Letters should be the end of animal issues

Some controversies in Columbia County just refuse to die.

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Perhaps it's time for them to be euthanized.

That doesn't have to be the case with Columbia County's Animal Control Advisory Board - though some local officials' exasperation with the board is understandable.

That frustration mostly is an outgrowth of the impassioned personalities involved in animal rescue operations.

Former County Commissioner Tommy Mercer blew his stack last year over the clashes between some members of those organizations and staffers of Columbia County Animal Care and Control.

Mercer sent letters to all of the area's rescue groups, demanding that they treat Animal Control staffers with respect. He then cemented it by requiring that those groups sign off on a good-behavior code of conduct before being allowed to receive free animals from the county shelter.

It worked. All but one rescue group signed the agreement, and while sometimes strained, generally the shelter's relationship with the rescue groups has improved.

After Mercer's term on the commission ended, Commissioner Scott Dean inherited the chairmanship of the committee that oversees Animal Control, and with it more complaints: Not so much with the rescue groups, but with members of the Animal Control Advisory Board.

It took an even shorter time for Dean to get fed up, and once again officials got ready to fire off a letter to the offending parties - threatening to abolish the advisory board altogether if the bickering didn't stop.

Chairman Ron Cross persuaded fellow commissioners to allow him to spin the comments a little differently. His revised version, one sent this week to all members of the advisory board and another to rescue groups that have signed agreements with Animal Control, sugarcoats a few passages. But it still gets the point across: Behave, or be gone.

"If a member of this board is not willing to support the Animal Care and Control Department, then that individual needs to consider resigning or become more supportive," Cross writes to the board members.

To the rescue groups, Cross writes, "If such violations in the terms of any agreement occur again, the Board of Commissioners will consider action to alter or discontinue agreements with some or all rescue groups."

Perhaps more important than both these mild warnings, though, is Cross' succinct description of the difference between the role of the government agency and the private animal rescue groups:

"The role of the Columbia County Animal Care and Control Department is centered on public safety and is determined by the Board of Commissioners. Animal rescue groups focus on saving all animals and placing them in good homes."

Those two aims are not mutually exclusive. It's long past time the hardheaded holdouts in the rescue groups acknowledge that while their own efforts are admirable and in some cases near-heroic, the government-run animal control is always going to be forced to deal with ugly issues far beyond just finding homes for cute puppies. The shelter staff has to do everything from rescuing abused animals to cleaning up roadkill to disposing of huge numbers of unadoptable dogs and cats.

It just isn't acceptable anymore that the people who do this thankless work continue to endure sniping and criticism, especially when they are doing a job assigned to them by elected officials on behalf of the county's citizens.

If any letters are needed in the future, they should say nothing more than "thank you for your continued cooperation."