Teton County Agrees to Pay PAWS After Shelter Cuts Off Sheriff

DRIGGS — PAWS has resumed taking animals from the Teton County Sheriff's Office, the shelter said Monday. County commissioners agreed on Oct. 13 to pay PAWS the $5,000 they had budgeted for it in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, and to sign a $33,000 contract for the year that began Oct. 1.

PAWS was on the Oct. 13 agenda as a discussion item, not an action item. When Commissioner Dan Powers proposed "a $33,000 payment" and offered to make it a motion, Commission Chair Brad Wolfe told him, "I don't think we have an action." Near the end of the item, Wolfe said, "This is just direction. We'll have to approve it … as an action item in the next meeting." PAWS's announcement describes the board's action as an approval.

"We are pleased to welcome animals from the Sheriff's Office again and continue working together to protect the people and pets of Teton Valley," PAWS Shelter Director Ann Loyola said in the announcement.

PAWS has run Teton Valley's open-admission shelter, at 15 S 1750 E in Driggs, since January 2022. It takes the animals deputies bring in: at-large animals, bite holds, rabies quarantines, and animals taken in during an arrest.

Loyola came to the commissioners' June 22 meeting to negotiate a new contract. "We have been working without a contract since October 1st [2025], totally in support of you all and our county and our community," she told them. The county's $5,000, she said, "covers 3 days" of shelter operations.

Later in the same meeting, County Administrator Billie Siddoway told the board, "We do still have that $5,000 for this year [fiscal 2026] that we haven't given them because we haven't ever signed the contract." Powers answered, "Okay, so we need to get the contract on there for an action item." Wolfe said he wanted "1 figure that covers everything."

The county budgeted $27,000 for the shelter in fiscal 2025 and spent all of it, according to its budget records. It budgeted $5,000 for fiscal 2026 and, as of July 22, had spent none of it.

PAWS said it entered the new fiscal year on Oct. 1 without a contract or a funding commitment from the county, and it stopped accepting animals from law enforcement that day. The shelter stayed open to the public.

When the PAWS item came up on Oct. 13, Wolfe said, "In my mind, we'd kind of discussed this and thought we were moving along. And then all of a sudden found out via the paper we weren't." "Well, it's Facebook, huh?" Commissioner Ron James added.

Siddoway told commissioners, "Commissioner Powers and I had a meeting with some representatives of PAWS in early September, and we had said, you know, the payment was there to process, but still even then I didn't process it. I just didn't have anything to submit, and I didn't think of creating something. So that was my oversight, I guess."

Later in the discussion, James told the PAWS representatives, "I wish we'd have had this meeting before y'all decided to go on Facebook and go to the paper and act like this board doesn't really care about [PAWS]. To me, that put a bad taste in my mouth."

Loyola, attending in person, answered him: "Emails started going back and forth from us to Dan Reyes in November [2025] … asking us to sit down and go over the contract." Reyes was then the county manager. Of the June meeting, she said, "That's where you learned that we hadn't even gotten the check for $5,000. So from June to September, we still hadn't gotten the $5,000, nor had we gotten any response on the negotiations that we were trying to have with y'all. … We needed to get somebody's attention. It just felt like we were being ignored."

"You have to understand, we're not full-time employees, we're part-time," Wolfe replied. "We depend on other people to bring things to us. And Billie apologized."

A moment later, Powers said, "I feel like we really dropped the ball."

Earlier in the meeting, PAWS Executive Director Amy Moore had told commissioners that PAWS "had proposed $5,000 plus $75 per dog per day, or a $33,000 flat fee." Driggs already pays the shelter $33,000 a year. Commissioners settled on the flat fee. Wolfe put it at "$28,000 plus $5,000": the $5,000 in the fiscal 2027 budget, and the rest from the county's remaining cash.

Loyola had raised licensing herself on June 22. The county's website still says vet clinics and the cities sell dog licenses, she told commissioners, "and that's not the case." PAWS had offered to take on licensing and keep the revenue, but "that would not solve our problems in terms of funding. … The income is not significant."

Later that day, Wolfe returned to it: "Well, let's just talk about the dog license fee … we must not be collecting anything now." County Clerk Kim Keeley answered, "Nothing. I mean, less than $200." Wolfe asked, "So how much is too much to license a dog? Is $25 too much?"

On Oct. 13, Siddoway told the board, "We don't have a dog license on our fee schedule right now." Wolfe answered, "Maybe put that as an action item the same time as the contract."

What to watch: Commissioners' next regular meetings are Oct. 26 and Oct. 27 at the Teton County Courthouse in Driggs. No agenda had posted as of Tuesday.