- December 5, 2025
Flagler County resident and animal lover Cameron Orr said he first began volunteering with local animal shelters after his wife convinced him to volunteer at dog walking with her.
Now, Orr is one of almost a dozen volunteers running the informal, local organization Animal Refuge of Flagler — or “ARF.” Orr and several other ARF volunteers are traveling the state to a dozen other counties to gather data on what it would take to form a municipal animal shelter.
In lieu of having its own animal shelter, Flagler County, Flagler Beach, Bunnell and Palm Coast all contract with the Flagler Humane Society for animal services. For all but Palm Coast, that includes animal control and retrieval services. Palm Coast has three dedicated animal control officers of its own, but still sends its animals to the Flagler Humane Society.
In August, former and current volunteers at the Flagler Humane Society showed up at Palm Coast City Council and Flagler County Commission meetings with a host of concerns about the shelter: overcrowding issues, mismanagement and a lack of transparency and a lack of euthanasia protocols.
It’s true the Flagler Humane Society is overcrowded and underfunded. At a joint meeting with Palm Coast and the Flagler County Commission in August,Executive Director Amy Carotenuto told the officials the Flagler Humane Society had over 90 dogs, but just 56 kennels, and the cat colony rooms were also at capacity. Those numbers do not account for the exotic pets the shelter takes in like birds, rabbits and snakes.
Since then, the Flagler County Commission and Palm Coast have begun exploring what it would take to create a county-run facility. But before it can get far off the ground, the city and county need data to understand what it would cost to build and run.
That’s where Orr comes in. He said he was asked by Palm Coast Acting City Manager Lauren Johnston and Chief of Staff Jason DeLorenzo to help them gather the necessary data.
He and ARF volunteers have spent the last week reaching out and traveling to municipal shelters in counties both near Flagler County and ones that are of a similar size. Orr said he asking for a large variety of data: the operational costs, employment needs and costs, the cost to build the shelter, how many kennels each shelter has, how.
Ideally he said, a future municipal shelter would work with the Flagler Humane Society to care for all the animals.
"Many of these counties that have municipal shelters also have humane societies," Orr said. "But we need the kennels."
In an Oct. 21 workshop presentation, Chief of Special Projects Holly Albanese included the construction of a municipal shelter as part of the county’s proposed legislative appropriations requests to send to the state for the next budget cycle. In her presentation, Albanese said a new 30,000 square-foot facility could cost an estimated $15 million to build.
The county has asked for letters of support for the request from Bunnell, Flagler Beach and Palm Coast, as they all partner with the Flagler Humane Society, for the legislative request. Johnston said the city is working closely with the county on the legislative request.
Flagler County is able to levy an impact fee to help pay for a shelter, Johnston said, but had in previous years declined to do so. And building a new shelter requires substantial funding to build.
As with every legislative appropriations list, Flagler County and each of the cities will send to Tallahassee multiple items they would like to see funding on. Both Flagler County and Palm Coast’s lists already have requests for major capital projects like flooding mitigation, expanding first responder services, and infrastructure improvements.
The municipal shelter request will compete against those requests and funding requests sent in by other cities and counties across the state.
The priority of the requests are set by the council in Palm Coast, Johnston said.
“It would be what the city council is hearing from the residents and how they'd like to address it through policy and vision, as how they rank their priorities.
The data ARF volunteers are gathering will support the request when it goes to the state. Orr said the ARF volunteers are out to get as much data as possible to support the county’s legislative request.
But Orr said he’s well aware that the idea of a municipal shelter could fail at any stage — from the city to the county and all the way up the chain to the governor’s desk.
“It's a long road where we're at in the very early stages,” Orr said. “But we're encouraged that we've been asked to go forward with this and gather data and help the city and help the county.”
