St. Joseph County commissioners on Monday approved an animal control contract for the rest of this year with the Humane Society of St. Joseph County. The Humane Society is getting less than it asked the county for, so it will be counting more on donors.
Commissioners approved a contract paying the nonprofit $915,000 for 2026. That’s more than the $619,000 the county council approved for this year’s budget but less than the $1.3 million the Humane Society requested.
Humane Society Executive Director Genny Brown has said they want to start offering health insurance to staff, add two staff positions including a full-time veterinarian, replace heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, and replace a vehicle. Brown says they’ll have to put off the vehicle purchase until next year but they still plan the other expenditures.
Brown says they’ll rely on donations and their three major annual fund-raisers.
“We’re going to continue to be out in our community just talking to everybody," Brown says. "We want to be as transparent as possible. If they want us to be able to continue doing our job and to do it well, it costs a lot of money to do that.”
The first of those big three fundraisers will be a trivia night on May 2.
