City Manager Brandon Wade told City Council members discussions are underway for the city to form a partnership with the Williamson County Regional Animal Shelter after Pflugerville voters rejected a proposal to build a new $10 million animal shelter last November. The Wilco shelter has been looking to expand its space for dogs and cats, as well as upgrade their surgery suite services. Wade said he and Police Chief Chuck Hooker met with Williamson County Commissioner Valerie Covey, Pct. 3, Jan. 11 to discuss the possibility of becoming partners to meet the needs of animals in both communities. “Commissioner Covey said she was interested in a potential partnership and there was currently no set process for adding a partner city, especially one that’s outside of the county; however, the board would be interested in discussing what that would look like,” Wade said. Wade said all the numbers are preliminary, but the cost to the city would be based on animal intake numbers. “We provided them with our numbers of animal intake over the past several years. Again, this is an extraordinarily preliminary number, but it looks like we would be at about 15 percent,” Wade said. “It appears, again preliminarily, that our capital cost for the expansion would be approximately $2 million, and that a guess of (operating and maintaining) costs would be about $200,000 per year.” Wade said specific details would be left up to negotiation between the two entities. “Just as matter of information, the original shelter capital cost was paid for by Williamson County, and the partners pay Williamson County for a share of the debt service and their share of the operating cost,” Wade said. As the two groups move forward in discussion, Wade said he hoped to provide more information to the Council in the next two weeks. “Under this circumstance, there would not be a facility in Pflugerville at all,” Wade said. “At this particular point, these numbers were so promising, I would like to pursue this further and bring you back a proposal quickly.”