Animal Shelter Open Houses Had Poor Attendance, Ended Early

Five months of public meetings produced data from an average of three citizens per meeting.  Shelter Chief Morgan Chegwidden's 7-15-24 report to City Council included

To give citizens an avenue to communicate their concerns, animal services held weekly open house hours for five months from February 2024 through June 2024. Visitors were invited to tour, ask the experts, share concerns and ideas for this come-and-go casual gathering of people motivated to solve San Angelo’s animal concerns. 

About two dozen people attended on 2/7/24 but no more than two individuals reported on any subsequent date.

The meetings were to run through August but stopped the end of June due to poor attendance.  

I would suggest veterinarians are included in the list of people motivated to solve the city's animal concerns.  They might be worthy of a special focus group meeting, since the open houses were held at a time that most veterinarians were working.  That is if someone really wants feedback/public input. 

 Morgan's report suggests that is the case:

To encourage greater participation, we moved the meetings to Thursday evenings and hosted events, such as a pet resource fair and microchip clinic. With no additional attendance, we held our last open house 6/27/24 and will research additional ways to stay in touch with citizens’ needs and requests

Data says the weekly series of open houses was for show.  Three months in it was obviously not fulfilling its stated aim, yet there was no course correction.  

Citizens have taken to contacting their City Council representative to get a response from Animal Services.  I hope they keep doing that.  Maybe elected officials will figure out that something is wrong.

Time will tell if Council's lack of response remains firmly in place.