Animal shelter designs get unveiled Tuesday

Reporter

Schlabach

County commissioners Tuesday will get their first look at the architect's concept plans for the new animal shelter.

The consultant, Tocoi Engineering, will seek input and direction as to how commissioners want the building to look and the interior use of space. They will work from an architectural concept from MLM-Martin Architects, a Maitland, Florida-based firm that has worked on animal services projects since the 1980's.

The current facility, which has been deemed obsolete, has 16 cat cages (condos) and 68 dog kennels.

Tocoi will present options including expanding the number of cat cages to 88 and canine kennels to 106.

County Commissioner Ruthie Schlabach, who has been the leading advocate to build this shelter, declined to comment on the plans because she had not yet looked at Tuesday's agenda.

But she told the Chronicle recently the price tag for construction is coming in near or possibly even below the $9 million maximum cap the board set on the project.

And, she said, it is imperative it get built because conditions at the current outdated shelter are cramped and unsafe.

"We have employees working in unsafe conditions and the county should be in an uproar about that alone," Schlabach said in an earlier interview

The timeline to start construction in the beginning of 2023 is still on target and assuming 18 months to build it, the county could see a new state of the art facility in 2024, she said.

Public and private monetary donations for the new shelter next to the county jail in Lecanto total $3.3 million. That does not include the $500,000 State Rep. Ralph Massullo and his wife Patricia have offered to contribute nor the $6.5 million from the recent sale of the Betz farm property in Crystal.

The county commission meeting is at 1 p.m. Tuesday at the Citrus County Courthouse, 110 N. Apopka Ave., Inverness.

To view the plans for the animal shelter, visit the county clerk's website at https://www.citrusclerk.org.

Michael D. Bates is a staff writer with the Citrus County Chronicle and can be reached at [email protected].

Schlabach

Reporter