Health, Welfare & Recreation Committee - Regular Meeting

Everybody get

you need one short. I don't know. I got one. Everybody's got one. I need Let me take a picture of it.

Starting to look good. I hadn't been out there yet. No, I just hadn't thought about it. All right, everyone. We'll call this meeting to order. This is our monthly health, welfare, recreation committee. It's um January 22nd, 2026, 6 p.m. We're in conference room one. Call this meeting to order. Look around and take the role. Everyone's here. And if you would uh look at your minutes on your your agenda, please look at those. And I'd entertain a motion to approve to approve the agenda. I make a motion we approve the agenda.

Second. Motion by made Mr. Moore, second by Mr. Duncan. All in favor of approving the agenda, say I. I. I. Have it.

No one's here for any public comment. So, we'll move on to our minutes. Minutes have been sent to you. If you if you would look at the minutes, entertain a motion to to approve the minutes when you get a chance. They're pretty short. So, not a lot of them. I was not here so I won't

Well, I guess one of us better make the motion to approve. I guess I should. That'll be Mr. Miller has a motion to approve the minutes. So, I have a second on approval of the minutes. I haven't read them, but Okay. Okay. Go ahead. I could. Why don't you? I'll second. Have a second by Miss Smith. All in favor of approval of the minutes say I. I. All right. Moving on to our old business. Move down to 6A, which is Mr. Morris. You have anything on rule water tonight? Uh, no sir. Nothing on rule water. We hadn't heard anything, I don't guess from Manchester.

They have not gotten their committee back together again. I understand that they're putting somebody in that committee, but that I don't think they have met yet. They were probably I think they they had told us that they were going to only be interested if it was 6 inch line though, right? Okay. Well, yeah, but I want to I want to get with them and and make sure we know. Yeah. At least we know what we're doing. Yeah. The county went through the motion. Yeah. If if it's not 16, they're not interested. Okay. Well, and it may change. Yeah. But

Okay. All right. Anything else on rule water? If not, we'll move to create an animal control report. Are you going to come up? Turn your mic on.

Thank you, sir. three a day. That's just a rundown of all of our numbers from last year. Had a pretty big year. Um, of course, number of dogs don't go down. It keeps going up. Keeps going up. So, but I'm pleased with the year we had. We did some did some good work over there. Well, these adoption fees, were they mostly rural in this area or

the adoptions? Yeah, they're going to be local. We'll have a few that might go further in the state. Very rarely do we have adoptions that are actually out of state. It does happen sometimes, but there might be three or four a year. So, if it weren't for the rescues taking 70% of them, we'd be in that euthanasia rate would be very high. Very high. Yeah. What What does that euthanasia rate have to be to be a no considered no kill? 10%. 10. That's what I thought. So you're considered no kill. Yes. I don't I don't like the term, but yeah. I mean, we fall under that

that category. Your percentage is very very low. Yeah. And that that doesn't and you don't break it down of how many are sick and have to be done. It don't matter.

Of course, the cats, we don't technically do cats, but we get some neglect cases and stuff like that. What's this? What's the seven other? What's that? Uh, we had a few reptiles and some rats and things of that nature. Yeah. Looks like you could put the two together. Well, that's they were designed to go together, but what do you do with the others? What do you do with them? Uh, we got some people that'll help us out with those. Cheryl, she's this manager of our animal control and she does reptiles at her house. Cool.

She's kind of our go-to for that kind of stuff. I guess they're large reptiles usually. Yeah, the last one there was one pretty pretty substantial is a snake, of course. Yeah, I assumed. So, what is an average reclaim fee? Does it depend on what the animal how long it stays or? Yeah, it's $50 just like during normal working hours. Um, it's $10 a day boarding and if it's after hours it's it doubles to hundred bucks to go pick it up. Like if they call you at 9:00 at night and say, "Hey, that's

Yeah, most but most time it's the sheriff's department or something like that." Yeah. That just seems like quite a bit of money coming in from reclaim, you know. Interesting. Our reclaiming rate was actually a little bit higher this past year, which is with times being as hard as it as they are, are there more turnins or like you know people Oh, yeah. There it's that's through the can't afford them anymore. Well, that and I think a lot of what's going right now, we got all the puppies being born. There's nowhere for them to go. Yeah. So, these people are giving them away for free. Well, it's not necessarily people that are looking for an animal taking these puppies. They're like, "Well, I don't need it, but I'll take it." But then they're not

following through with So then you get them back later. We get them back later or they're the ones running at large that they don't come get. They're like, "Oh, well, you know, it's just and that's that's where they have puppies." Then they have puppies and it's snowballing into something pretty big right now. I mean, it's How's the How's the food supply? You stocked up pretty good with Yeah, we're pretty good. We had to rent a storage unit temporarily until we can get over into the other building. So, how much do you usually stay ahead far as the poundage wise usually?

Uh, I don't know. We probably got a I'd say we probably got a ton over there in the storage unit. The blankets have kind of taken over the storage unit at the shelter right now. So, we just go get a truckload of time of dog food as we need it and bring it over. So, we don't have any place to really put away the straw for bedding. Yeah, we got a third of a semi-trail load we need to get rid of before we move over to there. Yeah, next next few nights be a good night for people come. Yeah, we've been advertising, but I mean, we've maybe had 10 people show up, but it needs to be gone or it's going to be raked off into a burn pile. Is it is it It's in the bail, right?

It was, but they fall apart, so you have to bag it, box it, whatever. Anybody out there want any straw? That's Yes. I mean, we've got a lot and we got to get rid of it. Like $6 a bail if you go buy it, right? Y I just took a bail to somebody the other day.

Got any more questions for you. Any questions for us? Appreciate you coming showing up. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you. All right, rural fire report. Talked to some of the some of the chiefs been pretty busy. Had several wrecks, fires going on. We had a fire yesterday in Manchester house. Was that the white vinyl? Yeah, I saw a white vinyl house. They burnt their car and everything was in Manchester.

Yeah, somebody was working on the car in the garage. actually right behind us here. SP I had that happen one time in my garage. My best car, but I had a couple of fires in here. I made a mess, but I didn't get anything burnt. Cars parked in garages. Sometimes fire sometimes. All you got to do

burnt the whole house, didn't attage or not. I had a pretty bad wreck yesterday on Asbury Road. Got a car over tired out there. Talked to Melissa. She said from her. She said they've had so far they've had two mutual aids, three brush fires, two vehicle fires. They've been a lot of illegal burns. They had their meeting last night to go over all their equipment. They were so they were really proud given we got the supposed to take your money for us. Thank everybody for that.

An illegal burn. What is that? Is that somebody without a burn permit or they're burning something they shouldn't be burned? Could be either one. They could be burn without a permit or they could be burning car tires. Okay. Copper wire. So if you burn the insulation off, it brings more money. Yeah. A lot. So they'll take it with the burn marks on it. I guess it melts down and yeah, there's nothing left. Starts saying it just goes to a heat when you get through. But it's like that. It's like it's like burning a car tire. It's just Yeah, it's bad. It's bad for you. Okay. I learned that's pretty much it. So

if they bring it in as wire, then the law says we can't take it. We got to know where it came from and all that. If it's just a heap, so if you burn the insulation off, you don't have to tell where it came from. It does two purposes. I think it just gets it sold and uh Yeah. Plus, they're not going to pay you for the weight of the plastic. Okay. So much you wouldn't get anything. Okay. Wow. That's pretty much it. Pretty short. It's a learning curve. Oh, I will say this. The the I drove by this the courthouse again today and it's just gorgeous. I mean, I drove by yesterday.

It's just with the lights on it, the trees and everything. It's just looks real good. There is one tree and I hadn't paid much attention uh on one side that's pretty good size looking tree. Looks like a Christmas tree. Yes. Well, they have all decorated with lights and everything. It just looks real good up there. I think they have I think they had a lot of people come in from out of town and everywhere just to look at it

through the Christmas holiday. And one one thing that you know Manchester started this and it could be a yearly thing, a New Year's Eve thing. I wondered if if the city and the county could get together or something and shoot fireworks off like they do in Gatlinburg or something and and use the tourism money to make a donation to each other. You know, if you got more people on the square or something to draw people and have more interest in hometown, uh I think that's a good idea. We might might could look at maybe doing that for the 4th of July. No, I mean for New Year's. New Year's. Yeah.

And fill up the hotels and I don't know if it would or not. I mean, it's just a stab in the dark. I don't know either. There's so many places, you know, Gber Pigeon Forge and everybody does it, you know. But there are people who stay home too that don't go to the town. You would have to do it in about 9:00. Yeah. But that would probably bring out a lot of people if you kept the square, you know, if the square was going and hot chocolate and stuff like that. I don't know. It's just something I thought I just thought of maybe some food trucks. 9:00 sounds pretty good to me. That way I'm in bed by 10:30. So

anything to drum up some tourism dollars. you know. Okay. All right. That being said, will any new business? Anybody have anything? None. Jackie, you got any new business? No. Okay. All right. Let's set our time for our next month's meeting. I was thinking about the 19th of February, 6 PM. That would be a Thursday night. Sound good with everybody? Okay, let's set that for next meeting Thursday. Thursday the 19th, February. Yes, sir.

And let's uh that one down and I'll entertain a motion for adjournment. So moved. Mr. Morris with motion. Second. Second by Miss Smith. All in favor of adjournment, say I. I. I. Thanks for everybody being here tonight. See you next month.