What started out as a temporary replacement for the Grande Prairie SPCA may not be so temporary. It’s been almost three years since the City and County of Grande Prairie opened the Regional Animal Care Facility and County Regional Enforcement Services Manager Stuart Rempel says the future is still unclear.
“Unfortunately, it has become much longer than we were ever anticipating. Right now we’re continuing to run the Regional Animal Care Facility… Future, and very soon we’re hoping that we can find a permanent animal care facilitator for this region.”
The SPCA closed its doors in May 2016 after it was $250,000 in debt. A portion of the building was sold to the Edmonton Humane Society and some of the animals were transferred to the Edmonton location.
The city and the county in partnership with Edmonton Humane ran the building for a time before the group handed the keys to the city and county to run full time.
In the next few weeks, Rempel says he is trying to plan a meeting with both the city and county councils to decide whether the facility should become permanent or whether they want to find someone else to run it.
“Right now we’re offering a very well run but a bandaid solution. If we’re to go into it full time we would jump into it with both feet but certainly, we need that direction from both councils as to where we’re going to go next.”
Rempel says his end goal is to have a solution figured out by the end of the year.