Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Proposed Budget Cut Threatens to Close Castaic Animal Shelter : Government: The facility serves about 250,000 people. The area’s other center is in Lancaster, 60 miles away.

CASTAIC —  Employees at the Castaic Animal Shelter take in thousands of stray creatures a year, hoping their owners or a kind soul will claim them before they have to be killed.

Now the shelter faces the same fate.

The Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control plans to close the shelter if a proposed 7% cut in the department’s 1994-95 budget stands, said Bob Ballenger, executive assistant for the department. He said a 19% cut in the 1993-94 budget was absorbed by all six county animal facilities, but such measures won’t work this year. Because the Castaic shelter is the smallest in the county system, it’s the most endangered.

“It’s the least amount of damage we could do,” he said. “It’s like being given a choice between cutting off your left arm or your left foot.”

The Castaic shelter serves about 250,000 people in a 250-square-mile area, including the Santa Clarita Valley and unincorporated sections of the northwest part of the county, Ballenger said. If closed, the nearest facility would be the Lancaster Animal Shelter, about 60 miles away.

The 12 employees in Castaic would probably be transferred to other county shelters, he said.

Ballenger said the department has asked the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for an extra $207,000 to continue operating the shelter, which took in about 6,500 of the 96,000 animals housed at county shelters last year. The supervisors will begin the budget approval process July 11.

Some officials have commented privately that they doubt the Board of Supervisors will allow the shelter to go unfunded, despite a shortfall of at least $184 million in the 1994-95 county budget. But shelter officials and Santa Clarita animal lovers, who watched last year’s cuts force local libraries into part-time operation and the Mira Loma jail facility in Lacaster to close its doors, said they won’t be reassured until the money is provided.

“I’m taking it completely seriously because I know how desperately underfunded the county is,” said Laurene Weste, parks commissioner for the city of Santa Clarita and a member of the Los Angeles County Animal Foundation.

About 62% of dogs and 36% of cats at the Castaic shelter were placed in homes, about two to three times the usual number for comparably sized shelters, Ballenger said. But residents said those figures probably would plummet if people had to go look for their pets in the Antelope Valley.

“It would mean commuting an hour to Lancaster to look for your animal,” said Rick Kerr, founder of Citizens for Sheltered Animals, which houses and tries to find new owners for unclaimed animals at the shelter. “Probably 70% of the people would say it’s not worth the effort to go out there.”

The distance would also have a devastating impact on response time to emergencies, Weste said.

“There is no ability to respond if you have a vicious animal--say you have a child cornered by a pit bull,” she said.

The shelter also responds often to wild animals such as bears, coyotes and bobcats that have wandered out of nearby mountains, officials said. In addition, employees have coped with some bizarre situations.

“At one time we had 9,000 chickens here,” said Lt. John Rozier, an employee who was at the shelter when it opened in December, 1972. “A chicken truck turned over right here in Castaic about 12 to 14 years ago. We had eggs coming out of our ears.

“Kids would come up here in the morning with boxes, and we’d tell them they could gather the eggs,” he added. “We didn’t want them to go rotten.”

Weste said she and other volunteers collected more than 10,000 signatures on petitions submitted to the Board of Supervisors asking that the Castaic shelter remain open.

“We gathered those signatures in a couple of weeks or less,” she added. The Department of Animal Care and Control has a proposed $2.1-million budget for the 1994-95 year, compared to $2.3 million during 1993-94, Ballenger said. He said the department needs $591,000--including the $207,000 for the Castaic shelter--to keep all services at the level they were this year, and more than $1 million to restore services provided two years ago.

There is some indication government officials are sympathetic to the shelter. Peter Whittingham, deputy to Supervisor Michael Antonovich, said the Castaic shelter is the “No. 1” priority on a list of several items the supervisor wants to preserve.

The city of Santa Clarita, which paid the shelter about $80,000 this year for animal control services within the city limits, may also be willing to contribute extra money to keep the shelter open, said Jesse Juarros, the city’s general services manager. He said city officials are waiting for the county’s decision before taking any action.

“How we would do that, we’re not quite sure,” he added, stating the city has its own budget problems.