New Tri-City animal shelter could be the cat’s meow

by Steve Snyder of of TODAY Newspapers

It's official - Cedar Hill will have a new Tri-City Animal Shelter.

Nov. 27, the Cedar Hill City Council approved a contract with Quorum Architects for architectural services for a new animal shelter.

The shelter is jointly funded by Cedar Hill, DeSoto and Duncanville. Cedar Hill, where the shelter is located, is the official controlling city for the shelter, so it is responsible for overseeing and organizing development, construction, financing and other shelter issues.

Quorum's David Duman said his company should have a schematic drawing in about a month, then be finished with its work and be ready to advertise for bids by the end of January.

This facility would house 83 dogs and 70 cats, plus no cats would have to be housed in a mechanical room. It will also have cat play and display areas, and quarantine areas for both dogs and cats. That gets the shelter almost to its target for the year 2017 of 84 dog and 72 cat spaces. It would have 7,500 square feet of floor space.

Tri-Cities Manager Alissa Prelis said in October a new shelter should allow Tri-City to exceed its current minimum holding time of 72 hours.

“We have found that a general target is six-10 days. That's what Rockwall, Mesquite and Grand Prairie do,” she said. “We looked at average dog days and population projections.”

In October, Duman said the roof on a new shelter should last 25 years, as compared to an estimated maximum of 20 years total for the roof on the current shelter. He also said that, with very rough estimates, the new shelter could save as much as $2,500-$6,000 in utilities per year with an entirely new building.

At the estimated cost of $2.9 million, financing should cost about $29,000 a year over a 20-year period.

The council had two action items besides the architectural contract for the new animal shelter.

It first held a public hearing to discuss a proposed annexation of about 1 acre of land containing part of the right-of-way of Wintergreen Road and South Main Street. The annexation is part of adjusting city limit lines between Cedar Hill and Duncanville.

It then approved setting a school zone speed limit of 30 mph on FM 1382 in the vicinity of Sims Drive, for Highlands Elementary.

Three people addressed the council in public forum. One person asked for the city to consider adjusting the late fee schedule on water bills.

Another said he thought Trios Grill was violating at least the spirit if not the letter of its Conditional Use Permit because of the volume and instrumentation of live music played there.

The third spoke about a public notice for the city water supply having coliform bacteria above state minimums, an issue covered in the Nov. 29 issue of Cedar Hill Today.

According to Corky Brown, the city's public information director, if a portion of a water line needed treatment after repeated tests, the water department would run water with a high chlorine concentration through the affected area.