The property formerly occupied by the Pinole Animal Shelter property is set to reopen to provide animal-related services to the community under the leadership of a nonprofit organization rather than the County.
Today, the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors will consider a proposal to sell its property at 910 San Pablo Ave. in Pinole to the nonprofit Animal Fix Clinic, formerly known as Fix Our Ferals, for $42,000.
As a condition of the sale, the property must be used “for the purpose of providing services to animals and the community through the sheltering, adoption, and provision of free or low-cost medical treatments to animals, and the administration of such uses for a minimum of 25 years.”
Animal Fix Clinic will provide low-cost spay/neuter services and veterinary medicine to the community, County officials said. The organization was founded in 1998 by a group of women who joined forces in Berkeley. According to its website, after successfully caring for community cats through trap-neuter-return and pop-up surgical clinics in the 2002s, the organization opened a free-standing spay/neuter center in Richmond in 2012, which last year had a name change to reflect its expanded scope of services. Learn more about the organization at its website here.
The County permanently closed the Pinole Animal Shelter in August 2020, consolidating operations at the larger Martinez shelter. The closure was among a lengthy list of savings measures approved for dozens of county departments to close a $35 million budget deficit for fiscal year 2020-2021. County officials saw the 5,550 square satellite shelter in Pinole, which opened in 2005, as underutilized “because it does not have an outdoor exercise area and was built without surgical facilities for small animals,” among other issues.
In August last year, the Board of Supervisors declared the property to be surplus, but seeing the need for animal services in the Pinole area, the County issued a request for proposals to 501c3 animal welfare organizations to bid on the property. Fix Our Ferals was chosen as the possible buyer.
