KC animal control duties shift back to city after complaints about KC Pet Project
The Kansas City Council has made it official. City employees will again take direct responsibility for enforcing the city’s animal control ordinances.
The animal welfare group KC Pet Project will no longer be in charge of handling dog bite complaints, picking up strays and rescuing pets who’ve been mistreated after a six- or seven-month transition period.
A previous City Council outsourced those duties to KC Pet Project in December 2020. But critics within and outside city government said the organization wasn’t up to the job.
The council’s Neighborhood Planning and Development Committee voted on Tuesday in favor of the change. And the full council approved that recommendation on Thursday night, despite a last-minute attempt by council members Johnathan Duncan and Nathan Willett to push the decision back a week to address changes in the animal control ordinances and other issues.
But Councilwoman Melissa Patterson Hazley and others said those details could be addressed during the transition, and the ordinance to bring animal control in-house passed unanimously 13-0.
The change was precipitated by complaints about KC Pet Project’s perceived lax enforcement of the city’s animal welfare ordinances culminating with a fatal dog attack on a Kansas City man last fall.
KC Pet Project runs the city-owned animal shelter under a separate subcontract, and that arrangement will most likely continue. It’s not certain, however. An intermediate group has ultimate responsibility for managing the shelter and hires KC Pet Project to run it.
But that nonprofit group, which shares its name with the shelter – the Kansas City Campus for Animal Care – has told the city it wants to end its contract next month. That group has had disagreements recently with KC Pet Project’s current leadership and has recommended that the city take control of the shelter, too.
So far no formal proposal for a city takeover of the shelter has been introduced, and KC Pet Project officials say they would love to contract for shelter management with the city directly.
City audit led to changeover
As for animal control, KC Pet Project sought that contract after a 2017 city audit had faulted the city-run animal control unit for being overly focused on issuing tickets to pet owners. The audit said the unit also needed to more in helping to correct the behavior that led to those citations for the benefit of animals and the community.
KC Pet Project won the city contract by promising to provide that better-balanced approach.
But the critics complain that too often KC Pet Project was unresponsive when people called to ask for assistance with dangerous dogs and about pets who were malnourished or mistreated.
The number of tickets issued fell dramatically after KC Pet Project took over. Complaints rose. When KC Pet Project’s contract came up for renewal last spring, the city decided to put it out for bid again after getting more than 200 complaints during the previous fiscal year, according to Forest Decker, director of the city’s Neighborhood Services Department.
Both Kansas City officials and KC Pet Project agree that the city’s current chapter on animal control in the city code has flaws that impede the ability of animal control officers to go onto private property without permission to impound vicious dogs and animals that are being mistreated.
Decker said he will suggest ordinance changes this year.
But some advocates and lawyers supporting KC Pet Project say transferring power back to the city won’t make much of a difference without first making significant changes to the ordinance that outlines how animal control enforcement should work, which they claim doesn’t give animal control the power to be effective.
Star reporters Eleanor Nash and Noelle Alviz-Gransee contributed to this article.
This story was originally published March 6, 2025 at 6:44 PM.
