On Monday, Aug. 19, there will be a very important decision made regarding the new Guilford County Animal Shelter – only that decision won’t be made by Guilford County; it will be made by the High Point City Council.

The City of High Point will vote on Monday whether or not to extend water service to the new Animal Shelter, which is being built near the High Point city limit.

Normally, this would be the most no-brainer of all no-brainer votes; however, there’s a little history and drama that could make the discussion interesting Monday evening, if not the vote.

Two years ago, the City of High Point came before the Guilford County Board of Commissioners and asked the county for a special multi-year property tax break for the downtown High Point area to help defray the costs of a new baseball stadium and other downtown projects in High Point – and the commissioners said no. (Well, technically the commissioners never voted on the matter, but that dead silence can safely be categorized as a no.)

At that time, some High Point officials pointed out both publicly and privately to Guilford County officials that the county sometimes needed High Point’s help – and they even pointed out at that time that High Point would have to approved water service to the new shelter based on the proposed location.

And now the agenda for the High Point City Council’s Aug. 19 meeting includes Guilford County’s request that the city authorize water service to the Animal Shelter. The new shelter, which is to be built at 980 Guilford College Road on the northwest side of that road, and southwest of I-73, is outside of High Point’s city limits but does fall within High Point’s planning jurisdiction.

According to that agenda item: “The property is proposed to remain within Guilford County’s zoning jurisdiction at this time with the City of High Point providing water service and Greensboro providing sewer service to the facility. The general policy of the City of High Point is to provide water and sewer utility services only to properties within the City’s corporate limits and to allow the extension of such lines to serve properties only within the corporate limits. However, the policy allows the City Council to approve the extension of such services to serve governmental property in lieu of annexation, as provided within the attached Water and Sewer Utility Extension.”

High Point staff is requesting that the City Council authorize the extension of water service to the new Guilford County Animal Shelter.

There’s no budget impact on High Point from the move.

The coming Animal Shelter will certainly need water to fill the bowls of Fido the dog and Frisky the cat, along with many other uses. It’s unlikely that High Point would hold up water to the shelter – but there was has been some very bad blood in recent years between the two local governments over the county’s lack of participation in High Point’s baseball stadium project and downtown renovation effort, and that still stings to some extent. The High Point City Council could, of course, just figure that’s what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, and simply never vote on the matter.