The vote to increase the contract and payment agreement with Burien CARES failed at the May 20 Burien City Council meeting. The vote was split 3-3, Councilmember Joan McGilton was absent.

The Burien Community Animal Resource and Education Society (CARES) is a nonprofit group that the city contracts with for animal control and services.

A motion was put forward to lengthen the city’s contract with CARES and increase payment from $120,000 to $170,000 per year.

Mayor Brian Bennett and Councilmembers Rose Clark and Gerald Robison voted in favor of it. Deputy Mayor Lucy Krakowiak and Councilmembers Bob Edgar and Jack Block, Jr. voted against it.

CARES has been a controversial issue for some time in Burien.

“We’re in a severe recession right now and I have some questions over increasing funding for animal control during this period,” said Block. “We have people that are still losing their houses, still having trouble making ends meet and I’m concerned that we’re increasing funding for pet care rather than taking care of the basic needs of our citizens.”

Block said he had concerns for the funding, and that animal control should ideally be self-funded and the city should do more, such as adding more locations in Burien where pet owners can buy pet licenses and giving higher incentives for people to sell licenses.

“The idea of a self-supporting animal control is just not realistic in any scenario I’ve ever seen,” said Robison.

Robison said that making it viable for CARES to operate would save the city money in the long run.

“People say we should be spending money on people instead of pets, it doesn’t make any sense to me,” said Robison. ”We’ve got a pretty good pet care model, there were some wrinkles that came up in the audit but with proper funding they can be corrected.”

Robison said it would cost the city more than twice as much to go to King County for animal control.

Block stated that while he’s not happy with the model, it’s the model the city has chosen and while he does not support the increase for CARES he does support animal control.

“My dogs are very dear to me,” said Block. “I would hate to see something happen to them. They’re my hairy daughters. I care about my dogs a great deal.”

“I have to look at where my responsibility lies,” said Block. “It’s not our money, it’s the citizens’ money and we’re charged with spending it prudently and I feel like when we’re not making an effort to at least try and collect the funds necessary to bring this program forward that we’re not doing our jobs.”

Councilmember Robison said he too would like to see the city do more to sell licenses and ideally he’d like to see them sold online as well.

“We have a responsible approach to animal control, a financially responsible approach and it’s responsible in respect to citizens and their animals and this is a way to make it better, this has been a work in progress,” said Robison. “Either we’re going to provide animal control or we don’t have to, we could say to heck with it let them all go. The idea is to makes things better.”

The CARES contract with the city will expire in 2014.