Marie McDaniel pets a dog Wednesday at the Cleveland Animal Shelter.CLEVELAND, Tenn. – Monday marked the end of animal pickup and drop-off services for Bradley County residents living outside Cleveland, the result of county and city officials’ lack of agreement on how to split the expenses of the Cleveland Animal Shelter.
The issue has driven recent heated discussions among Bradley County commissioners.
“I know we’re beating this animal contract thing to death, but the papers still have not got this right,” Commissioner Charlotte Peak-Jones said. “I want everybody to understand in the public that the city sent us four options to choose from.”
Just because the city provided multiple contract scenarios, it did not mean that any of them had been approved by the Cleveland City Council, Commissioner Jeff Yarber said.
The alternatives presented to the county broke down into two categories: options that retained all drop-off and pickup services outside Cleveland and options that eliminated animal pickup outside the city. In all options, the county’s portion was based on the number of animals originating outside city limits that are dropped off by residents or picked up or otherwise responded to by animal control officers. County animals amount to about 60 percent of those numbers.