Wanted: Volunteers to serve on new board overseeing animal services in Ascension Parish – The Advocate

Ascension Parish will soon be looking for seven volunteers to take on a new role in animal services for the community.

They won't be fostering, rescuing or caring for animals although they could do that, too but serving on a new board to oversee parish animal services, in light of a property tax being collected for the first time this year for shelter operations and animal control operations, as well as building a $2.5 million facility to house both.

People who would like to serve on the board will go through an application process and interview with the parish council's personnel committee, which will make its recommendations to the parish council.

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Earlier this month, the personnel committee introduced amendments to current parish law to create the Ascension Parish Animal Services Board.

"With a new revenue stream, the board will be promoting pet care and neutering" as well as protecting animals from mistreatment, protecting people from uncontrolled animals and "being good stewards" of the new animal tax revenues in the parish, John Cagnolatti, committee chairman said.

Ascension Parish voters in December 2018 approved a 10-year, 1-mill property tax expected to generate about $1.3 million annually for animal services. Creating a volunteer board to oversee the use of the revenues is the next step.

The personnel committee's proposed amendments to parish law will be voted on by the full council on Thursday.

When temperatures plummeted this winter, workers at CARA's House, the animal shelter for Ascension Parish, set up diesel-fueled heaters in the

The board, as proposed, will be made up of:

The vision of the board has also been spelled out: that someday in Ascension Parish "all citizens, their property and their neighborhoods will be safe from the dangers and nuisances of irresponsible pet ownership, that someday animals will not suffer because of human abuse, neglect or ignorance, and that every pet born will have a good home and proper care all its natural life."

Reagan Daniel, president of the board for CARA's House, the animal shelter in the parish, said they "are very much looking forward to sitting down with the board and helping in the planning process."

Daniel said CARA's House staff and volunteers have been considering priorities for the new facility.

"One of our biggest needs is a climate-controlled facility," she said.

Currently at the shelter in Sorrento, dogs are housed in a building that must be heated in the winter by diesel heaters and heat lamps and cooled in the summer by a huge, industrial-sized ceiling fan as well as individual box fans at each kennel and big "circle drum" fans that can be moved around.

The cats are housed in temporary buildings that are air-conditioned in the summer and have heating in the winter.

The shelter is currently housing 200 cats and 125 dogs, Daniel said. Summertime is the shelter's busiest time of the year.

One of the factors, Daniel said, is the jump in "owner surrenders" of pets to the shelter, often because the owners are moving away or, sometimes, leaving on a vacation.

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Wanted: Volunteers to serve on new board overseeing animal services in Ascension Parish - The Advocate