At the end of Old Mill Road across from the Vicksburg Fire Department’s training facility, sits a plain cinderblock building with a metal roof surrounded by a high fence.

Vicksburg’s animal control shelter is supposed to serve as a temporary home for animals officials hope will one day be adopted.

But the shelter has come under criticism by some area residents concerned for the animals’ well-being as they stay in the building during the extreme heat of the Mississippi summer.

The chief complaint, they say, is the animals are being kept in a hot building with no one checking on them after the shelter closes for the day.

The normal business hours for the shelter are 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., but those hours were changed this summer to 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., leaving animals in what some believe is extreme summer heat for 16 hours without sufficient cool air circulating in the shelter.

It’s a claim city officials deny.

“I’ve asked (assistant public works director Jeff Richardson) about this and he said none of the animals are in danger,” Mayor George Flaggs Jr. said, adding he and Richardson will meet Wednesday afternoon at City Hall with a representative from PAWS in Jackson.

“It’s air-conditioned; we have central air conditioning and a window unit and fans,” said Richardson, who oversees the animal shelter. “We are in the process of getting an additional central unit to put on the west side of the building and one of the (large) box fans is getting a new belt.”

The shelter has two sections — a small room on building’s west end to hold cats, and a larger kennel area with pens for large dogs and smaller stacked units for cats, puppies and small dogs,

A window air conditioner in the small room with pens set up to hold cats, stays on, with the door to the kennel shut.

Robert May, animal control supervisor, said the present central unit, which is used to cool the larger portion of the shelter, is turned off when workers open the shelter and turned on when it closes for the day.

During the day, a combination of industrial-size box fans and small window unit-type fans are used to circulate warm air through the kennels, making the atmosphere inside the building stifling.

Richardson said Friday the air conditioner is turned off so employees can clean the shelter using disinfectant, and the building has to be opened and the fans turned on to remove the fumes.

He said later the practice is changing, and the air conditioner will be turned on at 10 a.m. daily.

Cleaning and disinfecting the building, May said, is the priority when the building opens for the day at 6 a.m.

“We have to disinfect, clean everything. Once we do that, we go back and feed the animals,” he said. “Feed and maintenance; whatever needs to be done. We clean up for a second time before we leave.”

May said shelter workers constantly check on the animals between the time the shelter closes and it reopens.

The animals, he said, are fed twice daily.

“We’ll be back and forth bringing in animals (to the shelter),” he said. “We’re out during the day on calls, and when we bring in new animals, we make sure the (other) animals have water; that’s the main thing with the heat.”

He said someone is checking on the animals “every 30 minutes to an hour. I’ll be here checking on them myself.”

Richardson said the city has an adoption program.

Constance Lenoir, shelter secretary, said people interested in adopting an animal must pay a $20 feet at the Vicksburg Police Department to get a release to adopt an animal.

The person returns to the shelter and fills out an application.

If the animal is less than six months old, it can be taken home immediately. If it is older, it is taken to a local veterinarian to be spayed or neutered, and get shots, and the animal can be picked up at the vets the next day.

Animals picked up by animal control are held for five days before they are put up for adoption, adding photographs of the animals are on the shelter’s website and Facebook page. If someone finds their animal has been picked up, they can retrieve it from the shelter for a fine of $25 plus $2 a day for each day the animal has been kept.

Richardson said the shelter has a euthanasia policy, adding animals deemed necessary to be euthanized are taken to local vets for that procedure.