Animal Shelter Advisory Committee to Meet Next in October

The City of San Angelo canceled the Animal Shelter Advisory Committee's August meeting.  The ASAC will not meet again until October 21, 2021.  

In its last meeting the ASAC took up the issue of community cats.  San Angelo's City Council approved $5,000 for the shelter to fix "nuisance" cat collections known to City Council members.  The shelter asked for the funding after it released nearly 50 shelter cats into San Angelo neighborhoods.  Only one of those cats arrived at the shelter having been spayed/neutered.  The average time these cats had been in the shelter was 12 days, with one stay as long as 202 days.

The Animal Shelter released 48 unaltered cats into city limits.  Bentwood, Fort Concho, Santa Rita, Angelo Heights, Lake View, Southland Hills, The Bluffs, Bellaire, River View Heights and Wall received cats with intact reproductive systems, courtesy of the city Animal Shelter. 

Rather than plan to rectify the problem they offloaded into San Angelo neighborhoods the ASAC ran down Critter Shack, the only local animal rescue helping local citizens practice trap-neuter-return-maintain for Community Cats.    Critter Shack was not invited to City Council's June 15th or ASAC's June 17th meeting to represent the many services provided to address Community Cats.  

The rescue did reach out to members of City Council on June 11th offering to meet and share information on its Community Cat efforts.  

We are the contact for many caretakers who are actively practicing TNR, through our web site, through our low-cost spay/neuter clinic, through our partnership with Cassie’s Place for our West Texas Fix program that entirely focuses on cats, through our new voucher program, “Fix Your Critter,” and through our efforts in outlying communities to offer free or very low cost spay/neuter services to many caretakers. We deal successfully with hundreds of colony caretakers in the Concho Valley and any suggestion to City Council members to the contrary is simply untrue. We have an ever-growing list of caretakers and offer as much assistance as we possibly can to these men and women. Since the passing of the ordinance that offers some protection to the caretakers, our programs have focused on providing help to these colony caretakers and a large part of our annual budget is aimed at helping colony caretakers and cat owners in education, financial assistance and low-cost spay/neuter programs. If you or Council members have any questions about our caretaker registrations or programs, I would be happy to meet with you to discuss our efforts in these areas. The ordinance has been a step forward in protecting caretakers who are actively working with TNR and the cats in their care. 

Information shared with Shelter Director Morgan Chegwidden was withheld from the Animal Shelter Advisory Committee meeting on 6-17.  

Meeting minutes reflect none of the fiction, derision and disparagement city staff "presented" on June 17th.  They are inaccurate on multiple levels.

I offer a more accurate summary for consideration, although none of this was actually discussed by the ASAC:

City staff orchestrated a narrative that allows it to send more money to Concho Valley PAWS, giving PAWS a toehold in the shelter's return to field effort.  At any point since Council passed the Community Cat ordinance PAWS could've met the program requirements and been designated a sponsoring organization.  It has not done so, leaving Critter Shack at the only local rescue assisting citizens wishing to practice trap-neuter-return-maintain.  Critter Shack would have never released nearly 50 unaltered cats into city neighborhoods, something the city of San Angelo did between October 2020 and February 2021.  The city did not contact its only Community Cat sponsor before dumping unaltered cats on citizens.  Critter Shack operates a weekly spay/neuter clinic and would have worked these cats into their operation.  

City Council expects shelter leaders to run a public information effort on addressing cat collections and report back the impact of their $5,000 in additional funding.  Will that be before October 21, 2021?