ASAC Meets for First Time in Eleven Months

The Animal Shelter Advisory Committee met today.  It was the first meeting after the death of ASAC longtime Chair Ryan Smith.

During the meeting staff shared that thus far it has been a light kitten season.  They attributed this to the city's collaboration with PAWS on Shelter-Neuter-Return.  

City Council approved $5,000 last summer to deal with nuisance cat collections.  Shelter leadership was to have an aggressive community outreach effort and report back to Council the impact of the special program.  These things are yet to happen.

The last time the ASAC had a quorum for a meeting was June 2021.  Eleven months ago the committee spent 60% of its time on Community Cats.  The group spent considerable time sharing erroneous talking points that included:

1.  The Community Cat ordinance was crafted by a special interest group for the sponsoring organization.

False.  Health Services Director Sandra Villareal served as the staff resource for the ASAC subcommittee that crafted the ordinance.  The committee had numerous community representatives and city legal staff assisted in researching and writing the ordinance.

2.  Villareal asked if more than one animal service organization could be a sponsoring organization. 

Neighborhood and Family Services Director Bob Salas presented the ordinance to council in February 2015.  In his presentation Salas said "I believe we have two sponsoring organizations, Concho Valley PAWS and Critter Shack."  From the get-go there was an expectation of multiple sponsoring organizations.

Critter Shack stepped up to do the work over the last seven plus years.  Concho Valley PAWS did not.  PAWS had a community cat survey on its website for the nearly three years.  It's still there as of today.

3.  Shelter leadership has not been able to communicate with Critter Shack on community cats due to a "cease and desist" letter.

Area rescues became overwhelmed when the shelter unilaterally stopped taking owner surrenders which had been between 1,500 and 3,000 pets annually during the period 2014-2018.  The shelter's response to people who could have previously surrendered their pet was to call area rescues and here's a list of rescues who may be able to help.  

Volunteer rescues had neither the people or resources to handle the work the city previously undertook, taking in 6-12 owner surrenders per day.  That is the reason some rescues sent the "cease and desist" letter.  

Six days before the June 2021 ASAC meeting Critter Shack contacted the Shelter Director and informed that person the "cease and desist" letter did not apply to Community Cats and that Critter Shack would be happy to meet with the ASAC, City Council or shelter staff on the program.  

The 6-11-21 communication stated:

I see on the next City Council agenda that there is an item that suggests that Critter Shack (an unnamed rescue that is the contact for community cat colony registration) has refused to allow our contact information to be given to community cat caretakers for information about cats or about registering colonies. While we did ask that shelter personnel refrain from giving our our name and number multiple times a day a year or two ago when these people were refused help at the shelter, resulting in dozens of calls many days for all of our area rescues, we never asked that colony caretakers who needed information about registration or advice be turned away. The many, many calls that we were receiving that were referrals from the shelter were primarily about dogs; I remember none that were requests from colony caretakers. We are fortunate to be able to offer some concrete advice and help for those people who are interested in learning more about TNR and we are happy to do so.

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. 

Shelter leadership received this communication days before the June 17, 2021 ASAC meeting and made no mention of it, even after Dr. Victor Schultze recommended reaching out to Critter Shack one last time.

Our light kitten season, if it holds, is partially due to a long term effort by Critter Shack and its hundreds of cat colony caretakers across the Concho Valley.  It's sad that the most basic facts cannot be recognized.