Ingram accepts Animal Shelter challenge

The Lassen County Board of Supervisors handed the responsibility of dealing with the impassioned pleas from animal lovers regarding issues and concerns at the Lassen County Animal Shelter to at District 2 Supervisor Jason Ingram at the board’s Tuesday, Feb. 24 meeting.

Ingram got the item on the agenda, and he said he is ready to rise to the challenge.

Ingram told Lassen News he has arranged a meeting with Jackie Earnshaw of the Sit Spot Canine Center regarding a volunteer program at the shelter. Currently, volunteers serve at the shelter under the Sit Spot’s insurance coverage.

Ingram also said he’s asked Lassen County Council to draft a waiver that would allow volunteers to serve at the shelter and relieve Earnshaw of that liability. He said once that’s done, he’s ready to get to work to help the animals at the shelter.

“I bought this forward because it’s a big community concern,” Ingram told his fellow board members. “We want to have a good discussion on how we can get more volunteers incorporated into the animal shelter and possibly foster a foster care type of program.”

Ingram said during a recent visit to Southern California, he visited the animal shelter in Riverside County and they have more than 400 foster families and more than 20 volunteers at the shelter.

“They have a really good thing in place,” Ingram said, “and since then I’ve talked to several other places. If other counties are able to foster families to keep the animals from being euthanized — it would help in that respect by freeing up the animal shelter. There have been several incidents when our animal control officers are called down to the South County and we have dogs that are loose killing livestock, killing sheep, eating chickens and our animal control officer has to say, ‘I’m really sorry. The shelter’s full. We can’t take this dog in.’”

If other counties can put programs together to resolve these issues, Ingram said he doesn’t see why we can’t do it as well.

“It looks like we have a little public interest,” Ingram said, “and I’d just like to see what they would like us to do … Whatever we can do to make the shelter a better place to help animals get adopted out.”

Board chair, District 2 Supervisor Gary Bridges jumped into the conversation.

“Before we go any further,” Bridges said, “we have a plan in place. At the agenda meeting Pete Heimbinger (the county’s public works director) brought this up and he said we’ve had a program in place since last year, we couldn’t get anybody involved. With that, I guess we’ll open it up to public comment.”

Kim Page said animals are fed just once a day and then frequently left alone for many hours during the night when there is no one working at the shelter. She said she generally opposes euthanasia, and she wondered who makes the decision to say the shelter can no longer feed an animal.

She said the county has a huge animal problem and more money needs to be allocated to the shelter.

“Help, please,” she asked.

Heimbinger addressed the board.

“Back in 2006, we went through this same exercise,” he said. “We actually put everything together, had documentation that we could bring on volunteers and cleared all that through county counsel.”

He said the biggest problem was finding people willing to put in enough time to make the program work, including finding a volunteer coordinator to manage the program.

“I’m not opposed to this coming back and talking about it again,” he said. “Maybe now we could get more traction, and that would be great. A lot of the groundwork is probably already done.”

Ken Bunch, president of the Lassen Humane Society, said the organization was formed 40 years ago. He said the LHS’ main priority currently is spaying and neutering cats.

He said the LHS has funded about 1,000 spays and neuters per year recently.

Mimi Brasher said she’s been working with “free-roaming” cats, and her group of 30 members that since July 2024 have rehomed 600 kittens and 40 cats.

“Our system for animal control is just broken,” she said.

She suggested the county abandon the free-roaming designation for cats and begin a process of licensing them.

Katie Cuypers said she’s been volunteering at the shelter for two years and the shelter needs to expand its hours — especially during the weekends. She said Earnshaw has been serving as a volunteer coordinator, but the county should assume that insurance liability instead of placing the burden on a private business. She also suggested some fundraisers for the shelter.

Earnshaw, who has served as the volunteer coordinator, said the program works when there are enough volunteers. She suggested some improvements to areas where dogs could be walked would benefit both the dogs and the volunteers.

When her three minutes expired, Bridges suggested she meet with Ingram and share her ideas.

“I think since he brought this up, I think we need to appoint him as your go-to guy,” Bridges said.

“Your input is very important,” Bridges said after the public comment, “but to make it happen, we need the volunteers. I do understand that, and that’s the catch. It’s easy to complain, but it’s a lot of work to do something about it.”