LIVINGSTON - Livingston Parish broke ground on a new animal shelter in the town of Livingston that officials say will seriously improve animal welfare and public safety.

This new animal shelter will be built right next to the current shelter. When completed, it won't replace the current shelter, it will essentially be an expansion and allow for triple the capacity for animals.

The new shelter itself will cost around $3.5 million.

"We're able to build this through the hard work of the council, who has looked at the budget and was able to come up with this figure and not raise taxes," Livingston Parish President Randy Delatte said.

The Livingston Parish council determined that there was enough in their current budget to build and operate the new facility without tax increases coming to parish residents.

Officials say one of the reasons this is being built is to lessen and hopefully even remove the need to have the Livingston Parish Sheriff's Office respond to calls to the current animal shelter.

"We use the law enforcement now to do a lot of our animal control and they need to be involved in law enforcement work and not be an animal control officer," Delatte said.

Delatte says when the shelter opens, they're aiming to have six to seven animal control officers who work around the clock.

The sheriff's office says on average, they get around 40 to 50 animal-related calls per month, with most coming in rural areas. One of the benefits of the new facility is they'll be able to respond more to animal cases in rural areas.

"Everything from picking up stray animals to cruelty cases, it runs the gamut of the calls that we get, and the shelter will now be available to, once it's built, pick up those dogs, or those strays that normally we would have to leave them there," LPSO Major Chad McGovern said.

Officials say the new facility will serve all of Livingston Parish, except for Walker and Denham Springs because they have their own municipal shelters.

"We went to a lot of different shelters to see what they had done and to see what we liked and didn't like," Animal Shelter Commission Chair Maurice Durbin said.

In addition, the current facility is getting a cat hospital that officials say will be very helpful with spaying and neutering.

Parish President Delatte said they hope to have the new facility open by Jan. 2026.