Difficulty Getting Information about "Data Driven" Animal Services

When elected officials can't get information about Animal Services, what chance does the average citizen have?  Consider this exchange from the August 29th Budget Workshop:

Councilperson Lucy Gonzales:

Morgan, on these ordinances, I think that that was one of the concerns a lot of constituents have if they’re not enforced and we’re talking about like the number of dogs that a person might have, we’re talking about the spay and neuter ordinance, there are a lot of ordinances that are not being followed through. Do you by any chance have any kind of reports that have the percentages of the citations that have been issued and that you have followed through after citation is given to these people? Do you are supposed to or like how do we track the citations, is what I’m asking.

Shelter Chief Morgan Chegwidden: 

I can pull some reports - like I wouldn’t be able to speak to that information today, I don’t have it with me today.

Mayor Brenda Gunter:

Well I think that there had been, we did something that gave a little more power to the municipal court, if that’s the right word, for these citations, making people show up or they lose their animals. What was that? ‘Cos I know that we tried to address some of the issues with municipal court and animals citations.

Shelter Chief Morgan Chegwidden: 

Not familiar.

Mayor Gunter:

You just did this last year, we got memo on it

Morgan's boss Bob Salas:

I believe it was the speeding up the process through municipal court.  Eliminating some obstacle so that we could quickly get to the court, get them in and get them processed - I believe that’s what it was.

Mayor Gunter:

I think it also dealt, if I remember correctly, with those people who were, where the animal was released into the owner’s hands and had X amount of days to spay or neuter and if they didn’t within that time frame, then it went quickly to the courts. Is that correct?

Shelter Chief Morgan Chegwidden:

That’s the backlog that I’m reporting back to y'all quarterly of the volume of unaltered pets returned to owner and that we’re filing through the court, so it’s it’s instead of writing a citation in front of the person or giving them a warning and 10 days “Hey, you’ve got to comply with this”, we can then go back and file in absentia and they get a citation essentially in the mail, so it’s filing accompli. That’s a new process that we did implement last year but it wasn't a change on the municipal court side and it wasn’t a more speedy court process, it was just an additional allowance that we can cite through the mail in a filed complaint instead of a ticket right in front of the person.

Public Information Request (10-4-23):

On 8-29-23 Shelter Chief Morgan Chegwidden informed a concerned City Council about her "data driven" approach, yet produced no statistics on the special effort the city undertook to cite people who were yet to get their shelter animal spayed/neutered. That effort was undertaken by the City Attorney's office in conjunction with Animal Services. Several City Council members asked about this effort in the meeting but no data was provided, I request copies of communications, documents, e-mails and texts of any animal related data shared with City Council members after that meeting by city officials. 

City Response (10-10-23):

The City of San Angelo has reviewed its files and has determined there are no responsive documents to your request.

I submitted a different PIR in February 2023:

1.  How many failure to spay/neuter citations have been issued by the City Attorney's office through the streamlined process approved in August 2022?

2. How many of these pets spent time in the City of San Angelo Animal Shelter?

3. What is the period of time the Attorney's office is exploring for possible citations, ex. 1-1-19 to 12-30-21?

I did receive a scanned document in response but it was difficult to discern any data.  It was a list of citations, the Animal Control officer, the person receiving the citation and whether the case was closed.  Much of the information was blacked out.

Concho Valley PAWS has not given a spay/neuter report on shelter adoptions since October 2021.  The last report was included in the Animal Shelter Advisory Committee background packet.  That was over two years ago. 

The Animal Shelter spay/neuter picture is clear as the inside of a dust devil.  And that is intentional.