00:00 The Kern County Animal Shelter has been dealing with overcrowding for years now and this week the county took steps in an effort to remedy the
00:06 Situation by allocating money for a new shelter 23 ABC's Corio Leary has the details
00:12 As part of the county's recently passed
00:15 4.4 billion dollar budget roughly 1 million dollars will go to planning and designing a new animal shelter
00:23 The new shelter will help with the chronic overcrowding that the Kern County Animal Shelter has been dealing with for years
00:30 The Board of Supervisors that guard acknowledging that there's a crisis about
00:35 Animals in our community and I'm super happy that there's some more resources being provided to animal services more resources being provided
00:44 For the animals in addition to staffing increases
00:48 there are 1.2 million dollars that are going towards the designing and planning of a new facility one that will be able to serve the
00:56 Amount of animals that the current shelter sees every year. I can tell you that the design phase
01:01 Will take into account our annual intake of animals and it'll be structured to
01:07 Accommodate that number of animals Cullen says the current shelter takes in around 12,000 animals
01:13 Annually more than the current facility can handle. He says he wants the new facility to better serve the Kern County community
01:19 One of the primary hopes for animal services is a more community-based facility
01:27 someplace where the community could come for resources more
01:32 Visually appealing facility than where we're at right now. And of course better environment for the animals
01:37 in addition an extra
01:41 $1,000 is going towards increases in spay and neutering programs
01:46 Increasing the amount of animals that are spayed and neutered can help fight the persistent problem of animal overpopulation
01:52 There's being more resources added to the program to affect more spay and neuter surgeries for the community
01:58 Cullen told me he feels good about the amount of money allocated to animal services in the new budget in
02:04 Northwest Bakersfield Cori O'Leary 23 ABC News connecting you
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