My colleague David Stokes recently weighed in on Columbia and Boone County’s decision to spend $995,000 on a building for a joint animal shelter. City officials say the purchase will break even in about 30 years compared with cost of the Humane Society’s funding request. As Stokes notes, such calculations are only as good as their assumptions.
Unfortunately, Kansas City offers us an example of how such things can become a dog’s breakfast. And Stokes has been there at every turn.
In 2017, Kansas City voters approved a general obligation bond that included money for a new animal shelter. It passed with 67% of the vote. The project was sold as a public–private partnership: The Swope Park campus would cost $26 million, with $18 million from the bonds and $8 million raised privately. Another private campaign, “Raise the Woof,” hoped to raise another $5 million for an endowment. The city would own the building, and the nonprofit KC Pet Project would run it, in an arrangement similar to the Kansas City Zoo or Starlight Theatre.
At the time, Stokes welcomed the arrangement as a win for privatization, and he wasn’t alone. The city council included what seemed like a safeguard. Its $18 million was contingent on KC Pet Project raising $5 million. At the time, Councilwoman Jolie Justus said the campaign had already reached $3.8 million. Finance Chair Scott Wagner estimated that once the new shelter opened, the city’s annual cost of running it would rise from the $1.4 million it was spending on the old one to about $3.8 million—the only prediction in this mess that turned out to be correct. That is exactly what the city now pays under its operating contract.
Most of the construction money came through. When the campus opened in January 2020, private donors had committed more than $5 million in cash and almost $5 million in pro-bono services. The separate $5 million Raise the Woof endowment, meant to help with operating costs, is another story. There is no indication it was ever raised—the only endowment the city now mentions covers building maintenance.
What happened to private giving after the ribbon cutting is clearer. The city did not contract with KC Pet Project directly. It contracted with a separate nonprofit, the Kansas City Campus for Animal Care, for up to $3.8 million a year, on a term running to 2029 with an automatic ten-year renewal. That group, which FOX4 describes as KC Pet Project’s fundraising arm, subcontracted operations to KC Pet Project. According to its IRS filings, the Campus for Animal Care reported $4.1 million in contributions in 2018. By 2022, that had fallen to under $8,000. In 2024, it was $40. In those years, nearly all of its revenue was program service revenue, which appears to be the city contract passing through to the operator.
KC Pet Project still raises private money. But in 2024 it reported $6.1 million in government grants out of $10.4 million in total revenue, a figure that included its animal control contract. That means nearly six of every 10 dollars came from taxpayers. KC Pet Project took over animal control in 2020 after the city council overrode its own evaluation committee, which had unanimously rejected the proposal. Citations fell by 46%, complaints grew, and the city took the service back in 2025. Stokes again raised concerns about those operations. That failure was in animal control, not sheltering, but it shows how readily the council kept expanding the arrangement.
The partnership has since gone to the dogs. In February 2025, the Campus for Animal Care ended its contract and recommended the city take over the shelter. Instead, the city decided to pay KC Pet Project $3.8 million a year directly. In August, KC Pet Project’s former chief financial officer and a former board member told FOX4 that cash reserves fell from $2.66 million in May 2025 to $1.14 million that October, and to $175,000 by this spring. Contributions were running 54% under budget. A KC Pet Project spokesperson attributed the decline to rising operating costs. In September, KC Pet Project asked the city for an independent audit after finding “concerning discrepancies” in its historical financial records.
Stokes is right that contracting out is generally better than government administration, and that nonprofits can bring donors and volunteers that a city agency cannot. Even at equal cost, a contract spares the city long-term pension and healthcare obligations. But that was not the pitch. Voters were promised that private money would carry part of the load, and then the private money stopped. Kansas City’s experience adds a caution: Private enthusiasm peaks at the groundbreaking, but operating costs never end. Once a city owns the building, the risk falls on taxpayers. If Columbia and Boone County proceed, they should count only cash in hand toward any private match, write operating commitments into the contract with public reporting, and avoid automatic multi-year renewals.
Kansas City voters thought they were funding another public–private partnership. What they got was a building and a permanent line in the city budget. Columbia should be clear about which one it is buying.
