City of Cashmere hears from residents on animal control issue

CASHMERE — The Cashmere City Council meeting on July 14 offered a striking example of community participation. After the traditional opening, including the Pledge of Allegiance, Mayor Jim Fletcher informed the gathered audience of 10, excluding officials and media, that the council would simply be hearing their comments at that time and then moving on to other business.

Fletcher said that more questions could be answered, and in greater detail, after the city has had a chance to meet with BJ Andersen, the new(ish) director of the Wenatchee Valley Humane Society (WVHS).

The mayor and the council said they knew exactly what the public was present to discuss: The termination of Cashmere’s contract with the WVHS, a topic that’s been in the news recently after interviews were made public with Andersen and a local resident who performs “TNR” (trap, neuter, release) services on feral cats in the area. It was the first council meeting since those interviews were published, after a canceled meeting immediately following the public outcry that sparked the story.

One councilmember had a copy of the article printed out in front of her, marked up with notes of her own. The council came prepared to answer whatever questions they would be able to address.

Fletcher invited the first woman who entered her information on the sign-in sheet to be the first to speak. Melissa Chipman, who’s been in the area for a few years, switched from social media mode, where she’s aired most of her grievances in the local Facebook group, to city council mode quickly.

“Obviously we all know that it is causing quite a problem in this town, having no animal control whatsoever. My experience in discovering that was walking my dogs down by the waste management plant, and somebody threw a dog out their car window, and we were trying to figure out what we were going to do,” Chipman said.

But Chipman had no one to call. And one after the other, residents told more tales of personal experience. Some people had dogs who were attacked by other dogs. Some were overrun with feral cats. Some tried to call Rivercom or the Sheriff’s Office to address animal control, with one woman declaring that she’d been told by someone at the CCSO that all they could do was to “shoot the dangerous dogs.”

Anna Gullickson, the co-president of Cashmere’s Ridge 2 River Animal Haven and Humane Education, came with a clearly prepared speech in support of the WVHS.

Later, Chipman brought up the fact that even something as relatively minor as licensing pets, something required by Cashmere municipal code (6.24.010), was impossible without animal control services. Fletcher replied, “Yes, we are not necessarily in compliance with our own city code, but that’s the least of our problems.” Fletcher said that “in the old contract, the Humane Society was supposed to collect and license the dogs. That was part of their responsibility, and they didn’t do it.”

However, Andersen from the Humane Society sent an email to the Cashmere Valley Record on July 16 that says something very different:

“According to our records, we issued, on average, 120 dog licenses annually prior to 2025 in Cashmere. The majority of those licenses are for animals that are spayed or neutered. Over the last 3 years, we have handled 214 animal control cases, and received 235 stray animals, both cats and dogs,” she wrote.

“Contracting with WVHS won't guarantee every animal in Cashmere is licensed, but it will ensure that any unlicensed pet we interact with will be licensed or we will follow up and make sure the owners get in compliance. Any stray animal redeemed to Cashmere would be licensed at time of redemption, and a dog adopted by a Cashmere resident would be licensed at time of adoption,” she concluded.

The reason a contract doesn’t guarantee every dog is licensed, of course, is that many times residents simply don’t comply with the requirement. But Andersen was prompt with exact numbers, making any interpretation of the mayor’s statement contradictory.

Primarily dogs were the issue, although cats were a natural part of the conversation as well, with Chipman invoking Kathy Matney-Harris, the woman who was interviewed for the article prior to this meeting, as someone who could speak to the council on how efficient animal control had previously been in assisting her in local efforts to trap, vaccinate, neuter or spay, and otherwise care for the cats that have become notorious in the Division Street area and other parts of Cashmere.

Upon hearing that name, councilmember Jayne Stephenson characterized previous reporting in the Cashmere Valley Record as “misinformation,” and questioned why Matney-Harris was said to have spent “thousands of dollars” out of her own pocket when she was “reimbursed.” However, the assistance Matney-Harris has received has all been locals chipping in through a GoFundMe or simply sending her money via Venmo or other instant transfer methods, something residents in attendance at the meeting all simultaneously said in response to Stephenson’s assertion.

In fact, unlike city council meetings in other towns — and unlike Fletcher indicated at the beginning of this one — councilmembers responded extensively to the public while they were there. Councilmember Chris Carlson’s commentary was about money and allotment: “It always seems like it’s a matter of budget. And everybody complains if we raise taxes. Everybody complains if services are cut. And the budget’s a zero-sum game. You have a certain amount of money, and you have all these things,” he said.

He went on to list all of the other entities vying for money from the City of Cashmere, like the CCSO and the Regional Justice Center, and then he posed a question. “I’d like to know what services you’d like to see cut or done away with in order to offset additional money spent for animal control,” he asked. One unidentified speaker obscured by other attendees replied from the back of the room, “That’s your job to figure out.” Another speaker declared “This is what we do want our taxes spent on.”

Referring to the fact that a resident had said her dog had been attacked by a notable local four-legged menace named Rowdy, Carlson said he carries a can of bear spray with him. When Chipman sarcastically suggested that they “buy every resident of Cashmere a can of bear spray to ward off the pit bulls in their yard,” Carlson responded that his dogs were attacked by French bulldogs. “I was going to put the boots to them,” he said, “but they were so cute.”

After Chipman listed several potential code violations that the city was at most narrowly circumventing by, for example, having the capability to build a kennel to quarantine a dangerous dog, but not one that already exists, councilmember Jeff Johnson spoke up.

“If that’s true, that’d be a problem,” he said. “What I’d like to see happen is I think it would be good to have a subsequent meeting with BJ, but prior to that, or maybe during that process, I’d like to understand what the issues are, and if we renegotiate a contract or regardless of what we do, how we are going to resolve those issues. That’s the homework assignment we need to do between now and then.”

The mayor and city council seem to already be pursuing another meeting with WVHS’s Andersen, and she confirmed via telephone that she had enjoyed coffee with the mayor since the publication of the last article about this issue, so when Johnson offered the “homework” plan, residents were nodding their heads before he’d finished the sentence, and so was the rest of the council.

The consensus among attendees suggested cautious optimism as discussions move forward.

Andrew Simpson: 509-433-7626 or andrew@ward.media