Bloomington would get $456K from Monroe County, Ellettsville under yearly animal control agreement
In 2025, Monroe County government and the town of Ellettsville are expected to pay a combined total of $456,281 to the city of Bloomington for animal care at the city’s shelter.
That’s the figure that’s recorded in the interlocal agreement that appears on the agenda for the Dec. 4 meeting of Bloomington’s city council.
The amount is supposed to cover the cost of housing, caring for, adopting out, and potentially euthanizing animals that are brought to the city’s shelter from those jurisdictions.
Under the terms of the kind of interlocal agreement that the three jurisdictions have ratified for several years now, the amount is based on the most recent full calendar year of animal intakes, which for this year’s agreement was 2023. In that year, the city shelter received 3,370 animals, or an average of a little over 9 animals a day.
The part of the shelter budget that is used to calculate the per-animal cost is $1,054,639—which reflects a deduction of about $97,000 in revenue from adoption fees. Divided by 3,370, that works out to a cost of $312.95 per animal.
In 2023, there were a total of 1,458 animals from Ellettsville and the unincorporated part of Monroe County received by Bloomington’s shelter—74 from Ellettsville and 1,384 from the rest of the county outside of Bloomington.
Under the terms of the interlocal agreement, based on the per-animal cost, Ellettville will pay Bloomington $23,158 and Monroe County government will pay $433,123, or a total of $456,281
Bloomington’s shelter saw a 26-percent drop in total intakes from 2019 to 2020, from 3,948 to 2,905—likely an impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. But the numbers since then have crept up incrementally in each of the three years since 2020.
The total increase of about 5 percent from 2022 to 2023 can be attributed mostly to the 13-percent increase in the number of animals Bloomington’s shelter received from inside the city. In 2022, there were 1,310 animals from inside city limits received by the shelter, compared to 1,482 in 2023.
According to a memo to the city council from animal shelter director Virgil Sauder, which is included in the 2025 budget book, Bloomington’s animal shelter has maintained a live release rate of 94 percent or higher since 2020.
The city council’s Wednesday (Dec. 4) meeting starts at 6:30 p.m.
