Rainbow District Animal Control and Shelter Services owner Richard Paquette is looking to the citizens of Greater Sudbury to reverse council's decision to bring animal control enforcement in house.
The decision rendered by council on Feb. 9 was made with many questions still unanswered according to Paquette, who is looking to have the decision reversed and to have a fair RFP issued.
“There's no reason that the City of Greater Sudbury staff can not have their proposal to do this in house graded in a fair and open RFP process,” said Paquette.
“It doesn't make any sense to me that they would just skip that opportunity. It was clear to anybody who watched that meeting last week (Feb. 9) that nobody knew what was going on, there was more unanswered question than there were answers, they have no idea what it's going to cost and nobody has accounted for 150 different factors it seems.”
Paquette is hoping for more than 1,000 signatures on the petition and is confident that he will be able to get that number, though he feels that even half of that number would provide a fair amount of perspective.
“Only 800 people responded to the community survey and a little more than half of those were interested in a different service delivery model (for animal control),” said Paquette. “So 400 or 500 signatures on this petition doesn't necessarily trump the survey, but it starts to put into perspective how small of a sample that survey was based on.”
Copies of the petition have been circulated at the Rainbow District Animal Shelter as well as a number of vendors who rely on the shelter's business. Paquette says that he will also be going door to door and if anyone is unable to get a copy of the petition to sign, they are free to contact him at 705-698-7443.
Paquette's Petition Statement: Council’s decision to bring Animal Control Enforcement Services in-house should be reversed and a Request for Proposals (RFP) should be issued for the provision of these services in conjunction with the RFP for Pound Services.
