Saanich News
By Brennan Clarke
Weekend Edition staff

The Victoria SPCA is getting out of the animal control business, a move that will increase the cost of the service to taxpayers in seven Greater Victoria municipalities but may help reduce noise problems at the society's Napier Lane shelter.
Victoria SPCA director Greig Jenkinson said the organization decided last spring that being responsible for animal control was at odds with the SPCA's mandate to care for dogs and other stray animals.
"We found it was causing confusion with the people who are trying to support us and we feel we'll be in a better position to fund-raise without animal control," he said.
"It's hard to get donations from someone when you were there yesterday giving them a $75 ticket. Municipalities are there to take care of people and we're there to take care of animals."
However Jenkinson acknowledged that ongoing legal problems with the City of Victoria, which is taking the SPCA to court over alleged noise bylaw violations have underscored the need for the society to cancel its animal control contracts.
Problems with barking dogs at the SPCA shelter stem in part from regulations that prevent the organization from exercising or allowing dogs to socialize outside the shelter until they have been kept for four days, Jenkinson said.
"We're restricted as to what we can offer those dogs. They're not ours, so we can't take them to the off-leash dog parks or send them home with people on our sleep-over program," he said.
"This way the CRD can impound the dogs at Elk Lake (facility) for four days and then we can treat that dog."
Jenkinson also said the animal control contracts, worth a total of $277,000 annually, barely covered the SPCA's labour costs to provide the service.
"This was a deal worth hundreds of thousands of dollars," he said, We undervalued the service and we undersold it."
Don Brown, head of bylaw enforcement with the Capital Regional District, the only other animal control contractor in the region, said talks aimed at transferring animal control duties to the CRD are underway with Esquimalt, Oak Bay and View Royal.
Additional talks with Sidney, North Saanich, Central Saanich and Colwood, are expected to begin in the near future.
Brown said the seven municipalities that had contracts with the SPCA will see an increase in cost when those duties are transferred to the CRD.
"The cost will go up somewhat, although not astronomically," Brown said. "We want to have cost-recovery and some cushion."
Jenkinson said four of the contracts are up for renewal at the end of 2004, while the rest come due at the end of 2005.
However, they all contain escape clause language that allows the SPCA to withdraw as long as sufficient notice is provided.
In most cases the SPCA has to provide 60 or 90 days notice. However, Oak Bay's contract requires six months notice, a clause that Jenkinson said the SPCA will honour.
Getting out of the animal control business may also reduce the cost of renovations the city wants the SPCA to make as a way of curbing the noise that emanates from the shelter.
Jenkinson said that municipalities wanting to use the Napier Lane facility as a dog pound will be asked to fork over cash for improvements.
"We're saying 'if you want to use this as a municipal pound, then how would you like to finance it?'" he said.