For the past seven years, Community Partnership for Pets, Inc. (CPPI) has been serving Henderson County residents by providing low cost spay/neuter programs. CPPI is an all volunteer organization and no one working with the organization collects a salary. CPPI has provided these programs with the support of local veterinarians, grant money and private donations. In the last seven years, CPPI has spayed/neutered over 8,800 animals. These animals, left unaltered, would have produced over 88,000 unwanted puppies and kittens that would ‘litter’ our community and fill out Shelters.

Each animal that comes into the County Animal Shelter costs taxpayers approximately $223.57 per pet which covers food, medical care and the operating expenses of the facility, including euthanasia. It costs CPPI approx. $81 to spay/neuter and vaccinate a single animal, which we believe is a better use of our tax dollars to avoid an unwanted litter.

Here is the problem CPPI faces. The majority of our funding comes from grants. Although the grantors have been impressed by CPPI's accomplishments in the last seven years, grants are not intended to be a long-term solution to an organization’s funding – particularly if a community is benefitting from an agency’s services (i.e. Henderson County and our Shelter and our Community benefits from CPPI providing affordable spay/neuter services).

CPPI has met with several of the County Commissioners requesting their support to fund spay/neuter in the 2012-2013 budget. CPPI asked for $86,107 to fund about one-third of the surgeries CPPI is scheduled to complete in 2012. The County Commissioners did not publically discuss the merit of the request for funding or the merits of the work CPPI has provided to the County in the last seven years.

Therefore, CPPI is asking that animal lovers, who believe that spay/neuter is the answer to pet overpopulation, help us by providing our Commissioners with your compassionate and professional thoughts on why funding spay/neuter will keep unwanted animals from being born to only face an uncertain future.

We are hoping to give our Commissioners enough new information to have them reconsider our request for funding prior to the final budget being signed end of June 2012.

Please, without this support from our County Commissioners, CPPI be unable to fund our spay/neuter programs through year end 2012. Matter of fact, without funding, CPPI will will sell our last spay/neuter vouchers on July 22, 2012.

In just seven years, we have seen the euthanasia rate at the County Animal Shelter drop by 25.3% and in 1Q2012, the number of animals coming into the County Animal Shelter is down by 21%. All good signs that spay/neuter is working.

CPPI believes that money spent on preventing the births of unwanted animals is far more humane than allowing these births only to euthanize 6 out of 10 animals that enter our County Animal Shelter. Please show your support by adding your electronic signature to our petition of the Henderson County Commissioners. Please let them know, in a professional manner, that animals are important to you and funding spay/neuter is a must.