Bowie Animal Lovers Still Fighting for City Shelter

As the City Council gears up to work on the city’s annual budget in less than a week, an animal welfare group is again urging the city council to support a short-term shelter in the city.

For more than two years, the Bowie-based Citizens for Local Animal Welfare has been lobbying for a 1,500 square foot short-term shelter in the city, pledging $100,000 to help build it and collecting thousands of letters in support of the shelter.

An anonymous donor gave the organization the funds for the purpose of constructing a shelter in Bowie.

Prince George’s County Animal Management Division Chief Rodney Taylor testified at Monday’s City Council meeting in support of the Bowie shelter, calling it a “win-win.” A Bowie shelter will make it easier, he said, for residents to reunite with their pets and it will also ease some of the burden on the county.

“We see a great need for the municipalities to have shelters,” Taylor said. 

Connie Carter, a member of CLAW, gave a short presentation to the City Council Monday to counter some of the objections to the creation of a short-term shelter.

Some have argued that a city shelter would duplicate a service already provided by the county. Carter pointed to the city police department and the city’s refuse collection as two examples of duplicated services.

While the relatively new facility in Upper Marlboro is more than 50 percent larger than the old shelter in Forestville, the new state-of-the art facility is understaffed, Carter said. There are two fewer staff members at the new facility but there are 190 additional cages to maintain, she said, meaning less attention for the animals and greater exposure to diseases.

Although members of CLAW were not successful in securing funds in last year’s budget for the shelter, the group has had some victories: convincing the city council earlier this year to create an advisory committee on animal-related issues and garnering support for the creation of a small holding room in the new City Hall, set to open this month.

The holding room will allow city animal control officers to keep pets in Bowie until the close of business each day, allowing Bowie residents to avoid trips to the county shelter in Upper Marlboro to retrieve lost pets.

But members of CLAW, according to the group's website, say the holding room is too small and will not keep animals from ending up in the county shelter.                           

An average of 335 animals are brought to the county shelter each year from the Bowie zip codes of 20715 and 20716, according to Carter.

Mayor G. Frederick Robinson has said he favors holding off on the short-term shelter until the holding room in City Hall has been in use for at least six months, to see if it’s adequate. 

In this  budget year, Robinson said the priority should be maintaining core services such as public works and public safety, not on what he described as “like-to-haves, ” like a city-run shelter.

“I’m not convinced it’s a high enough priority for us to do this now,” Robinson said.