Greater Sudbury is looking at taking over control of all animal control services after an RFP failed to attract suitable bids, says a report going to city council July 12.
The report says the cost of using city staff for animal control would be about $675,000 a year, plus $400,000 to $600,000 for building renovations and another $100,000 to buy equipment.
The capital costs would be drawn from the tax rate stabilization capital reserve fund.
The RFP was issued in May and attracted two private bids: one from Pet Save Animal Services for $255,000, the other from the current contract holder,
Rainbow District Animal Control and Shelter Services for $825,000. The current budget is about $600,000.
The Rainbow bid was deemed too costly, while Pet Save failed to achieve a 50 per cent score on the city's ratings system.
“(And their) RFP submission was very brief and did not provide evidence of meeting all of the RFP requirements,” the report said.
Animal control has become a contentious issue in the city since 2014, when a review of services recommended several changes. That led to an increase in Rainbow's bid from $443,000 to $600,000.
The city tried splitting the contract up, but only Rainbow bid. So they signed a short-term contract with Rainbow that expires in October this year, with an eye on reforming the system. They hired a consultant, Matrix Consulting, who filed a report in January with several recommendations.
They included taking over animal bylaw enforcement in-house, which the city is doing. Matrix also concluded that, at $600,000, Sudbury's was the lowest cost compared to cities of comparable size in Ontario.
The report also concluded that taking over pound services would likely be “cost-prohibitive.
“The cost of providing this service with City of Greater Sudbury staff would increase compared to the costs of providing the service through contracted vendors,” the Matrix report said. “As shown in the bylaw analysis above, this would increase personnel costs by up to 45 per cent of existing costs of service provision.
This would increase the total annual expenditures on Animal Control Services (field operations and pound services) from around $600,000 to almost $900,000.”
Richard Paquette, whose family owns Rainbow District Animal Control, said he's dumbfounded that city staff would propose it could be brought in house at a cost of $675,000.
"How they can come in at that price, despite what their consultant told them, is beyond me,” Paquette said Monday. “That's some interesting math.
“To staff a pound with two full-time employees and some part time hours here and there, and that's it? We're open 10 hours a day, and they said they wanted extended hours into the evening. It's not physically possible to staff the pound with only two people and have extended hours."
He also disputes the estimate that Rainbow's bid would end up costing $825,000 a year. Under terms of the RFP, they had to bid on how much they would charge for housing each animal during the three-day redemption period. Rainbow bid $550 per animal. The city calculated the cost of the bids by estimating there would be 1,500 animals a year coming in to the pound.
Paquette said last year, only 1,200 animals arrived in total, and 200 of those were surrendered by the owners – meaning the city didn't have to pay for those pets.
"And the overall trend has been going down, so it's not going to magically start to go up," he said. "It doesn't make sense."
They have also let the city know that they are willing to do the work for a flat rate at the same price as 2014, plus annual cost of living increases.
"We'd be more than happy to sign a contract tomorrow for the next five years ,” he said. "The budget next year could be $630,000, instead of $675,000. Their own consultant said the price they're paying now is below everybody else in Ontario. It's a reasonable price."
"They don't even know what they're getting themselves into," Paquette said. "I think their plan is crazy. It's so far from reality, and it's so far from what their consultant told them was possible. I'm not even sure how they can present that to council honestly."
