The Lewis County Board of Commissioners approved a notice Tuesday, March 18, for a public hearing for ordinance 1361, which would transition animal control duties from the Lewis County Department of Public Health and Social Services to the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office.
The public hearing is set to start at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, April 1, in the commissioners’ hearing room on the top floor of the Lewis County Courthouse and will give community members a chance to weigh in.
Because a county ordinance is a concrete rule change to county law, it has a more rigorous process that has to be followed before it can be passed. Part of that is the public hearing.
“The ordinance requires a legal notice that gets printed in the newspaper of record. Then you hold a hearing with time for public testimony,” Rieva Lester, clerk of the Lewis County Board of Commissioners, said. “Most of the time, they will vote after. They have the option of recessing it until another date in the future, but they usually close the hearing and take the vote the same day.”
The ordinance addresses the fact that Lewis County Public Health and Social Services Director Meja Handlen is in charge of animal control, despite the fact that the sheriff’s office took over the bulk of animal control operations starting in October 2024. Changing the language in the Lewis County code is the last step in the process.
The sheriff’s office is already responding to calls about animals. But, in the past, if a deputy thought an animal should be impounded for any reason, including being a danger to the public, they would hand that case off to someone at the county Department of Public Health and Social Services. Ever since the sheriff's office hired two community officers in October, the department has been responding to and processing animal cases directly.
“If someone calls in an animal complaint during the hours that one of our community service officers is working, there is a high likelihood they will deal with it from the beginning,” Gabriel Frase, Lewis County Sheriff’s Office special services chief, said. “If they are not working, a deputy will start the process and hand it off.”
In the case of a dangerous animal, the Department of Public Health and Social Service used to prepare a case for the Dangerous Animal Designation Board, which considers designating an animal as dangerous. The designation then requires the owner to care for and shelter the animal according to specific guidelines.
“We have potentially dangerous animals and dangerous animals,” Frase said. “If it meets one of those, it would have to be reviewed by the animal health officer that was under the public health department.”
Now, the sheriff’s office can take care of all of those matters in-house, but ordinance 1361 is necessary to make the deal official and transfer the duties to the sheriff or whomever he designates.
This involves a lot of new jobs for the sheriff’s office, including duties such as regulating kennels in the county, designating county shelters, presiding over the Dangerous Animal Designation Board, regulating dangerous animals and managing all impounded animals.
While these jobs will transition away from the Department of Public Health and Social Services, public health will continue to manage the operations of the Lewis County Animal Shelter.
The department is looking for a way to eventually hand off operations of the animal shelter as well, with a nonprofit or other organization perhaps taking over in the future, according to previous reporting by The Chronicle.
