University.
