LIBERTY COUNTY, Texas – Nearly a year after Liberty County commissioners approved a budget that included funding for a new animal shelter, the project remains in a holding pattern as county leaders weigh staffing costs and the timeline for a new county jail.
The growing number of stray dogs — along with reports of animal cruelty and neglect — drew residents to Commissioners Court last year, where many pushed for a shelter and were encouraged when money was set aside. KPRC 2’s Lisa Hernandez requested an update from Liberty County Attorney Matthew Poston, who said the shelter cannot operate as planned without a staffing strategy that relies heavily on inmate labor.
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Poston said the county does not have room in the budget to hire the employees needed to run an animal shelter and would need trustee inmates to handle essential daily work such as grounds maintenance, cleaning and monitoring animals. But he said the current jail does not house low-level offenders who could qualify for that trustee program, and the planned new jail — estimated to be completed in about two years — is intended to house inmates who are eligible for trustee status.
KPRC 2 asked for more details, but an interview was declined. We will provide updates as soon as we learn new information.
County Attorney Matthew Poston provided the following statement:
Ms. Hernandez,
To understand the timeline, the plan and its constraints should be described. The Commissioners intend to replicate a neighboring county’s animal control program. There, officers who are dual-certified as animal control officers and jailers enlist trustee inmates to perform much of the work of the program. For example, the inmates mow the grounds around the shelter, clean the kennels and monitor the animals. Such a program benefits the animals, the inmates and the county, who is able to greatly reduce employment costs.
The animal shelter program is only workable when the new Liberty County jail is constructed. For example, the inmates who work at the animal shelter would need to be eligible for trustee status and the inmates who populate the current jail do not meet those eligibility requirements. Most of the county inmates are housed out of county under contracts which give the other county the right to refuse the most dangerous inmates and those who require intensive healthcare. The Liberty County jail is therefore left with both of those classes of inmates.
Liberty County is entering a hiring freeze in the next budget year as the first payments on the jail bond are coming due. Unfortunately, county employees will not receive a cost-of-living raise. The County is entering a very restrictive budgetary period because of the increase in the jail population occurring at the same time as the jail’s capacity was greatly reduced by order of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards. Utilizing inmate labor is a budgetary necessity for the animal control program.
This means that the animal shelter’s construction must coincide with the new jail’s. The County has already hired the architects for the jail project and will be hiring construction managers this Thursday. The Court will immediately turn to doing the same for the animal shelter now. The next step will be to hire an architect and shortly after that, a construction manager. I’m expecting an agenda item on Tuesday’s agenda dealing with selection criteria for an architect from our purchasing department. Based on similarly sized projects, we expect construction of the animal shelter to take approximately a year to complete. The jail is estimated to be constructed in approximately 20-24 months.
This timeline is not near as fast as Commissioners Court would like nor as the need for an animal control program demands. In the period before the animal shelter is built, we are looking for partners for spay/neuter events. Limiting the growth of the stray animal population is vital to reducing the risk of disease in our community. Similarly, we are asking the Legislature to grant Liberty County the authority to prohibit roadside sales of dogs, something that would no only keep our roads safer, but would also reduce the number of fly-by-night pet breeders.
Matthew Poston, Liberty County Attorney