BRANSON MO NEWS: Branson will soon have to look elsewhere for its animal control services.
Currently, the city receives animal control via a contract with the Taney County Health Department for $200,000. As of Jan 1, 2018, the health department will no longer offer animal control services leaving Branson to seek an alternative solution.
According to Robert Niezgoda, director of the Taney County Health Department, the decision to end animal control services came from long-term discussions started in 2015.
“There’s a better solution out there for animal control to include all the jurisdictions,” Niezgoda said. “The health department’s perspective has been, we don’t have any statutory obligation to run animal control. This is a contractual relationship the health department took on to assist those jurisdictions.”
Over the past two years, Niezgoda said, there were more increases with the costs of hosting animal control services.
“Increased veterinary costs, there was increased levels of services being demanded,” he said. “There was increased Missouri Department of Agriculture standards, which increased maintenance of the facility and also increased veterinary costs. We got to this point two years ago where we realized there had to be a better way to run this.”
Niezgoda also said each of the jurisdictions that contracted animal control services through the health department were “great to work with.”
“They’ve been interested in doing the right thing for animal control in this county,” he said. “I have a positive outlook, it’s going to be a favorable outlook for all the jurisdictions since they’re working together.”
Lt. E.J. Jones of the Branson Police Department presented a pair of potential replacement plans for animal control services to the board. The first, involves the city moving to an in-house animal control plan. According to Jones, previously hosted its own animal control, with the program …
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