The Park County Commissioners were more generous with special funding requests this year than in the last few years, with a number of organizations such as Youth Clubs of Park County and Powell Economic Partnership receiving more funds than they had last year.

However, a majority of commissioners took a stand against giving any money to the Park County Animal Shelter in Cody because of the way it operates.

While the Moyer Animal Shelter in Powell again received $3,000, for the second consecutive year the shelter  in Cody received no funds. One of the main reasons? It’s a no-kill shelter.

That decision was made after the new shelter director Amanda Munn had asked for much more money, $20,000-$70,000 than in year’s past because she said the shelter is taking a good proportion of its animals from the county and had even performed one of its new Trap-Neuter-Release services in a Powell neighborhood.

Commissioner Scott Steward disputed the statement that the shelter takes a lot of animals from the county, saying in his time as sheriff deputies would routinely pick up animals out in the county, which would be rejected by the shelter because they were not from within Cody city limits.

“I know a time or two they’ve lightened that up, but for the most part they wouldn’t take them, so it’d be interesting to see if that was still their policy,” he said.

Chair Dossie Overfield, who lives outside of Cody city limits, countered that she had recently picked up a stray cat on her property that the shelter had taken.

Commissioner Lee Livingston said he was opposed to the shelter getting county funds for both its no-kill policy and its program where feral cats are spayed or neutered and then released back into the same area.

“I’m not going to vote to fund them anything,” he said. “As long as they’re no kill and they’re spay and release, I’m not voting.”

Steward said he objected to the shelter complaining of overcrowding before the new facility was built, while being overcrowded partly because they would take in animals from other shelters.

Livingston, who had previously voted for funding for the shelter, said in a later interview that this year the issues all just “came to a head.”

“I use animals, I love animals, but I just know there’s some that just shouldn’t be here any longer.”

He said animals that are unlikely to be adopted take space and prevent animals more likely to be adopted from getting a spot at the shelter in the first place.

Commissioner Scott Mangold suggested the shelter be given $5,000 because the smaller-capacity Powell shelter had been given $3,000, but Commissioner Lloyd Thiel said he’d agree to either no or less funding, joining with Livingston and Steward to approve no funding for the Cody shelter.

The Park County Animal Shelter in Cody has worked as a no-kill shelter since 1996, according to its site, and last received funds in fiscal year 2021-2022, when it received $9,000 after asking for $10,500. The next year it neither asked for or received funding.

Shelter board Vice Chair Joelyn Kelly said a lot of people like the fact that they’re no kill and that it helps with fundraising.

“Right now we are running over capacity, have record numbers, we’re doing the best we can do. We do have a lot of efforts around making sure animals don’t stay in the shelter indefinitely and we have collaborated with shelters in other areas if they have a better chance of adopting them,” she said. “There’s still extreme cases where an animal might be a risk to people, and we do make hard decisions in those extreme cases. But it’s important that we do everything we can to give an animal a good life.”