Maricopa is a city that puts its rocks in cages but not its pets.
“We moved to Maricopa almost five years ago from Washington State and the amount of loose, dumped and unwanted animals out here is insane,” said Rancho El Dorado resident Shannon Slettvet Banford. “It gets progressively worse every year, especially since the pandemic.
“Dumped dogs run through neighborhoods all the time, often on weekends, when there is no animal control officer on duty.”
An analysis of five large community Facebook groups in Maricopa this year alone found thousands of posts about loose and feral dogs. Even groups that had set rules against posting such notices averaged multiple per day.
Banford claimed even when Maricopa Animal Control Officer Luke Ziccardi is on duty Monday through Thursday, he often is unable to take loose dogs to the Pinal County Animal Care and Control shelter, which is perpetually full.
A rescue partner of PCACC, Home Is Where the Hound Is, recently announced the shelter was at full capacity and that for the first time in six years it would start euthanizing for space.
Many residents like Banford said they felt the solution to the issue was staring them in the face — a new shelter in Maricopa, the county’s most populous city where feral animals this year were declared a crisis. An October InMaricopa poll of 532 city residents found a head-turning 97% said an animal shelter was a “need” in the city.
“Not only does the city need a shelter, it needs resources for these feral and for the pets,” Banford said.
InMaricopa contacted city to ask if such resources could exist here.
“Currently, the city of Maricopa partners with Pinal County to shelter rescued and stray animals, averaging just two to three animals per week,” said spokesperson Monica Williams. “Establishing a dedicated animal shelter would require a significant investment, potentially funded by taxpayers. Fortunately, our collaboration with the county allows us to meet our community’s needs while keeping costs minimal.”
She said Ziccardi’s primary task is to educate pet owners about the importance of microchipping their animals for quick reunification if they become lost and encouraging the securing of doors, fencing and gates to prevent pets from escaping.
Kelly Anderson, executive director of the Maricopa Chamber of Commerce, said she felt the current set up wasn’t working after conversations with residents in Thunderbird Farms and Hidden Valley and the owners of The Gud Ark animal sanctuary and Little Whiskers Rescue.
“It’s a real problem here and with 70,000 people and our own animal control and animal management issues, now we have the Valley dumping more on us,” Anderson said. “Quite frankly, in my opinion, being the largest city in Pinal County, we’re really underserved when it comes to county resources.”
Anderson emphasized the benefits of having a shelter in town.
“When people lose their animals or somebody finds an animal, having one location, like an animal shelter, that can hold that pet for a day or whatever it takes to be reunited with the owner would be super helpful,” Anderson said. “I think if we had animal shelter here, it might assist our community with setting up and launching some sort of TNR [trap, neuter, release] program to also address our feral cat population.”

Local rescues left to pick up the pieces
Little Whiskers is a volunteer-run rescue that has been helping TNR the feral cat population and tending stray cats, feral moms and their kittens since 2018.
According to owner Brittney McCarthy, the rescue today has 61 cats between its nine foster houses. During its last fiscal year, which ended in August, the rescue had custody of 781 cats.
“Most of them are going to be strays,” McCarthy said. “They’re either strays or they’re feral babies and feral mamas. I would say that about 30% are owner surrenders.”
McCarthy said owners who want to surrender their pets are meant to file paperwork with the rescue ahead of the surrender, but too many simply dump their animals without any documentation.
Most recently, there was a box of 11 kittens dumped at Jennifer Ferguson’s house in May. Ferguson is one of the fosters for the rescue.
McCarthy likened the feral cat situation to a zombie apocalypse.
“They’re everywhere,” McCarthy said. “If you don’t think about them or know about them, you don’t really see them, but once you do you, you start seeing them everywhere. You’ll see them behind businesses, in sewers, subdivisions and front yards.”
People don’t like seeing feral cats on their property, McCarthy said, “so they call us, yelling at us to remove them. We’re not animal control.”
Ferguson said Ziccardi has only responded to calls for injured cats because he told her otherwise, “the calls would never stop coming.”
“Welcome to our lives,” McCarthy said.
According to data from the city, animal control calls have increased sharply over the past four years from 347 calls in 2021 to 966 this year.
Of those calls in 2021, six were for vicious dogs and 59 were for barking dogs. It is projected that in 2024 there will be 58 vicious dog calls and 214 barking dog calls.
McCarthy said not only is Little Whiskers inundated with calls from residents, but the rescue has been called on by Maricopa police and fire departments to pick up feral cats they had encountered. One recent example was a cat left in a car when the owner was arrested.
The rescue foots all the vet bills and TNR costs. McCarthy noted the city used to pay for five cats a week to undergo TNR but a year ago, suddenly, it stopped and gave no reason.
“The rescue is always in debt,” McCarthy said. “That’s never going to change … We’ve all talked about it, closing our doors because financially it’s insane.”
McCarthy has been in conversation with Maricopa Mayor Nancy Smith and City Councilmember Eric Goettl about options to improve the feral cat problem. She envisions a “nice structured mobile home” with land for cats and dogs to roam. Inside, she sees adoptable cats, intakes, a sick quarantine and vet’s clinic.
McCarthy’s retained veterinarian, The Mobile MASH Unit, has pledged weekly visits to Maricopa if such a property was developed.
Goettl said a satellite shelter should be funded by the county.
“Our residents here in the city already pay county taxes that are supposed to provide for animal control services,” said the councilman. “The onus really does lie with the county in building some type of satellite facility out here on the western side of Pinal. As a city, we’re working to see if we can influence the county to consider that; it’s been a long process.”
Goettl said the hope was that once Pinal County Supervisor-elect Rich Vitiello, who lives in Maricopa, is sworn in next month, the city might have new leverage to divert resources toward Maricopa.
McCarthy said the likelihood of PCACC building a satellite building in Maricopa was low, noting the department is looking to build one in San Tan Valley instead and advocates a city-run shelter in Maricopa.
“Stop putting rocks in cages. Stop beautifying things that don’t need to be beautiful. Build a shelter,” McCarthy demanded. “You can make a shelter a nonprofit which means you get donations, you get help, you get grants and it’s a huge part of it. But a lot of grants are not available in Pinal County for foster rescues. They want the brick-and-mortar.”
The city pays per animal taken to the county shelter in Casa Grande and again for each day on intake, stray or medical hold.
“Imagine putting that money into your city,” McCarthy said. “Putting a shelter here that’s not an hour away.”
Her rescue, its vets and its volunteers have offered to help get the shelter up and running if the city were to invest in one. Ferguson said a local shelter would collaborate with rescues and rescuers in the city.
“Few things are more agonizing than watching something innocent suffer and not being able to help,” Ferguson said. “It all boils down to the love of pets and some people consider their pets to be major parts of the family. That’s why we rescue for love. Our blood — actual blood like from a bite or scratch — sweat from catching kittens in the summer and tears when one dies go into caring for the kittens and cats of Maricopa. They’d get more help if we had an animal shelter.”
The harsh reality of a local shelter
PCACC Director Audra Michael said she understood why some 97% of Maricopa residents wanted an animal shelter but questioned if they grasped the gravity it would entail.
“When we impound an animal, we have to give them a vaccine. Vaccines cost money. We have to give them flea and tick treatments, that costs money. Before we adopt them out, we have to get them spayed and neutered,” Michael said, among other costs. “You have to go into it thinking how are we going to help the community — not just get a bunch of stay animals off the street.”
Michael worried if McCarthy’s proposal was thought through fully.
“You want to have a shelter for picking up all the stray dogs that are running down the street. But then what are you going to do with them?” she questioned. “You can’t just say we’re going to have a shelter and then load up the shelter with animals that you have no outcome for.”
PCACC is overfull and amid a remodel.
When InMaricopa interviewed Michael, the shelter had custody of 270 dogs and three dozen cats, and more than 50 dogs in foster homes — but only 118 kennels due to the ongoing construction that began in February. When the remodel is completed, the shelter will have 149 kennels.
Michael noted the remodel does not include the addition of any new kennels. Because, she predicted, a new kennel block was “going to be full within a day.”
“Then you need more staff; you need more supplies and you need more resources. So, we didn’t really want to add more kennels,” she said.
The remodel moves the meet-and-greet areas inside, adds new office space for staff and play yards with shade structures, astroturf, kennels and a wide walking path. The cats at the shelter will also be moved to the front in the lobby so people who come in will see them right away.
According to Michael, PCACC took in 2,496 stray cats and dogs from Jan. 1 to Oct. 24 — an average of 10 a day — but she said a normal year sees some 5,000 animals. This year, 65 cats and 89 dogs came from incorporated Maricopa.
When fully staffed, the shelter has 43 employees, but today there are only 36 on the payroll. Not only is the shelter overfull, it is understaffed.
The Maricopa County Animal Shelter, which serves 4 million people, takes in 60,000 animals a year and has custody of 900 animals at any given time in a building that only has 300 kennels. As such, some animals arrive in Casa Grande from north of the county line, and Michael smells a similar problem if Maricopa opened a municipal shelter.
“If a shelter opens in Maricopa, people from unincorporated Maricopa will try to bring the animals to you, which is in itself a nightmare,” she predicted. “People want to help but they don’t understand jurisdictions, so it causes a little chaos which is not fair to the citizens or to both shelters.”
She said even if the city council and mayor agreed to build a shelter, it would still take a long time to become operational.
“If they want to do that, that’s great, but it’s going to take some money and planning,” Michael said. “We’ve been going through a remodel that got approved four years ago but only got started this last February.”

A call to action
Even if a shelter is never built in Maricopa, there are other things that can be done to quell the city’s feral pet problem — like educating the public, volunteering or donating to local rescues like Little Whiskers.
“I know times are tough and sometimes it’s not always inexpensive to get a dog spayed or neutered, but the consequences of not doing that or not keeping your pet indoors can be catastrophic for the city,” Goettl said. “That would be my plea to our residents.”
PCACC offers vouchers for such surgeries with the purchase of a license for your pet. Keeping track of pets, whether through the county’s pet licensing program or a microchip, is important to keep shelter numbers down, Michael said — only 1 in 10 incoming pets is ever reunited with its owner.
Michael said people holding onto animals they find for a couple days would be helpful as well.
“People think that they’re going to get in trouble, which is not true. They think it’s going to be too much money, which is also not true,” she said.
The question is this: Will a shelter ever be built in the city? A lot of residents are holding out hope for one.
Said Banford: “We need a shelter in town that the lost and dumped pets can go to so we can help control this epidemic of animals being dumped out here.”
Error embedding FlippingBook shortcode, please check the flipbook url. ()https://magazines.inmaricopa.com/view/650284955/[/flippingbook]