A protracted dispute between Loveland City Council and the Larimer Humane Society over animal control services is moving toward an amicable resolution.
On Tuesday, council voted unanimously to appropriate three months of funding for the nonprofit while terms of a new annual contract are finalized.
“I’m very excited about it,” Humane Society Chief Executive Officer Judy Calhoun said. “We are very pleased to be able to continue to serve the Loveland community.”
The vote ended nearly a year of contention between the Humane Society and City Council that arose over the agency’s plan to start implementing contract increases for its three jurisdictions — Loveland, Larimer County and Fort Collins — after an audit revealed it had been undercharging all three for several years.
Since 1989, the Humane Society has been providing a wide range of animal protection and control services to Loveland, including pet adoption, licensing, cruelty investigations, emergency evacuation and sheltering, community education and dead animal disposal, among others.
According to Calhoun, Loveland’s true share of the agency’s annual operating expenses are around $780,000 per year, about 80% higher than the agency’s contract in 2021 ($438,815). To blunt the impact, Calhoun planned to introduce the increase in phases, starting in 2022 with a 27% rise to $558,815, then stepped up to the full amount in two years.
That figure and the future increases were met with alarm from City Council when Calhoun submitted the proposed contract in February. After some grumbling and a postponed vote, council ultimately agreed to the higher price, but asked for more negotiations before the next year’s proposal.
Calhoun met with city finance staff and representatives from the Loveland Police Department over the summer for those negotiations, but never got a chance to make her case to council before the 2023 budget cycle began. As a result, an appropriation for the agency was removed during the official budget vote in October, pending further talks.
With time running out on the 2022 contract, Calhoun and city staff moved quickly to restart the negotiations, and included Councilors Steve Olson and Don Overcash, two of the most vocal skeptics of the cost increase. At issue was the “magnitude” of the increase, Olson later said, which he couldn’t support without more fine-grained data about how the agency is charging for services in Loveland.
“The issue we had discussed early on was, well, we have the dollars, but we don’t have metrics to be associated with it,” the councilor explained. “I tend to think about the cost per unit, recognizing that we weren’t going to go to an a la carte type thing. I thought that it would at least be valuable for us to understand and for us to come up with what’s it costing us for what we’re asking for.”
Calhoun said she met with the councilors and representatives from the Loveland Police Department and city finance staff at least twice to discuss the contract and explain how it calculates costs, and exchanged numerous emails and phone calls. She was also able to provide data for Humane Society activity going back six years, providing a fuller picture of growing demand for its services to Olson and Overcash.
“If they looked at from 2019 to ’20 to ’21, it looked like our intake numbers were coming down pretty dramatically,” she said. “What going back further back showed is that they tend to fluctuate from year to year.”
Continuing, she explained that the agency’s intake number for 2022 jumped dramatically over the year before, and is comparable to the rates predating the COVID-19 pandemic.
“What we’re seeing in 2022 is, in many ways, a return to normal,” she said.
Calhoun and her team also agreed to add reporting requirements to their contract related to calls for wildlife and livestock in Loveland, as well as the number of local animals that receive veterinary care.
That seemed to break the ice for Overcash and Olson, both of whom went on to vote for the appropriation. Both also complimented Calhoun and the Humane Society board for their willingness to work “in a collaborative way” with the city on this issue.
Olson also explained that he proposed asking for just the first quarter of funding, so there would be additional pressure on the city to finalize the contract.
“In bringing this, I had suggested that we do a quarter so that we ensure that we don’t dilly dally with the contract,” he said. “Make it kind of at the forefront of our mind and … get this done for everybody on a timely basis. I think that would be the best interest of the Humane Society and for the city.”
According to City Chief Financial Officer Brian Waldes, the contract should be signed and ready to be approved in March. After that, Calhoun and the team will be back before council to request another $584,861 for the remainder of 2023.
