The City has decided to close its animal pound so all stray animals will soon go straight to the East Kootenay branch of the SPCA.

Chris Zettel, corporate communications officer with the City of Cranbrook, said closing the Pound and using the SPCA is intended to be revenue neutral.

"What we spent on operating the City Pound and staffing it is intended to be transferred over to the SPCA," he said. "We are still trying to finalize the contracts."

The City is also hiring two new part time bylaw officers who will take the place of the current animal control officers and will have different duties than them.

"With the two officers, the City is really trying to maximize the service it can provide the public by using less dollars. They're trying to generate a little more public visibility so people see them out and about more often and kind of engage in more public education," Zettel said. "They are also going to be different from the ones we had in the past because the ones we had were animal specific. These new bylaw officers will focus on animal control to a point but will also look at parking outside the downtown core, something that hasn't really happened before."

Bylaw enforcement in Cranbrook is complaint driven and Zettel said with the extra officers, they can focus on specific areas that historically get complaints and also put some patrols in residential areas that don't get visited often by bylaw officers.

The job posting for the two officers closes on June 15 and Zettel said they hope to have at least one officer in place by the end of June.

During the summer months complaints to bylaw enforcement are usually about the parking of RVs, boats and campers on the street and stray animals.