The borough assembly has approved a 21-year lease for St. Frances Animal Rescue to operate a small shelter on a lot that it would share with the vehicle impound yard.
For years, St. Frances Animal Rescue has connected the community's cats and dogs with warm, loving homes. But after its cat shelter on private property closed in 2020, the nonprofit has been searching for a new location.
After three years of collaboration between St. Frances and the borough, the assembly approved a 21-year lease Dec. 12 on an industrial lot near the junction of Bennett Street and Ishiyama Drive. The nonprofit requested - and was awarded - the borough's longest available lease agreement for its shelter at a rate of $10 per year.
As of last week, the organization had 11 cats in its foster system, though it housed as many as 36 in its shelter in 2020. An in-person, public location, explained lead volunteer Joan Sargent, would make it easier for would-be owners to meet potential pets and would encourage people to adopt locally.
"It'll increase our capacity," she said. "We've been really limited, we've just had too many calls, or too many cats come in at once. It'll definitely increase our capacity to deal with that. People can easily come by and see what's available. ... The foster situation is a difficult way to expose the public to the animals that are available locally."
Sargent hopes to start groundwork at the site in the spring of 2024, then open the completed facility in roughly two years. The exact timeline, however, will depend on fundraising efforts and application and award schedules for grants.
The shelter will share the 16,500-square-foot lot with the borough's vehicle impound yard, which will have a separate access gate.
The shelter will be staffed in regular shifts, with volunteers medicating cats for fleas and ticks, evaluating their temperaments and ensuring that they are vaccinated and neutered or spayed. The total shelter area will be about 400 to 500 square feet, according to borough documents.
After the shelter is up and running, the organization doesn't anticipate resting on its laurels. Sargent would like to bolster its volunteer program, provide training classes for people interested in working with animals and maybe even expand into sheltering dogs.
So far, not many dogs come through St. Frances, and the in-person shelter would be for cats only, to avoid noise concerns.
St. Frances also wants to be a part of the borough's emergency planning conversation, since providing for people during emergencies, Sargent suggested, also means providing for their pets. After the Nov. 20 landslide at 11-Mile, Sargent evacuated her home in the middle of the night, but the well-being of the animals she cares for was at the forefront of her mind.
When a firefighter came to her door to inform her about the slide and evacuation procedure, she asked, "'What is there available in town for animals?'" Sargent recalled. "He said, "I don't know, we're just asking people to evacuate.' And I said, 'Well I have three cats and two dogs.' ... It needs to be included in the emergency preparedness plan."
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