Report favours fast-tracking pound

Dog welfare advocate Jessica Maxwell

Hastings District councillors are being asked to approve a $500,000 loan to fast-track an upgrade to the city's dog pound.

The council had previously intended to revamp the pound sometime after June, but a new staff report, to be considered at a council meetings tomorrow, says it makes financial sense to bring the work forward.

Conditions at the ageing facility, which was built in the early 1970s, and the way animals were treated there, caused a public outcry last year, prompting the council to commission an independent report which recommended a number of changes.

The report's author, dog control specialist John Payne, was subsequently appointed to a 12-month role to manage a programme of changes at the pound.

In December, the council approved $165,000 of funding for "interim upgrade works" at the pound, ahead of $500,000 being set aside for a more comprehensive revamp to be carried out during the 2015-16 financial year, which begins on July 1.

But the new staff report says the cost of modifying the existing building to meet the desired short-term improvement in standards was now expected to be "significantly higher than the $165,000 first predicted".

Making substantial improvements to the existing building was now considered "a more practical investment" because it would provide a facility that would be suitable for 15 to 20 years, the report said.

The upgrade would include increasing the size of kennels at the pound, a move that would reduce the number of kennels at the facility from 32 to 27 - a change staff believed would provide adequate accommodation "for the foreseeable future".

If it continues with its previous plan of an immediate, short-term upgrade followed by more substantial work done after June, the council would "incur unnecessary costs upgrading the current facility only for those improvements to be written off when a new improved facility is constructed to replace the current pound", the report said.

Hastings Mayor Lawrence Yule said the council had made significant progress on dog control issues in recent months and fast-tracking the pound upgrade "was the next logical thing to do".

Dog welfare advocate Jessica Maxwell said she agreed with the council staff's revised approach to upgrading the pound. "Do the job once and do it right. It would be foolish to carry out a costly interim upgrade only for improvements to be demolished in a couple of years' time."

Meanwhile, Ms Maxwell has called for a refund of "special owner policy" processing fees collected by the council and for it to release legal advice it received on the issue.

Late last year, the council voted to disband the special owner policy - which provided reduced dog registration fees for approved owners - from July 1 as part of its revamp of its animal control regime following Mr Payne's review.

Ms Maxwell questioned whether the council had acted in accordance with the Local Government Act when it collected the processing fees.

Mr Yule said the council would not release the legal advice it received on the matter from an Auckland QC because it was standard practice not to.

However he said the advice was that Hastings District had acted no differently from other councils in charging special owner policy fees.