Peoria Pundit

Remember last year when the City of Peoria and the County of Peoria seemed about on the verge of war over which governmental body was responsible for holding prisoners until they make their first appearance before a judge? It was the most public of many disputes the city and county seem to have over jurisdictions and financial responsibilities.

This latest dispute will be over the fees paid by county residents to register and vaccinate their pets. State law makes counties responsible for “rabies and registration” and with investigating reports of animals biting humans. Many years ago, the city agreed to assume these functions through the entire county, provided the city gets to keep all the rabies registration fees, which usually generates a little more than $300,000 a year.

The trouble is that the rabies control program alone costs $328,000. And the department’s entire budget for all programs — including stray animal impoundments, sick/injured animal rescue. ordinance enforcement, cruelty/neglect investigation, shelter operation and pet redemption by owners — totals about $773,000. Remember, this is a city-run department that provides services for the entire county — and people from neighboring counties will drop off animals at the shelter. They take the animals, because they would just end up dumped in the nearby park of left tied to the shelter’s fence, says Animal Shelter Director Lauren Malmberg.

So why not just raise the rabies registration fees to cover the costs of running the shelter?

First, state statute gives only counties the power to set the fees. Malmberg last year asked the county to raise the fees for cats and dogs from $6 and $17 to $10 and $20. The committee to whom Malmberg made the request tabled it and it hasn’t been brought back up. That lack of a decision has forced city residents to pick up an increasingly larger percentage of the share of running a program that serves the entire county.

Second, even if the county eventually agrees to raise the rabies registration fee, it won’t rise enough to cover the entire cost of the program. City Manager Randy Oliver said that any fee large enough to do that would be so high, it would discourage rabies vaccination, which is the last thing they want to see happen.

And some members of the council — especially at-large council member Gary Sandberg and Fifth District Council member Pat Nichting — want the county to pick up a bigger share then simply passing along the rabies registration fee.

So the board council decided by consensus Tuesday to contact the Peoria County Board to ask them to consider raising the fee. The trouble is, all the Peoria County Board members are elected, too. And they probably don’t want to raise fees and annoy voters. Besides, they probably won’t believe any suggestion from the city that it might stop running the rabies registration program because I have to imagine the problem of stray dogs is potentially a bigger problem in the city than in rural parts of the county.

Two-thirds of Peoria County residents live in the city. These residents have come to expect services from city government, even though services that state law says must be provided by county governments. Two thirds of Peoria County Board members represent districts almost entirely within city limits. But it’s easier for these guys to take a pass on the responsibility of running the things they are responsible for running. After the meeting, I heard an anecdote about a County Board member who receives maybe two emails a month from constituents. I imagine even at-large council members get that many emails an hour. In a political environment like this, why should a County Board members elected to represent a district bother to struggle to get services to his or her constituents, when it’s easy to go along, get along and campaign on the issue of keeping taxes and fees low? Answer they won’t. Unless the public gets wise.

The end result is a Peoria County Board that operates as if it should serve ONLY those areas outside city limits, even though two-thirds of the county by population is the City of Peoria. They do it because voters let them.

As you all know, I live outside the city limits of Peoria. So I’d like to thank all you suckers inside the City of Peoria for paying to keep the strays off my yard.

Peoria Animal Welfare Shelter,PAWS,Gary Sandberg,Pat Nichting,Lauren Malmberg