Fulton County animal services stops answering Atlanta's calls for animal control

ATLANTA - About 24 hours after Fulton County cut off its Animal Services in the city limits of Atlanta, animal shelters were already seeing its negative impact.

It comes after a funding dispute between the two government entities.

Laura McKelvey, the shelter manager at Paws Atlanta Shelter in Decatur, told FOX 5 Atlanta she was already getting calls from people who live in the city and couldn't get help for stray animals. Normally, Fulton County animal control would respond.

McKelvey said she was worried that with animal control not responding in Atlanta, more strays would run loose, and more pets could potentially be abandoned.

The county said they had given the city six months to sign a new intergovernmental agreement for animal control services that all 14 other cities in the county had already signed.

They doubled the price for those services for Atlanta to around $6 million, but Atlanta wanted a discount.

McKelvey said shelters like hers legally can't step in and take over animal control services in the place of Fulton County.

"Legally, we are not allowed to take in stray animals at all," she explained. "They all have to go through the county and they actually have to go through the county that they're found in. So if a stray animal's found in Fulton County and they can't go to the county animal control, I don't know where those people can legally go."

The City said, for now, people can call 311 for any animal-related problems.