San Antonio’s Animal Care Services is falling short of big goals
San Antonio’s Animal Care Services Department still is not responding to roughly 40% of the critical calls it receives, is not on track to reclaim its “no kill” status and is falling well short of its spay/neuter goals one year after a deadly dog mauling spurred a major budget increase, according to a city budget presentation Tuesday.
This year, ACS is set to receive a 13.6% budget increase, up from $28.5 million in 2024 to $32.3 million in 2025. That’s on the heels of a 33% budget increase in 2024 — a massive change compared to most other departments.
Tuesday’s presentation was intended to update the City County on the department’s process and make the case for the proposed additional funding.
The department has been operating with an interim leader since former Director Shannon Sims retired early in May.
Michael Shannon, who most recently served as the city’s director for Development Services, is currently overseeing the department after city leaders declined to hire any of the four finalists a national recruiting firm brought to San Antonio to be interviewed.
While the council seemed less eager to grill Shannon than other recent department leaders who’ve come before them with updates in recent months, the room burst into laugher at the suggestion he might continue overseeing the department long-term — a nod to the job’s challenging nature.
Despite falling short of some of last year’s goals, Shannon said the department is still making progress on some of its most critical challenges, like improving its response rate to calls about aggressive animals, animal neglect and cruelty, which was at a staggering 44% last year.
ACS expects to get to a 100% response rate by 2026, according to the budget presentation, but this year, it’s projected to respond to about 59% of such calls this year.
One notable change has been a big increase in the number of criminal citations issued by ACS officers, primarily for unrestrained dogs, as the department added staff last year.
“Stat wise, our live release rate is up for the year, our intake [of stray and roaming animals] is up. Our citations are up,” City Manager Erik Walsh said in an interview after the meeting. “Every one of those measures is trending in the right direction, and frankly, better than what it was 12 months ago when we were giving this presentation.”
In light of the major investments, Councilwoman Phyllis Viagran (D3), who has long pushed for better funding for Animal Care Services, said the city needs to ensure the agency is using the money effectively.
Sims pushed for the approval of a new strategic plan for the department on his way out the door, focused on raising the public’s standards for animal care, in addition to improving public safety.
“I was very appreciative of the strategic plan, however, it was just a little too general,” Viagran said. “… I think you have a monumental task ahead of you Mike.”
The department expects to receive fresh data about how it’s doing on its goals early next year, when a new study of the number of stray and roaming animals living on the street should publish.
The last study, conducted in 2019, found that about 35,000 stray dogs were living on the street at any given time.
Live release rate
San Antonio has been on a long journey to increase the number of animals it finds homes for, after a series of news reports in the early 2000s revealed the city was euthanizing roughly 50,000 dogs and cats each year.
The city achieved “no kill” status for the first time in 2016, meaning that at least 90% of healthy, adoptable animals were adopted, transferred or returned to owners.
But by the end of 2022, that number was at its lowest in seven years, even as the department was taking in fewer animals, according to an animal rescue nonprofit that raised alarm about the issue.
On Tuesday, Shannon said the city is on track to report a live release rate of roughly 85% for the 2024 fiscal year, which is ahead of its goal of 83%.
But as the city faces pressure to pick up more stray and potentially dangerous animals off the street, it’s already anticipating that animal rescue efforts won’t keep pace.
Tuesday’s budget presentation called for increasing the number of ACS first responders from 32 to 50 in the coming year, but did not include new pet placement staff, and didn’t project any increase in the city’s list of people signed up to foster pets.
With the additional officers ACS is expected to impound roughly 33,000 animals in 2025 — a increase of about 3,000 from this year — but the number of rescues and adoptions are only expected to increase by about 1,000.
The city projects its live release rate will fall to 83% for the 2025 fiscal year.
“As we’re focusing on enforcement, our live release is going to suffer,” said Walsh, who noted that council has repeatedly called for more enforcement officers.
Last year’s budget amendment process included a last-minute push from council members to add more officers to respond to critical calls, which ACS waved off amid concern about not being able to find homes for the number of animals they would bring in.
“The department is going to need to be as creative as possible within their budget,” Walsh said Tuesday. “It is one of the budgets that’s going up as the highest percentages.”
Spay/neuter surgeries
Tuesday’s presentation indicated that ACS is on track to fall short of its spay/neuter goals by roughly 10,000 surgeries this year.
Shannon said the city has struggled to keep enough vets to staff its spay/neuter clinics, and changes to the industry’s spay/neuter methodology is causing vets to achieve roughly half as many surgeries in a single day as they once did.
The budget includes includes money for 21 new support staff positions for two new spay/neuter clinics in Denver Heights and Las Palmas that are expected to provide free and low-cost surgeries for residents’ pets starting early 2025.
That move comes as Walsh said at an earlier budget meeting that the city didn’t receive a single response to its request for proposals to have the clinics staffed by nonprofits or other outside partners.
Still, the city is setting a goal of 41,170 surgeries for the coming year, after achieving 33,000 in the 2024 fiscal year. That’s compared to 23,600 surgeries in 2023.
Councilwoman Marina Alderete Gavito (D7), who authored a proposal calling for San Antonio to join other cities in spaying or neutering impounded pets before they’re returned to their owners, asked whether the new investments would give ACS the capacity to start instituting that policy.
Shannon said the city was not on track to have enough veterinarians on site to make that change.
ACS anticipates approximately 4,800 impounded pets will be reclaimed by the owner without having been neutered, according to a City Council presentation earlier this year.
link
