King County Animal Regional Services plans to reduce the license fee for unaltered animals from $90 to $60 (Redmond Reporter, July 9, 2010).

I wonder how the geniuses in the King County bureaucracy came up with a rationale for this reduction.

Unaltered animals mean more animals, whether intentional or accidental. A check of local, non profit animal shelters reveals that many of these animals were unwanted. More animals require more services. More services create a need for more staffing and more calls to the animal services agency. More staffing and more calls mean higher costs to the county.

How do we meet these higher costs? Reduce the fee for unaltered animals, the cause of the increased costs. If reducing fees in the face of higher costs is how King County does budgets, there should be little surprise that it has financial woes.

If the County’s position is that a reduced fee for unaltered animals will result in more people buying licenses, then the fee for all licenses should be reduced, and that many more people will buy them.

When humane animal organizations are doing all they can to reduce pet overpopulation by encouraging, and, in most adoption policies, insisting that animals be spayed or neutered, King County appears to be travelling in a different direction by reducing the license fee for unaltered animals.

Please wake me when it starts to make sense.

Richard L. Grubb, Redmond