Officials give progress update on new Ascension Parish animal shelter

The following is a press release from the Ascension Parish Office of Communications:

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – The Parish of Ascension and its animal services board has been working hard to find a new home. They have engaged Shelter Planners of America and received a needs assessment and conceptual design plan to assist in determining the best site and design for a new animal shelter. This shelter is funded by a one-mill property tax collected since 2019.

While the board has these plans in hand, several challenges remain:

• Five (5) or more acres are needed for the facility to be located on
• This land would preferably already be zoned “rural” ‘or “MU2″ to allow for an animal shelter to be built.
• The land would also need to be “high and dry”, the shelter cannot be built on a pier and beam for several reasons, one main reason is that the stairs would not be ideal for the animals.
• By law, the Parish is not allowed to pay over the appraised value of land.

The administration and animal services board are ready to finalize the conceptual plan once a site is obtained, then they will proceed to go out for an RFQ for architectural/engineering services for the construction complete design, and finally do an RFP for the construction of the animal shelter.

“While there are many steps in this process, I’m optimistic that our staff and Animal Services Board can accomplish all of this and we can be breaking ground in 2023!” stated President Cointment.

Any interested parties with land for sale or donation please contact 225-450-1200.

Click here to report a typo.

Copyright 2022 WAFB. All rights reserved.