Public Safety Committee - Regular Meeting

All right, time is now 2.08 p.m. and we'll call our Public Safety Committee meeting to order. Madam Clerk, could you please call roll?

Council Member Jalen McKee-Rodriguez.

Council Member Castillo. Council Member Spears. Council Member White. Chair Kaur.

Here.

Chair, we have Kaur. Here. Okay, the first item on the agenda is approval of minutes from the August 31st Public Safety Committee meeting. Are there any changes that need to be made? If not, I'll take a motion. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Okay, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right, motion carries. Item two on the agenda is an update related to the elder abuse and interpersonal violence subcommittees that we've created. We did a memo the last time we met, but we wanted to give the chance to see actually a presentation from the work. So who am I handing it over to first? Oh, Jessica? Yes. Jessica, you're up.

Good afternoon, Chair and committee members. My name is Jessica Dovolina, Deputy Human Services Director. And today, Rebecca Flores, Education Program Administrator, and I are going to be providing updates on awareness and prevention efforts related to elder abuse and interpersonal violence. So just for background related to elder abuse, um, the November, 2025, the public safety committee, um, and the elder abuse subcommittee specifically. Resolved to strengthen protections for older adults and expand opportunities for greater education and awareness. We again presented to the committee in February, 2026 on a council consideration request filed by council member Castillo. related to enhancing senior protections, and during that presentation we identified some of the actions that we could take within existing resources and presented that for committee feedback and next steps. Based on the direction that we received, we have partnered with SAPD, Bexar County, as well as Adult Protective Services, some of our contracted providers that are operating at our senior centers, and other local stakeholders to implement a number of actions. They focused around enhancing internal and external awareness of elder fraud, abuse, neglect, and exploitation, increasing awareness of not only City of San Antonio services, but larger community services that we can connect older adults to, expanding our internal and external training for frontline city staff, as well as our service providers and older adults themselves. And in addition, we commissioned a study on the status of older adults in San Antonio identify larger gaps and challenges that older adults in the community beyond just the senior centers are facing we're highlighting here some of the actions that we took in fiscal year 2026 as part of our implementation plan as i mentioned they included a section that specifically focused on enhancing our training and expanding that so we expanded our don't look away training that we're hosting in collaboration with adult protective services For frontline city staff, we've targeted 10 city departments, but we offer that citywide to other departments through our online training module. We are also giving older adults training on smartphone usage, specifically related to scams and other types of predatory practices that are happening in the community. And that's provided through our contracted partners, primarily OATS and OASIS, but we do bring in other presenters as well. We are also, through our work with our benefits navigators and our financial counselor, enrolling older adults in the Do Not Call Registry to try to stop some of those solicitation calls that they receive. We've developed and distributed a resource guide that's available both in English and Spanish. We've also distributed it to our partners so we can kind of spread that reach to the larger community. And we actually worked with Sacred to post that on their website among other older adult resources on their older adult portal. We created, in collaboration with DSD, a printable no solicitation sign that older adults can place in their yards. We distributed that through the senior centers. It's available in both English and Spanish. And we actually created a printable PDF that we could distribute to our partners. So if they wanted to print additional signs, we actually encouraged them to do that, to share with the older adults that they serve at their sites. We've also worked on launching a number of PSAs and also distributing a quarterly newsletter through our senior centers to highlight comments, scams, and other types of fraud activities. And one of the things that we did most recently in August is we worked with SAPD, the Bexar County Sheriff's Office, and AARP to actually video a PSA that we could release through TVSA. That's actually airing this month, and we've also posted that on YouTube. And we're going to be doing that throughout fiscal year 27 as well to continue that momentum of education and outreach. We are also continuing our partnership with Adult Protective Services. And once a year during Older Abuse Awareness Month, we're actually celebrating and doing a walk for a cause to raise awareness. So this is where older adults compete and actually get steps while they're learning about older adult abuse, exploitation, and fraud, and identifying strategies how they can be reporters in their community to help identify when that's happening and how to report that. And we actually culminate that with a ceremony for World Elder Abuse Awareness Day where they collectively take a pledge to take that action and move it forward as they participate in programming. And lastly, as I mentioned, we commissioned a report on the status of older adults in San Antonio. We're actually anticipating that the results from that report will be ready this month and we're proposing to come back to the Public Safety Committee to share those results in November and discuss next steps. As mentioned, one of the core strategies we're really focused on is continuing our education efforts for frontline training to city staff, but we're also working with our older adults and the goal of that is really just to increase awareness of what abuse, neglect, exploitation, what that looks like when you actually are seeing it with older adults that are experiencing it and how you go about reporting that and understanding that there are mandatory reporting requirements. In fiscal year 26, we've trained roughly 5,000 City of San Antonio staff from 10 city departments But again, we're offering that to all city staff that are interested in taking the training. We're promoting it with other department directors to try to encourage their staff to take it. And we really want it to be available citywide on a continuous basis. Concurrently, our financial counselor, again, in collaboration with SAPD and contracted providers, is also providing training at our city of San Antonio senior centers. Roughly 500 classes have been provided through September. And what they're really focused on, again, are those common frauds and scams that elder adults are often subject to getting solicitation and getting people to reach out to them. And they're especially vulnerable to those types of scams. In fiscal year 26, our two benefits navigators and our financial counselor have also assisted older adults on a one-on-one basis, and that's both older adults that are in our senior centers as well as those that are referred from the community. In 26, Benefits Navigators have helped nearly 500 older adults identify specific challenges that they're facing, primarily related to financial security and connecting them to resources. The top needs that have been identified by those that we're working with were related to housing security, financial security, and healthcare access. Our financial counselor worked with an additional 107 older adults to provide assistance for more complex cases. So this is individuals that have a multitude of needs, not just resource needs. And so it's really a three-pronged approach. They work on helping them with financial security and getting baseline resources to help them on a long-term basis. They're working with them on fraud remediation, so that's including referrals with outside agencies, legal referrals, working with the individual's bank and with creditors to try to remediate that. and in some cases working with SAPD and law enforcement. And then lastly, helping them to connect with online legacy planning resources like wills and trusts so that they can build long-term for a future and help ease that transition for their family when the time comes. We're also continuing our coordination with Adult Protective Services, SAPD, and the Bexar County Senior Justice Assessment Center. We're in the final phases of completing our MOU with Bexar County so that we can facilitate that partnership and that ongoing work. And we're doing that very specifically for suspected cases of abuse, neglect, fraud, and exploitation. In 2026, we've had roughly 20 specific cases that we've referred to an outside partner related to either abuse, neglect, fraud, or exploitation. For 2027, we're proposing that we continue with the alignment and the recommendations from the Public Safety Committee, as well as the strategies we implemented in 2026. As I mentioned, we'd also like to return to public safety to talk about the work that we're doing that we see is needed from the status of older adults report and really identifying those gaps and challenges and what additional strategies we might look at implementing to help address that. At this point, I'm going to turn it over to Rebecca Flores, our education program administrator, to talk about our project pilot related to interpersonal violence.

Good afternoon. Last October, DHS was charged to develop an asset-based prevention program to help reduce youth crime in our community. We gladly took up this charge. As I'm sure many of y'all are aware, there is tons of research showing the strong correlations of mental health disorders and youth and juvenile justice system. And this fits in perfectly with the work we are doing with the San Antonio Youth Commission and the Higher Education Student Advisory Board were on teen mental health. As we were selecting the schools to invite into this pilot, SAPD kindly shared youth crime data from 2022 to 2025. As a whole, youth crime within the city limits slightly increased from 1,372 crimes committed by youth in 2022 to 1,617 in 2025. Council District 2 experienced the highest rate of youth crime followed by Council District 3, then four and five. To help improve youth skills in experiencing healthy relationships and better decision making, DHS has been working with the San Antonio Independent School District Student and Academic Support Services Department to embed DHS's Project Worth programming in 16 elementary and middle schools. For those who are not familiar with Project Worth, it is a positive youth development program within DHS and focused on the social-emotional development of teens to improve their educational and career goals. The schools selected for this pilot are located schools located in zip codes with higher rates of youth crime and are located in council districts two and council districts three. Utilizing the seven-base curriculum, which is a research-based online social-emotional learning tool, the pilot aims to help students understand and articulate their emotions and build an understanding on various social-emotional concepts important to positive decision-making. Improving these skills resonated so much with SISD team that they have committed to utilizing the school counselors to implement the program during the school day. It was a huge win for us. As former teachers know, doing anything during the school day is huge and getting your counselors on board even better. And since we know how busy counselors are, we wanted to make sure that we set them up for success by providing trainings on the curriculum and developing a facilitation guide with lesson plans, scope and sequence, conversation prompts, and student-led activities. Sara Guerra, who's our team lead, worked with our Project Worth teen ambassadors in developing the hands-on activities these teens found engaging that we also included in the guide. The teen ambassadors also helped us develop the facilitation toolkits that you see in our budget. And these were activities that the teens found engaging and they felt that they wanted to share them with their peers. Although we did select specific modules for the teens or our youth to do, you see them here, we also allowed, we're encouraging our counselors to allow youth to pick the sixth module. So depending on the school, we may have third grade doing one module, fifth grade doing a second module, We recognize that this may create some noise when we disaggregate the data at the end of the pilot, but we feel very strongly in giving youth autonomy, ownership, and a voice in what they are learning. I know we have some great minds with Maria who can help me figure that out, so I'm sticking to this recommendation. I also want to point out that a component of this pilot will give leadership opportunities for youth in implementing the curriculum, so some of the students will be trained by DHS staff on leading activities or some lessons. We also want to connect school staff, students, and families to COSA programming by inviting COSA staff to meet with SISD counselors and students, or even ask COSA staff to lead an activity. For those former teachers in the room like me, we know that sometimes hearing the message from a non-school person is sometimes more effective. And two benefits for the price of one, this will also bring more awareness of COSA programming to our community. We plan to reach out to SAPD safe officers working in the school's attendance areas to help us develop student recognition efforts. And we welcome any ideas y'all have too on how we can make this partnership with SISD stronger so our children and youth have the skills they need to be successful in all facets of their life. And Jessica and I are happy to take any questions y'all may have.

Thank you so much for you guys for the presentation. I'll start off with council conversation if anyone likes to go first. Council Member Castillo.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Jessica and Rebecca, for the presentations. Beginning with the senior conversation, I really appreciate the approach of going beyond those who attend our senior centres. During last month's Palm Heights Neighborhood Association meeting, we had a constituent bring a case up to our attention One of which, there was a door-to-door solicitation, and it was a new one. It was one I hadn't heard, which was the water heater, to inspect the water heater and replace it. What occurred was they replaced the water heater and they put it in the ceiling. It began to leak, the roof collapsed, turned into this whole big case that our constituent services team has been assisting with. One, appreciate the value of connecting our seniors to those no solicitation signs and going beyond senior centers, but also the partnership with our delegate agencies. For example, I believe it's Project MEND, they're providing assistance with restoring the home after that incident. So just appreciate that approach. I'm looking forward to the overall study. I was curious in terms of the legislative agenda, can you share a couple of examples of maybe past bills or those that may be in the queue or in discussion that you all intend to support?

So we're working closely with DSD. We did review ordinances, and we found that what we have locally is actually a good basis for us. It's more about outreach and education, but we're going to be working with the government affairs team. They're actually starting the process for the legislative agenda as well as with the Joint Commission on Elderly Affairs. So we don't have anything specifically identified yet that's in the queue, but we'll be working with them closely to build on that.

Great, I appreciate that. I know that that'll be really impactful work. Moving over to the conversation around youth violence. Within the last week in District 5, we had an incident in which we had a boxer over at Top Dog Boxing Gym, I believe a 15-year-old who committed suicide. And we also had an incident in which a 15 year old was shot by other younger youth. So this is very much needed work. I appreciate you all entering into the schools because what we hear from some of our peer mentors is the value of going into lower grade level. So pleased to see that you all are beginning with third grade because that's where, for example, Benny Price of Big Mama Safe House says that's where the highest need is. Where there, I believe there's opportunity improved, but I also understand getting into school is very difficult, is integrating peer mentors, right? I know, again, with Benny Price, he has nonprofits that he works with, and they're in some SAIC schools, so I think getting plugged into them would be of value, right, because these are individuals with lived experience who have been incarcerated and can share, you know, the impact of having that short-term thinking or lack of impulse control, the impact that it can have on you long-term. So I think there's value sitting with Big Mama Safe House to see if they could be welcomed into the schools as well, and to share, to integrate that into the curriculum rather. So I appreciate the work on both of the initiatives, but I want to go back to the seniors because I missed a point. We had a Who Let the Dogs Out event at Normal Park, which is connected to the Normal Senior Center, and we had a handful of seniors come out like, hey, what's going on? You know, like, I have my dog, but I take me a link, right? So I... don't know how to get connected to resources, but we have a team member that's going to work with ACS to help coordinate that piece. But I highlight that because there's just that high need because at another neighborhood association meeting, a community member had a concern about their neighbor who is a senior, has indoor pets, and there's issues with just the overall living conditions because of their pet in their home, but they're concerned about Adult Protective Services getting involved. So I don't know what resources or opportunity in terms of like linking ACS with some of this work with seniors. what that could look like or if it exists.

Sure. And I know John is here, so I don't want to overstep, but we have worked with ACS in the past to go to senior centers and bring staff to talk to seniors about pet health care and other needs. We also work with Meals on Wheels, and they actually help with food for pets as well as the food bank. So there's a few resources that we can connect with, and we'll certainly connect With ACS to look at specific strategies that we could bring to all the centers.

Great. Sounds good. Thank you, Jessica. Appreciate it Thank you. Thank you, Rebecca.

Thank you chair Thank You councilman Councilmember McKay would you guys? Spears

Thanks, Chair. Thank you for the presentations. You know, I love to go to my senior center and interact with the seniors, and I agree with a lot of the way the direction that we're taking here in the subcommittee. We did do some of the financial – we did a couple of financial, like, seminars and technology seminars at the Senior Center, and they really appreciated those, especially because that's ever-changing. So I'm glad that we're looking at expanding that to some degree or as much as we can, potentially even bringing in – I think we even brought in the county to help us with that because they're over the court system. So they were helpful in some of that as well. So is there any desire to do that, to work alongside the court system?

Yeah, so we actually work with a number of partners. We've brought in Bexar County on various different educational seminars to provide at senior centers. We recently, I believe it was at Walker Ranch, brought in the sheriff's office and SAPD to do some cryptocurrency awareness. since that's kind of a scam that's happening right now. I think they did it through bingo, so trying to look at really fun and interactive ways we can do that. But, yes, we're always open.

I'm surprised they pulled that off. They're very serious about the bingo. They are very serious about it. Okay. All right, I like that. I'm glad that we're doing that since, you know, you bring in the expert on that. When you are saying on the 447 older adults that were assisted, can you tell me a little bit more about that, how we track outcomes there and what happens after they're connected with the services?

So in some cases it's a very small connection, so they may say, you know, I had this increased or unexpected cost this month, didn't have enough savings, and as a result, I'm food insecure, but it's really a one-time situation. And so in that case, it's really just a direct referral to the food bank, helping make sure that they're getting that commodity, the monthly commodity to carry them forward for the month. But in other cases, it may be I'm struggling financially every month, and here's, and then it's looking at, well, what are you currently What benefits are you currently signed up to get and what else can we connect you with? So something like food stamps. So using the same food bank example, they actually do SNAP enrollment as well. And so we would connect them to the food bank. We would make sure that they went to their appointment. We would make sure that the food bank helped them complete their application and then follow up. So if that resource for whatever reason doesn't work, let's say the senior is not income eligible for that particular resource, then we would look at, well, can we connect them to a monthly food pantry, for example. So we would explore various resources to help address that one particular need, whether it's a one-time issue or it's a recurring issue.

And then once you make that connection, do we track that or follow up, or what's the process after?

We do follow up with them to make sure that they're connected to the resource.

Okay.

And if they needed something more, we may, again, refer them to our financial counselor. Frequently, especially with exploitation, fraud, and scams, we're not seeing someone come and say, I've been exploited. What they're saying is, I don't have enough food for the month. And then you're asking questions, sort of leading questions, and you dig down and you find out, no, there's really a deeper issue happening here. We would either refer them to our financial counselor or if we have enough information and we do suspect that that's happening, we would refer them to law enforcement.

Do you know how many cases of financial fraud or exploitation we had or were referred?

We referred 20 cases total. Most of those were with Adult Protective Services.

Okay.

And that was just for fiscal year 26.

Do you see a lot of referrals through code enforcement?

We don't really get any questions related to code. It's more about immediate needs, more about like rental assistance or mortgage assistance, food insecurity, some of those more basic type of needs.

Thanks. Thank you. And just wanted to touch on Project Worth. I'm glad the pilot was so successful. It's important. And the more we can implement programs like this throughout schools, I think, the better. This is good and good work. And I'm glad that it's successful and you have some shifts that you're wanting to make, but it's, I don't know, I just think it's good. So, thank you.

Thank you. And just really briefly, thank you for the presentations. Really quick on the registry for Do Not Call, I don't know if I or my staff was fully aware, can you tell us a little bit about what that looks like and how that support works?

So I actually wasn't familiar with it, so I tested it myself. So you go to a website, a federal website, and you enter your number for the Do Not Call Registry. There are some steps that you have to take to verify. But then once you do that verification, you're automatically enrolled in it. So it's a federal registry.

Yeah, I think if you could send that out to all of our field office teams, just to make sure they have that, because I know we get, we should do our own numbers. Well, I guess I got a spam call. I was taking calls yesterday. But also for 311, because I know our residents call 311 a lot, so it would be really good for 311 staff to be trained on that registry as well.

Absolutely.

And it doesn't seem too complicated.

No, it's a very quick, easy process.

Great. And then the one other question that I had for you was around the outreach work. I'm really glad for slide four, the outreach goal. And I know you've already provided so many of these classes. Do we have a target for what we're trying to aim at for this year?

We were hoping for fiscal year 26 to be at 350, but knowing that we were able to hit 500 pretty easily, we are looking to increase that. Part of the strategy, though, is bringing in other providers. So a lot of it is done by our financial counselor, but we have found success in bringing in other providers that are subject matter experts, like OASIS and OATS, to provide specific trainings.

Yeah, for the sake of saying, looking at data, do we take a look at to see which areas are being hit the hardest with, for example, scams and frauds for the elder adults and then focusing the outreach in that area?

We've actually blanketed the training across all senior centers, but we can be more diligent about looking at the data to make sure that we're providing more specific targeted training to senior centers, and we can build that in as part of 27.

I would love that, and I'd love to coincidingly see if we see any changes in the crime rate in those areas, or even just in general. So knowing that we've done this for two years, what does that look like at the end of fiscal year 27 to see if the financial scams for the elder's older adult population does decrease? So I'd love to look at that. Thank you so much. And then Rebecca great work I'm super excited about the counselors being we when we first proposed this and councilman Castillo and I were on the subcommittee we thought initially that it was going to be after school and then you're only getting a smaller subset of the population and so I'm really glad that they Decided to take that on. How did that happen?

The San Antonio Independent School District also has a board goal on social-emotional learning. And so when we went through the curriculum, the types of activities, we had testimony from our Project Worth, and I'm persuasive.

I love that.

They were like sold. Great work. And so, you know, as you know, counselors are very, very busy. So we were just very, very happy. But we have not given up on after school either because the more that we have the dosage, the better. So I am setting up a meeting with the Excel Beyond the Bell, which is all of our nonprofits. and specifically going to do one-on-one meetings with the nonprofits that do after-school programming and SAISD to embed it there also.

Great.

And then to the point of we do have need across the city. This is a pilot, but we do plan to shop around other school districts now that I think we have a great model. We've done all of the work. The Train the Trainer, you know, it's a great model to expand this because at Project Worth, as you know, We had about 120 kids participate in Project Worth. And with this pilot, we're gonna be up to 1,250. That's great.

And so are the counselors doing it during the day with students that are visiting? Is that the idea?

Yeah, it varies during every school. So some have mascot hour, and then some are embedding it in some of their electives and our PE. So it's gonna change by the school. because we're in some charters, some in-district charters, and so we're working with the school to make sure that it fits within their schedules.

It would be good for us to track to see how they actually implement during the day and the amount of time that the curriculum actually gets used because sometimes, you know, we... some of us educators will try to squeeze more in that we can actually do and so just be good to see if like the program is actually implemented to fidelity when we're looking at the pre and post survey so that the data can be analyzed you know for if if a school actually use a curriculum once a week for those students that might be more effect well we'll just see what the data shows versus if it was like once a quarter

That's why I made sure we had a scope and sequence in the facilitation guide to make sure that that's something that we could say we set this expectation and is it being followed.

And then last question for you. What are the nine schools that are using it?

Well, we're going to have 16 in total, but we've only trained counselors in nine. And so we're scheduling more trainings next week and the first week of October. And the schools that we have are Washington Elementary in D2, Young Men's Leadership Academy D2, Davis College Prep D2, Pove Middle School, Emil King at Gates Academy D2, Cameron Elementary, Pershing Elementary, Smith Elementary, all those are in D2. And the following schools are in Council District 3. Hotwells Middle School, H. Rogers College Prep, Steele Montessori Academy, Mission Academy, Ball Elementary, Highland Hills, Jaffet Elementary, and Schenck at Foster. So it's a nice distribution of where we are in the community.

Was it a self-selection? No. Oh, you guys actually selected.

Yeah, we literally went, I mean, SAPD was wonderful at getting us some very rich data. And within the zip codes, we looked to see what schools were in the zip codes with the highest rate of youth crime. And then we were talking to, again, we've been working with assistant superintendent on this. And so when, you know. Great. Assistant superintendent helped us make those connections with the schools.

Well, that's awesome. I love the strategy there and I'm looking forward to seeing the data from the pre and post surveys and then also long-term, of course. So I appreciate it. Thank you so much. All right. Any other comments on this item? Okay, we'll move on to item number three, which is a briefing on the CCR for a Safe Lodging Partnership Task Force. Maria Vargas from I-C-S-O, Integrated Community Safety Office. Finally got it.

Yes, ma'am. Good afternoon, committee chair, committee members, Maria Vargas Yates, director of the integrated community safety office presenting on the CCR for safe lodging partnership task force. Today's presentation will provide insights based on data analysis and staff is requesting the committee's input for next steps. This CCR was submitted in May of 2026 by Council District 2. It was heard by a governance committee in June of 2026. It requested engagement of motel operators, residents, city departments, and community and university partners to align safety practices, communication, and data support. It requested a review of evidence-based interventions and to develop safety standards and incentives to encourage proactive motel operator compliance. It also requested a pilot program targeting high priority corridors or properties with defined success metrics and to evaluate funding opportunities. And finally, to assess displacement risk for vulnerable residents and develop a community engagement plan to communicate program goals. Over the past several months, the ICSO has been gathering and analyzing data in response to this CCR. We have produced a wealth of analysis in this initial research phase. but out of consideration for this committee's time, I am presenting a selection of highlights. You may find additional insights in your backup slides, and we look forward to any additional lines of inquiry that this committee may provide that we can pursue further. So we began by gathering hospitality business data, utilizing CoStar, an independent research organization that the planning office has a license for. Once we had that data, we had to define what is a motel for the purpose of this CCR. There's a very helpful column in that data set that defined whether my room door opened up directly to the exterior or the outside, which would be a motel, versus my room door opening into an interior hallway, which would be a hotel. So with that in mind, we defined for the exterior opening only, and then we filtered out all businesses that were marked as permanently closed. What we were left with was a total of 150 motels across the city of San Antonio. We then matched those business property addresses to their BCAD parcels to obtain their geographic footprint. And on the right, you can see a map of those 150 motels, and their colors are denoting the years in which they were built or their age bands. We have three age bands, pre-1969, 1970 to 89, and 1990 to 2010. I did have staff verify that no new motels have been built since 2010. On the left, you'll see a table with some descriptive statistics. So our median motel daily rate in the city is $65 with 39 rooms sitting on 1.17 acres. For the purpose of this presentation, our data source is police calls for service from the CAD, the computer-aided dispatch, Mark 43 for offenses and arrests, 311 for quality of life, Acela for inspections, and as I just mentioned, CoStar and BCAD for our property data. The timeframe for the data is October 2023 to June 2026, so about 33 months. I'll also note that for this presentation and analysis, we removed all proactive police calls for service. So that would be our hotspot treatments, our patrol buys, and our onsite activity so that we were looking specifically at citizen and community generated calls for service. As I mentioned, we have a wealth of analysis to share, but here are some focus findings for you. Our lower price motels show more call activity in police and 311. Our lower price motels also demonstrate higher offense activity. A geographic clustering effect was observed where motels located near other high activity motels tend to also show elevated activity, but this relationship weakens when you remove those highest activity motels. Motels built between 1970 and 1990 show meaningfully more call activity and police in 311 than both older and newer properties. Motel activity over time largely tracks citywide and it remains relatively stable. Motels exhibit significantly higher relative police calls for disturbances and assaults in progress. And then finally, no relationship between the ownership type and public safety outcomes was observed, with those ownership types defined as those that are franchise owned, independently owned, or chain managed. As you're aware, the city has been conducting a violent crime reduction plan with phase one being hotspot policing. Since we began hotspots, eight motels have received a minimum of 24 hotspot doses as part of 18 distinct hotspot treatment plans. A dose here being defined as 15 minutes of high visibility presence by police in a patrol vehicle with their lights on, or high visibility plus where the officer also patrols on foot and makes contact with residents and community members. In total, those eight motels have received approximately 2,900 hotspot doses for their respective treatment plans from 2023 to June of 2026. A specific example to highlight here would be Q Bed Living, which was prescribed about 1,200 doses in 2024 and 2025, and it was eventually subject to a DART agreement in November of 2025. And our map here shows you those eight motels that participated in the hotspot treatments. When looking at the top 20 offenses taking place at motels, here we're comparing the rates of those offenses at motels compared to the citywide. I'll note that those that you see occurring at one to two times the rate of the city are not meeting the threshold of statistical significance. However, we do highlight those that do. Prostitution is occurring at 19 times the rate at motels in the city. Unauthorized use of vehicle at 3.5 times the rate at motels compared to the city. and sexual assault at 4.33 times the rate. I'll note here our number one problem type of wanted person is relevant to our next slide with wanted person describing when an individual has a warrant for their arrest. The ICSO purposely compared motels to apartments as apartments and motels serve a similar purpose in our community. They also at times have similar layouts and infrastructure and design. So when you directly compare the activity rates for the rooms, motels to apartments, motels appear to have higher rates of police calls, offenses and arrests. However, on the right, when we control so that we compare motels to a similar apartment of size, price, age and location, we see that police calls and offenses exhibit no real difference when you control for these key characteristics between motels and apartments. However, arrests remain at two times the rate at motels. And again, I'll link us back to our previous slide where that wanted person is occurring at 1.7 times the rate at motels. And so when a person has a warrant and an officer is responding to a call for service or conducting proactive work, they have no discretion but to arrest that individual on that warrant. And so this is why we see a direct relationship to the sustained two times rate of arrest at motels compared to apartments. and I'll once again bring up this particular thread at the end of our presentation. This slide shows a map of our most active motels, and we've broken them down into percentile bands. We have police calls, offenses, and arrests, and the pink triangles show our most active motels in the 90th percentile or higher. Our green circles show the second most active band of the 75th to the 90th percentile. And I'll note that there are nine motels that show up in our 90th percentile across all three of these maps, all three of these categories. Two of them are located in the northeast side of town that we're calling Park Village area, and the remaining are showing up on the south side of town, what we're calling San Antonio River South. In addition to looking at public safety data, we also communicated with our partner departments who conduct social support services. Homeless services and neighborhood housing services do provide services when requested during DARTs. Homeless Strategy Services Department also conducts outreach operations at motels if a client meets the HUD definition of homelessness and if services are requested. And then any domestic violence call for service will receive follow-up from MetroHealth. The CCR also asked us to research any studies and evidence-based practices in regards to motel safety. Arizona State University really pioneered looking at motel public safety programs in the 90s. And one of the first cities in which they did this study was Chula Vista, California, where the city implemented a voluntary program with motels so that in addition to health and code standards, there is also a police call for service per room ratio standard And what the takeaway was from this voluntary program was that it was not as successful as they'd like due to the voluntary nature. And so many of these cities ended up shifting to an ordinance based program where you had to achieve this call for service room ratio standard, as well as your code and health standards to receive your certificate of occupancy so that you could operate as a business. As a result in some of these cities, some motels did close as they could not achieve that standard. Over time, researchers have highlighted some concerns that having a call for service ratio standard incentivizes operators and owners to suppress calls for service coming from residents and visitors staying at their locations. This is particularly a highlight was domestic violence. And so if there are crime and public safety issues happening at motels, we want people to be calling 911, calling 311, and utilizing our lines. However, this was a concern with maintaining these standards for calls for service. So just a consideration as we move forward with recommendations. SAPD also advised that they should accompany city staff conducting any outreach at motels with higher levels of violence. And finally, motels serve as an important low barrier and affordable housing option for many San Antonio residents, as the CCR acknowledges. No security deposits are required, so I don't need to save up at large lump sum of money up front. No background checks, no proof of income, and no credit check requirements. And so this links us back to my wanted person top offense, the warrants. And so people understand that no background checks are required at motels. And so it could be exploited for nefarious reasons for people who know that law enforcement is looking for them and they go to stay at a motel instead of their residence or their apartment. But as well, people who are justice involved and they can't pass a background check just to live in an apartment or live in a home, they can get a room at a motel. So this is also important for considerations as we develop our recommendations. For next steps, the ICSO will lead an internal department task force that will include police, code, human services place-based emergency services team, neighborhood housing, and homeless services and strategies outreach team. We will engage with motel owners and operators in the surrounding community during the fall and winter, and we will return to public safety committee in the January, February timeframe with feedback from that engagement and our preliminary recommendations. I'd like to give a special acknowledgement to my data scientist, Ram Prakash Banlamudi, who put this together. Ram is here to answer any of your intense data questions that you might have. We also have the city attorney's office here. We have development services and police here as well, and human services to answer any questions that you have.

If you helped on this, would you be able to stand so we could just give you a little quick round of applause? THANK YOU, MARIA. THAT WAS A GREAT PRESENTATION. I'LL HAND IT OVER TO YOU.

THANK YOU. I'LL BE SHORT. THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR ALL OF YOUR WORK ON THIS. YOU ACCOMPLISHED SO MUCH IN SUCH A SHORT AMOUNT OF TIME. THIS IS TO A T WHAT I IMAGINED THAT AN OFFICE LIKE ICSO WOULD BE DOING WHEN I HAD MADE A PITCH FOR A SIMILAR OFFICE FOR YEARS AFTER BEING ELECTED. You said everything I think needed to be said. You did everything that I asked of you. Sounds like you're going to be coming, you're going to be engaging with the motel operators and then coming back in January, February-ish. Does that require a motion or are we good on that?

No action needed. We just wanted to hear your input if you were good with our next steps.

Perfect. Looks lovely. Y'all did wonderful. Thank you.

Thank you. Would either of you like to speak? Council Member Speers.

Thanks, Chair. I too think ISO is You were just with us at our HOA group luncheon that we have, and we can really tap into your resources. Y'all are really full of a lot of knowledge and things that many of us wouldn't even think about or know to think about. And so I have great admiration for what you're doing. I love the CCR. impactful. I did want to know when you said on the next steps you're incorporating all of these different departments is this going to be like a team approach or each of them going out or I don't know how to envision that piece.

We like the team approach when we can very similar to problem oriented place based policing there's safety in numbers as well when we do go to these places and we can leverage each other's staffing and resources to be a force multiplier so I would like this to be team based as much as we can.

I agree. Yeah, I think it sounds really good and will be effective and a holistic approach. So thank you.

Councilman Castillo.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Maria, for the presentation as well as to Councilman McKee-Rodriguez for this council consideration request. This is an issue that we often hear within the Roosevelt Neighborhood Association, and I think it's one of the areas that you all have identified as one of the hot spots. I'd like to invite you to present to the Neighborhood Association. I know they really value the work that you are proposing, and I really value the point on slide 10, right, about the impact that a background check and or security deposits can pose, because we know the impact in most formerly incarcerated individuals like you laid out have issues identifying housing, so oftentimes find themselves living at motels, so I appreciate that acknowledgement and I'm interested to see as this evolves and if, or I guess my question is, is there a timeline that you have in mind that if this model isn't successful that we do move into an ordinance? Is there a timeline that you'll have to potentially explore an ordinance?

Something that we can do that many of these other cities did undertake was a pilot. And so we'd like to try a pilot, typically at least six months, I'd say, in order to see any kind of meaningful change in call for service activity or to do kind of resident survey and resident engagement. Again, a minimum of six months, and that could be something that council has input on.

And one thing I'd like to highlight is also the role of economic development. So the Roosevelt Association, they connected two of the motel providers to one of the facade grant programs. And they saw that investing in the facade, the association helped them apply. And they saw a reduction in activity by improving the facade. So I think also bringing in economic development would be of value as well. Absolutely. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you, Jeri.

Thank you. And again, Maria, this is a great presentation. I loved really understanding the nuances on some of these. And there are some that I don't understand. I try not to be too long-winded on some of these questions. But were you guys able to dig into the trend that the 70 to 90 had higher calls than older and newer?

Oh, to dig into maybe why that is? Some speculation that we saw was we were able to see if a property is renovated. And so if you're older, maybe it's time for renovations. If you're in that middle age band, maybe not quite bad enough for a renovation and a facelift. So again, kind of that facade that the councilwoman just referred to, that's crime prevention through environmental design, right? Showing that territoriality and that there's a capable guardianship. And so that's one of the hypotheses that we have is we can look at next is renovation times. And then when we get on the ground and start doing assessments, What do these places look like? Right. And so that does contribute to public safety at these locations.

So, yeah, that was what I was thinking. It'd be interesting to see what that could look like as an opportunity. If we are doing an ordinance, maybe like a carrot and stick model where we are, um, if, if that is what we end up at in a year that we also have a program that says like, if you do X, Y, Z, um, I'm thinking so much like the proactive apartment inspection program. That not only keeps us getting up to code, but also maybe like we did that one program for small businesses to allow them to fix their I'm forgetting the name of it, but like the facade, I think it was facade improvement grant program. I know that program had its challenges, but something similar to see if that might be a way. Because the other thing that you highlighted today that I don't necessarily know that I really considered was how many locals use motels. And I have always just thought of motels more as a transient traveling population. So were you able to get any data on

how many locals are actually staying in these places i don't have information on locals using these places we did discover that of the 150 motels only 19 have the extended stay certificate of occupancy and so that requires that the room has a kitchen or kitchenette as part of that room and the rest of the 150 aren't extended stay And so I believe the ordinance, and city attorneys can correct me if I'm wrong, is up to 30 days. But when I had my really, really wonderful summer ambassador, she called all the motels for me, and we got those rates, and we asked, hey, do you have a stay limit? 88 of them said no. But only 19 have the extended stay in the data that we see.

It's because it requires the kitchenette.

Right. But it doesn't mean that our residents aren't using them in an extended capacity. And so that's something else that as we go out, we're going to collect that data and do some assessments.

Yeah, I was going to say, I wonder if they're not already collecting it, if that could also be a part of something that we look at is like who's using it. Because this came up when we were doing the VASH voucher discussion too about whether our veterans are having to use these places for a longer period of time or not. folks that are after the storm. I know some of my residents have stated that they're having to use it. So it would be interesting to see if we could at least collect data on how many locals are having to use the spaces.

And something else for consideration in our research is that the city attorneys will give recommendations on best business practices to the motels, one of them being requiring and verifying identification. Now whether these motels are doing that and collecting that data on that zip code for that person on the ID or the driver's license, that's to be seen. So not all of them might be interested in collecting that data.

And so I wonder another in ideation mode, like if we're doing a six month pilot and we do a voluntary sign up, we require the collection of this and maybe in tandem with that include an opportunity for a facade grant or additional street lighting or something like that that could help with public safety as well so that we get to see a little bit more about what that could help with. And then, I mean, slide seven just broke my heart a little bit, but I feel like you know something is true. You don't even know like a fact is true, but then you see the numbers and the numbers are like, oh, it's really true. So yeah, just wanted to highlight that it's like, THESE ISSUES ARE REALLY PROBLEMATIC IN OUR COMMUNITY, AND I WANT TO THANK COUNCILMEMBER MCKEE-WIGGISH FOR BRINGING THIS UP, BECAUSE IF WE CAN ADDRESS THE PLACES WHERE THESE TERRIBLE CRIMES ARE OCCURRING, MAYBE WE CAN help reduce the, how often they're occurring as well. And then the last thing I wanted to share was, so just the suppressing of calls from motel operators, does that mean like, who is, isn't it, I would assume that if someone is experiencing rape, they're the one that is making the call, but that may not be the case? Because how would a motel operator suppress that call?

So when you come to my front office and you're going to stay at my motel, or maybe renew your stay because you stay with me for weeks, months at a time, as part of that, we have that conversation of, hey, as you're signing this contract, don't call 911. If you have a problem, you call me. You come to the front desk, right? And people who are struggling to find a place to live, stable housing... It's that option of I don't want to be on this person's bad side or you know get kicked out or evicted in a sense. And so that's what that communication has been observed in some of these areas where they're finding that residents say hey they kind of said don't call like unless it's really really an emergency right. They want us to go to the front desk first. And so that's the criticism of some of these programs.

And did they see in any of these programs an increased existence of the unhoused population around the area?

That is not something that I noted in those research studies. Okay.

The last thing I was going to say was, like, yeah, the background checks. Initially, when that was shared, I was like, oh, yeah, we can ask them to do background checks, but then there is an alternative side to that, too. So it's a very nuanced challenge because if you prescribe that, then folks that are just looking for a place, they are also out of luck, even if they're doing everything they're supposed to be doing. So it can be a challenge in both directions. So I appreciate that nuanced look at this challenge. Well, we look forward to having you back then in, oh, Council Member McHugh-Rodriguez.

Yeah, can you go, what's the difference between, so right above prostitution where it says assault, bodily injury, married, cohab, a few down, it says assault, BI, which I would read as bodily injury, married, cohab.

That is likely just the same offense coded differently from 2023 to 2025. Sometimes those offense descriptions do shift in the data. And so that's something that we can verify and merge if we need to.

Yeah, I would just wonder if that changes any of the data. I don't think it would based off of the like quick math, but I just wonder if there's anything if any of this needs to be updated.

That's an excellent point. Thank you.

Thank you.

And just real quick in the back of slide 17, just because I just want to see, I know it's not statistically significant, but you still see like how much higher arrests and offenses are than citywide comparisons on here. So it's just, I just wanted to highlight that. So this is overall offenses and arrests in comparison, right?

So this is showing that for arrests, motels are making up between 1% to 1.2% of the city's arrests.

Got it. Got it. Yeah, I guess it would be interesting to see if this industry is higher than, and I know you looked at it from apartments, and so apartments, there was that similar analysis. Is there any other industry that would be similar to motels? Not really, right? Because hotels is completely different.

We could do hotels and we should control again for the size, the price, the area in order to control for those things. Because naturally in something we controlled for in this that I didn't mention, the larger the business, the more calls for service you can expect to come out of it. It's just a direct relationship. And so we did control for that size effect for all of this analysis.

Um, and you guys also checked for, um, outliers. So wanted to appreciate that. All right. Thank you so much for this is really great.

Did any of my colleagues have anything else?

Yeah. Councilman Castillo Maria, I think you might.

So I was just curious as well, uh, with slide, uh, seven would solicitation of sex fall under prostitution or was that not captured? Cause I'm assuming if there's an arrest for prostitution, there may be arrest for solicitation.

So we did note that the solicitation offense. is not occurring at the higher rate of the actual prostitution offense. And so this is showing the top 20. It is present, it's just not in this top 20. OK, thank you for that.

Thank you.

So that would be the individual looking for that service, whereas the prostitution is the individual being arrested for doing that service.

Okay, thank you, Maria. Thank you. All right, our next item on the agenda I believe is DSD. Yes, it's the briefing on the residential street light gap program.

Good afternoon, Chair and Council. My name is Amin Tomaz, Director of Development Services, and I'm here to provide you an update on the Residential Streetlight Gap Program. My presentation is a lot shorter than the previous two. So I will talk a little bit about the program background, then talk about the overview program reason and cause, and then talk about stats and progress and I'll talk about finally the dashboard that we have online that provides a lot of information and transparency to citizens. So the background, as you all know, this program started and was created in FY 2022 to address street light illumination gaps in residential areas specifically to improve traffic and pedestrian safety. When we started looking at this, the scope of work was to look at the neighborhoods and residential streets that they were built prior to the current codes. And then when we did that, we did full evaluation. And we compared it to today's code. And we found a lot of areas that have gaps. So we need additional lights to fill those gaps to make sure the illumination is appropriate, again, for pedestrians and for traffic. The focus was mainly on hot spot areas where we have more crime. If there is an area where the visibility is very low, those were areas that we put as top of the priority to make sure that's the areas we need to address first for safety reasons. So overall, since we started this program in FY 2022, we managed to get $13.88 million throughout the last five years. And so far we utilized all the money except $179,000. And the reason why we kept a little bit money is we still have about $900,000 that we did encumber that money. So we have locations already identified, and the contractor is working on installing those. We want to make sure we install all these lights first, and then we go back to the $179,000. We left it as a buffer just in case some lights are a little more expensive or we run into a problem. So overall we installed 1,508 lights so far, and we had a little bit over 2,000 locations authorized. This table actually shows every council district how many lights are physically there existing prior to our program, and then how many lights we identified as needed lights or warranted lights, that's what we call them, to fill those gaps. And then the last column is how many lights we installed so far. So basically, we have over 4,000 lights that are needed to be installed or warranted. We did install, as I mentioned, 1,508 lights so far. We have in the pipeline about 90 to 95 lights that will be installed with the 900,000, and then potentially with the 179,000, another 19 lights. So I would say another 100 lights will be installed to utilize and use all the money we have. So overall, I think it was a good program. So in the last five years, we closed about 35% of those gaps that we had. And those gaps started 50, 60 years ago, obviously. So again, I think it was a very successful program so far. Finally, the dashboard. We have this dashboard online. It's been there for several years now. You can sort by district. You can sort by the status installed or in the process of construction or being reviewed. You can look at it per area. You can look at it citywide. It gives you a lot of information, and all the lights that we are working on or worked on, they are actually listed here on this dashboard. So a lot of customers and citizens, mainly citizens, they look at it, and it answers their questions before them calling us. That's a quick update on where we stand and what's left out of the money that we had in our budget. And I'm available for any questions you may have.

Thanks, Amin. This program also was one of Council Member McHugh's first initiatives, I think, when he was elected. So I'll pass it over to you to share initial thoughts.

Thank you. The year was 2021, and it was a much simpler time. If we can go to slide four, I just want to make sure that I fully understand what's going on. So the 1,508 lights are installed, and then there's another 2,059 that are authorized, and all of that is accounted for in funding.

No. We installed so far 1,508 lights. So that actually, if you look at the table on the right-hand side, that equates to the first two rows, the 11 million and the 1.6 million. Those are the lights we already installed, and we either paid or we are about to pay those invoices. The third row, 900,000, that equates to money we have encumbered, but we have not installed the lights. That's about 90 lights that we still need to install. So the number on the left, the 2,000, is how many lights we physically authorized and gave the contractor. And we said, here is 2,000 locations that we needed to install. So out of that, we installed 1,500. So there is about 500 locations we already identified and authorized them to install lights. But we don't have money to do all 500. That's a long answer, but I wanted to go through it.

No, I don't know that that was helpful actually. Okay. Okay. So 2,059 authorized, that's just those that have been authorized, but only a hundred of those you said will be able to be, you said 100 or 500.

Let me, let me try and see if I can simplify it. So over the 2,059, 1,508 have been installed.

There's a balance of five so we're not adding those two together. So those don't get us closer to the 1508 is included in the 2059 And then the 932 thousand can pay for how many more lights That was the 179,000 Yes, the hundred said they're not the pending installation the 900 the 900 thousand is about 90 lights 85 to 90

So we will be about 1,625 lights when we are all set and done.

Okay, and we still have another 2,600 and some change, almost 2,700 lights that we would need to fund in some way, shape, or form. So where do we go from here?

I mean, at this point, again, we are utilizing every penny we have. And I know this budget, we did not get any additional money at this point. So I'll let Maria chime in. Sure.

I think what we could do from the Public Safety Committee is have the discussion if this is something we want to continue to do, then start that conversation for the fiscal year 28 budget and see what opportunities we have for funding there.

Mm-hmm.

Councilman, I can offer another path as well that has been explored by another member here at the table, and that is utilizing CIP dollars to install some strategically placed sets of streetlights. So we've done that with District 1. Obviously, we're open to doing that if there's a certain place that you'd like to utilize your CIP dollars in some of the...

I was going to add a little bit of color. I was going to comment on this, and I'll give it back to you. But essentially, the challenge that I found was the warranted lights are based on the math that they did, but the neighbors around there sometimes don't want them. And so although the gap is warranted, like the gap that they're saying is 4,000 is warranted, I don't necessarily know that all of those are the neighbors want. And I also think on the opposite side, like when we look at some of our urban areas, that there's more lights that are needed in areas that are denser and it may not be 300 feet, but maybe we need every 125 feet around a school. So I think we need to like, in my thought would be like, let's shift to figuring out how do we capture more of where the need is rather than just the fixed width where in our suburban neighborhoods, at least like my suburban neighborhoods, they don't want them. They're like, we don't want these lights. I'm like, okay, well, let's not put money where folks don't really want them. But anyways, back to you.

So part of the early work that the team was doing when the index first started was – a lot of labor required in getting easement access and getting approval from folk who either couldn't be reached or didn't want the lights. And then I think it became a little bit easier once you no longer had to request easement access and could instead utilize the solar lights. And I'm wondering, do you have a list of, I mean, I guess Is there another column that could be added that says that lights were rejected or not desired that can give us a little bit more insight in terms of what is needed?

We definitely can add that. We do have that information for any locations that the citizen rejected the light. We documented that. I don't have it on the slide, and I don't have it with me right now, but I can provide that to you.

I guess when I think back to 2021, I remember one, it was a little disappointing to me that there wasn't a clear picture of where every street light was, which ones were working, which ones weren't, how many lights were needed. And so the city wasn't able to be proactive in installation of lights and residents had to fight and advocate and, It was a lot of barriers that they had to jump through and so this allowed us to be proactive and I think it's it's clearly worked in that You know, I think we get significantly less calls about the need for streetlights now that we've installed so many and I just I CIP, to me, is meant for major projects. I don't know if the guidelines have changed, but it aims to be projects that are $100,000 or more and utilizing it kudos to council member core for figuring out a way to address our community needs. I just don't know that it's, if the goal is for us to be proactive, requiring us to use CIP dollars that should be utilized a little bit more strategically, I don't know, or that should allow us to be creative in addressing community needs. If there's already a program that exists, why wouldn't we just fund it? And so that's a disappointment from this past budget cycle, um, to add to a list of many, um, I guess that's it. Thank you. And thank you for all your work. I know this is a lot.

Yeah. And I'll, uh, I'll just finish the thought on, um, the CIP and then hand it over. And so, um, like I mentioned, the challenge with the current program is if it's not listed as a gap, like if we have a lot of areas around particularly, uh, where places folks are walking significantly at night, that people will say this, it's too dark in this one spot on the street. but it wasn't a gap. And so we weren't able to actually fund it through this program because it wasn't listed as an actual gap. And so I think what, while it's, we do need a long-term solution to council member McHugh Rodriguez's point, I think in the short term, I put one, I kind of like finangled this from Mike Shannon when he was there and said like, hey, I know this is gonna be annoying for you because we basically put together a list of 50 streetlights that we just went out to the neighbors and say like, if you want a streetlight, come back to us. Of the 50, only five actually we had to cancel because someone else didn't want it. Because like when you put a street light, there's four houses that are mainly affected. So it could be like one of the four that's like, no, it's too bright. So we up 50, we had five that didn't make it. And those 45, that was a combination of electric and solar. So once we went solar without having to deal with easements and stuff, Those cost approximately $9,200. So the whole 45 light for us was $250,000 from our CIP budget. But it does take time to implement, right? They're not going to just do it overnight. So it's taken us, it took us almost two years to get from submission of lights to completion. And we're almost there. We have like six that are still under review. And so all that to be said, like we were... they've said that they'll let us do it again. So our focus is going to be really around parks, schools, libraries, and entertainment areas to make sure that those streets that people are walking maybe to and from, we get a lot of requests for this in Tobin Hill. We get a lot of requests for them around the Blanco area. And so we're gonna focus on those specifics and our universities that we have to try to make sure that the highly walked spaces field it up because I think like in my understanding the reason why I really support the light program is because it goes back to the conversation we had earlier around built environment and how built environment can be a really big supporter for public safety and so continuing to light up areas will I think see a decrease in crime in those areas as well.

Council Member Speers.

I really just want to agree with you on what you're experiencing with some of the lights. I appreciate the program, but I did, too, also have a few neighborhoods where they want dark skies. They want to be able to see the stars. And some lights were going in kind of randomly, and they flipped out. But y'all turned them off, which is important and good. But I mean, that's a light that could have likely gone somewhere else. But that's helpful to know how you implemented it in your district. It is important. It's a good safety measure to take. So I'm going to look at that the way you explained it on how you did it for your district. But just wanted to double down on what you were saying that It's interesting how sometimes it's not really wanted, even though it looks like it needs it, right? So thank you. Thanks. Council Member Castillo.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Amin, for the presentation. In short, appreciate the program, hopeful for the next fiscal year we can prioritize investment in it to continue to install lights. There's just two pending in D5 for the last, like, two years. So hopefully they'll be supported.

No, no, no. I want absolute clarity here. Both of those were denied by the residents in that area.

Can we relocate them to where there is a desire to have street lights?

The residents or the lights, ma'am?

No. Thank you. Thanks, y'all. Thanks, Sharon.

I have one last thing. And this might go to both of the council members' points. Is there a way, I've asked this, I'm like, how do we figure out where we want, not only where they're warranted, but where the community really wants it? And is there a way to update the program that we could then continue to fund to show this is not only warranted but needed And warranted by like math standards, but also like the community wants it and needed in specific areas. Is there a way that we could, or maybe you guys have, if you guys can think about that. I know someone once like, it's one of the third party contractors tried to pitch me this. at some point, but I don't know if you have any thoughts on that real quick.

Yeah, I mean, I think engagement with neighborhood association leaders would be a first stop, right? Like if there's a level of density of lighting that's wanted in that area, certainly we could relocate the two lights in D5. I was just joking, I'm sorry if I took it too far, but... And then the other thing is, I mean, the code is what it is, right? And that's how we were able to come up with the map that exists, right?

But the code is, I think, for like new developments, right? It's not necessarily for historic urban areas.

I understand that, but I'm saying it could be updated to be reflexive, right? If there is development in a more dense area, right? I think it could be opened up, is my point. Got it. And so I would say the first place, the easier place is engagement with leaders and neighborhood associations. And if there's a level of density wanted beyond the code requirements, I mean, that's a place for some.

It's a great point. Thank you for that flag. UDC code amendments are coming up next year. And so streetlights around schools, specifically around schools, will definitely be one of the things that we try to focus on. Council Member McHugh, would you guys?

Thank you. I know that when this was in its infancy, one of the things that One of the tools that we had utilized in order to prioritize where lights were going, especially when it took a lot more, again, you had to get easement access and permissions and it was taking a lot more time to install the lights, was overlaying it with schools, it was overlaying it with crime, it was overlaying it with a number of different factors that would allow us then to see, hey, these are the ones that are most needed. I'm wondering if it's possible to do two things. One would be to maybe look at those maps and say, hey, based off of this information, even though it doesn't fit within the existing code and doesn't qualify as a gap, this might be an area where lights would help. And then we can go out and then find out from the people who live around there, the people who frequent the community and then council members themselves, would this be, you know, should we make this investment? Should we add this, swap it for something else? The second thing might even be something as simple as a like request a light portal or some sort of option that people can say, Hey, I want to, because people will call and they'll go through three one one or they'll go through our office. And it's not really a, Think what I'm proposing is a more streamlined approach to request a street light that could then be utilized by the team to say hey, this is Probably an area where we can utilize some of this funding so that it's less based off of the warranted lights as they exist today but more so around requests they were receiving crime data and Frequency of use all of that. Is that a possible evolution of the program? I

I support that, and you guys already have a requested streetlight. When you go to the streetlight website, it says requested streetlight, but what happens is it goes to 311, and 311 measures it and says, oh, it's warranted or not based on the current code, and then if it's not warranted, it just dies, or that's a bad, sorry, it just goes away.

But to the councilman's point, there are hundreds on that list that are warranted, right, from those, right, that.

Oh, there are, from the 311 request list.

Right, I mean, and we've targeted some of them, right, but that could be a different approach.

So maybe as a follow-up, could you send us like a report from 311 of the warranted lights that you've at least, or maybe like, yeah, from like 311, I don't know if I would, I would want to see unwarranted too, but just all the lights that you have seen at least from 311 that have been requests from residents. I think that would be really helpful for our districts. And that way, like to the point earlier of, oh, these are the ones that we want to focus on, but word of caution, if one person submits it as a request and it's warranted and the other three people don't support it, you should always ask all four neighbors because otherwise, I hate having to take stuff down. I'm like, we just paid money to put this up and taking stuff down feels like the worst. Anyways, Council Member Speers.

Well, just to add to that point, is there anything about, I know this is, to your point about each district maybe being a little bit different in needs. So we have mailbox break-ins in our cluster mailboxes. Is that part of the code at all, or could it be?

Councilman, let me take on that one. So we, Councilmember Alderete-Gavito had had a CCR on that topic. And one of the things that we committed is through this upcoming UDC update, we are going to consider and discuss the requirement that for new development, development lights are installed in those cluster mailboxes. So that would take care of future development. And then for current development or existing streets, we came up with an education campaign and working with neighborhood associations to try to educate the community on what to do when that happens, how to report it, and to continue to call SAPD when those instances are happening.

Could the council members use the dollars that they have for CIP for something like that to support the areas in which...

I mean, I think absolutely. With the CIP dollars idea, we're looking for a larger chunk of lights, right? But if they all were around cluster mail boxes across neighborhoods, I think absolutely.

Thanks. Okay, thanks. Anybody else on this item? Oh, yeah, go ahead.

I think just lastly on the topic of the UDC amendment as it relates to the earlier conversation I think we were having about the UDC amendment process is changing the length, I guess, or the distance requirement. I don't know that that would be necessarily helpful because I do think about the newly developing subdivisions and homes. They are more suburban. They're more outer city. And those are the... Communities that were most likely to hear from folk that hey, we want dark skies We're here because we don't want to be in the in the city city. We want we want to look out and see stars so I think I don't know that changing the UDC and that way is Necessarily appropriate, but I do think some sort of solution or even allowing for lights at a closer distance without requiring it

I would just add that any redevelopment that would occur in the dense urban core would have to meet those new standards of distance, right? And so if there's a wish, what I'm hearing is perhaps it needs to shorten, right? So we could work on it, and if there is development, they would be required to do it would be my thought.

And then we could also like revamp. So I think what Maria just mentioned, and I think this is a great idea. I think we should ask if you guys could come back. Maybe we can bring you all back in the beginning of the year in like January, February with an idea for a revamped program. And in that you could include updates, recommendations for UDC amendment changes around schools or high frequency public, high density public spaces. Maybe we think about how we ask for like confirming the new lights that are warranted or using the 311 program, et cetera. So like a revamped version of what you might think the program could look like that we could then go try to find magic money to install some of them.

Yeah?

Okay, all right, thank you, Amin. Okay, all right, one last item. I can't believe it's only 3.30. We're doing so great. Last item on the agenda is animal care services performance metrics, and do we have someone from AC, oh yeah, I see John. Sorry, you're hiding behind the podium. If you wanna just walk us through any of the highlights from the statistics, and if we can shorten it to the one-page version and blow it up.

We do have a member.

Oh, I apologize, thank you. Sorry, we have a, after you go through the statistics, we do have someone signed up to speak.

And Chairwoman, if I may, the purpose of this review is just to highlight some of the metrics and then if we could get feedback from the Public Safety Committee on areas that they would like for John to come back in October to do a more detailed dive in to those metrics. Thank you.

Yeah, so I will be brief. I'll highlight a couple of the metrics here and Obviously the first one is the critical call response. You know, we are gonna finish this fiscal year with our highest rate we've ever had at nearly 94% and had the goal of 98% next year. And we have had some success over the summer months. So the last few months we've had 97, 98% in the critical call response. So we are on our way to working towards that goal and being able to achieve it this year. So very proud of the team. There's a lot of work that goes into that. And specifically in the last month, in July and August, we had very successful months at 98%. Uh, Danish dog compliance rate. I did want to point out on, on that, you know, it does show 72.4%. I, I always try to remind council whenever we show this, uh, this number, because it is a snapshot in time and can change drastically very quickly. So in three days from now, I could run that number again and it'd be 82, you know, so it, it really depends on. where the cases are at that are out of compliance, whether or not there's a hearing coming up, and when it was due. So let's say they all came due at the same time. It may take us a week or so or longer to get with all those to bring them into compliance. So just keep that in mind when you look at that number. It does fluctuate up and down, and it is literally just a snapshot in time. Bike cases worked. You know, we're doing a really, really good job with our bike cases worked. Obviously, we're at 100%. for the severe bite cases and roughly 98% for the moderate. And done a really good job this year. It's the first year we've hit 100% for the severe cases. And so very proud of that. Unfortunately, the numbers is about the same. We're staying about level with the number of bite cases that we're receiving. And then the last number, our last couple numbers real quickly, we just live release rate, we are going to finish at almost 88% live release rate for this fiscal year. Um, highest, uh, that we've had, um, post COVID. And so very proud of the number or I'm sorry that, uh, the last three years, um, very proud of that number. A lot of work has went into that as well, especially when we're seeing, uh, the increase in intake that we're seeing, um, even though this year intake is down a little bit. Um, and then the last one is our spay and neuter services. Our, our staff's done a really great job with our spay and neuter surgeries this year, and, and we are going to fall. We did have a goal of just over 41,000 this year. We're gonna be just slightly short of that 41,000 number probably, but overall it was a very successful year for Spaniard as well.

Thank you. Before we take council comment, Vicky, would you like to speak?

Since I started advocating for our dogs in San Antonio, I've been interested in spay-neuter efforts made by the city. I listened to other advocates such as John Bachman indicate that we need over 100,000 spay-neuter surgeries a year to help solve the population problem we have here. My friends and acquaintances in San Antonio and I have actively helped citizens get their dogs these important surgeries. I worked with ACS and with other citizens to start the ACS Ambassador Program. I heard early in my career as an advocate from Director Heber Lafgren that we would not increase spay and neuter sponsored surgeries above 38,000. That was in about 2017. We are now sitting at about 40,000 to 44,000 surgeries that are sponsored. We are not even attaining our goals at these levels. Why? Recently, I had conversations with representatives from SNPSA, Humane Society, and Spain Neuter Network. All of these entities have contracts with the city to provide Spain Neuter surgeries. They all indicated to me in response to questions I asked that their no-show rates for city-sponsored Spain Neuter surgeries were very high. These rates led them to request that deposits be made. I believe these deposits run around $40. These deposits are refunded when people show up with their pets. On June 10th of this year, I submitted an open records request requesting information from ACS so that I could calculate their no-show rates for the city's east side and west side clinics. The information I was provided with was not useful in determining this rate. I had a meeting with John Gary and the Animal Care Clinic Administrator, Chelsea Lopez, a few weeks ago and recently received an unofficial, incomplete information as an example that has been compiled since Chelsea started as Animal Care Clinic Administrator. That data indicates no-show rates of up to over 50% on some days, 33% or more on most days. Some days were overbooked to try to mitigate this problem, but if all showed up on these days, people who actually had an appointment may have to be rescheduled. Why is this important and why did I want to look at this data? Every appointment that is a no-show is still a cost to the city and a missed opportunity for someone who needs and truly wants the surgery. A free service to a citizen is not a free cost for the city. In response to a question that was asked by a council person, I heard John Gary say that we are not making our goals on spay and neuter because surgeons are not available. I believe this is inaccurate. We are not making the goals because people are not showing up after making appointments. The spay-neuter effort is an important objective and the strategic plan ultimately to solving our problem in the city with stray and roaming dogs and providing a good quality of life for the citizens of this city who care about our dogs. We need to do better as citizens, employees of the city, and elected officials to encourage pet owners to be responsible. I am still awaiting more complete information on city spay-neuter no-shows so that I can complete my audit. I really think that we need to be looking at these numbers. This is a waste of money if people are not showing up. We should probably be at about 50,000 at least by now, spay-neuter surgeries that are sponsored by the city. That's my opinion. And one other comment I'd like to make regarding the... Critical call. I would like to know on critical calls, what is the process and how are those closed? Because many people are not happy with how these how calls are being closed. And that's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, is there any items on this memo that folks wanna see a report on for the November, are we, oh, shoot, October Public Safety Committee, yep, can't remember.

Yeah, if you could real quick define each of the, I'm looking at the spay and neuter, could you define each of the types of facilities, so there's the free community, city facilities, ACS in-house, and ACS offsite clinics, which are which?

Yeah, so the free community ones are ones that we pay a vendor to do that. Then we have our city facilities that are low cost which are also run by vendors and then our in-house and then the off-site, ACS off-site clinics are ours that we operate.

Okay, so you just read it back to me. So the city facilities, is that the east side and west side, or is that the ACS off-site clinics?

The ACS off-site clinics are the east side and west side. Now the east side will be moving to one of the other categories that I picked up October 1st.

Which one?

It will be moving to city facilities where it says low cost, but that term will change because then it will add free on there as well.

So the free community, okay. So city facilities are the ones that we own but we lease out or that we have our partners operate and provide low cost. Is that the same general concept for free community? It's just the cost difference? Correct, correct, it's just the cost. And then ACS in-house is at the clinic or on the ACS campus? Correct. Okay, and then offsite clinics are? Which one were those?

The off-site clinics are the east and west or that bottom one. Okay, gotcha. Then you just said that. That'll just be the west clinic. Okay. October 1st.

Just wanted to be sure. And then is this the first full year that the east and west side hubs are both operating?

Yes, this will be the first year that we'll have a full, well, actually this past, this fiscal year we're finishing up will be the first full year.

What I'm really interested in is why are, those first three categories, the free community city facilities and ACS in house, why are those lower and what data can you provide? I mean, I guess there's still a month to go. Do you anticipate that in this, in September, will you have September data by then to show the full year in October?

Yeah, absolutely. We can show the full year.

Okay. Do you anticipate that we're gonna be closing some of the gaps between this, the year to date or the, this fiscal year in 2025?

Yes, I believe, like I said, we're gonna finish a shy of 41,000 this year once we have all of September's data in. And most of that that we're falling short is actually our ACS in-house clinics, which actually is due to not having veterinarians.

Okay, and I guess with regard to what we just heard from Vicky, when someone makes an appointment, do you keep record of how they heard about the, how they booked the appointment or how they heard about it?

In our wait while system? Uh, I can double check that. I'm not sure if, if we have that, uh, how'd you hear about us? No, I don't think we do that.

Cause what I'd be interested in, because there's a lot of people, especially in my district and I imagine other parts of the city, there's a number of nonprofits and volunteers who, uh, go door to door and are trying to get as many people appointments as possible to spay or neuter their pet. And I'm wondering if someone voluntarily goes to the facility or hears about it and signs up themselves, is there a lower rate of no show versus if one of my neighbors comes to my door and tells me that I should be spaying and neutering my pet and I go ahead and I say, yeah, let's make an appointment. Am I actually going to show up for that or do I just want that person to leave my front door? And I'm concerned that that may be happening to an extent. And I'd be interested in what data we can, uh, put together that might either verify that or dismiss it.

Yeah, we can, we can definitely, if it's not there, I don't, I don't believe it's there right now, but I definitely something we could easily probably add to that booking system, uh, that we, that we use. I will say we did change our booking system recently, uh, to where residents can now actually book their own specific time. which has improved the no-show rate. We do have about a 30% no-show rate at the off-site clinics, but we've been working a lot to overcome that. That being said, we do overbook because of that, and both of those clinics are on pace to hit their target.

Okay. And then what does follow-up look like for no-shows?

Our staff does contact them, tries to rebook them, tries to figure out why they didn't show as well to see if it's a transportation issue or something like that. If it's a transportation issue, Sometimes we can refer them to either the ambassador program where Spaniard Network can help with transport or our CASA program where our CASA coordinators can do that.

Do we have any data on the outcomes of those follow-ups, whether folks say that they've found another way to get their pet fixed or... they're no longer interested for whatever reason, or they do end up showing, is there any data on that?

I can get that data, yes.

Okay, that'd be helpful. I think as it relates to the no-shows, because it sounds like that is a problem, any data that we can collect and be able to present that will allow us to address that at its root, I think would be worthwhile. And then also I think, it is just concerning to me that we're not gonna end up very far, for 26, we're not gonna end up very far off of 25, despite having two fully operational spay-neuter hubs that have been now embedded in parts of the city that have great need. And so I guess what I would like to get into is why, And how do we fix that? Because my understanding is that each of the clinics was supposed to allow for an additional 6,500 surgeries.

That's total, total. Total between the two? Yeah.

Huh.

It would take veterinary capacity.

Can you talk a little bit more about that veterinary capacity? I know when we initially approved those three vets for the Westside Clinic, I want to say maybe a year and a half ago, there were going to be three contract that we're doing like day you know like taking days additional days from their regular job and so like to this point right you theoretically should have increased through in 2026 by 6,000 versus just increasing by if it ends up at 41,000 just by 1,500 because we added two new facilities so tell me what is the challenge with, like, why didn't we just bring on more contract vets for the ACS main campus if that was what the challenge was?

They're not available. There's just not, there's a shortage, not just here, but nationally, there's a shortage of veterinarians. And so if we had veterinarians, we would bring them on, but there's just not available to us.

OK. One more thing. I hear that. I know the vet problem is a challenge. And the nonprofits have been telling me that, too, because they're also struggling to spay and neuter because they don't have that capacity. But at the same time, I feel like we just got to maybe, I don't know if we need a third party to come in and help us go get contract. Because the reason we were paying a lot of money for those contract vets because that's all we could get. So now we're saying like, oh, we don't even have that as an option. So I just, I wonder if we're like, we are paying more for these two facilities now, right? I know we're moving one, but we're still gonna be paying for the facilities and the operations and our number isn't increasing. Like that's the thing I'm struggling with. It's like we have now two, well, this past year we had two additional buildings and the number didn't go up. So what, sorry, go ahead.

There's the services that are happening at that facility, at those two facilities, and it's everything else that.

Went down, which is like, did we just take from, you know? So, yeah.

And to the end on the topic of vets and whatnot, and I've been saying this for however many years, what is it that we need to do to create an attractive compensation package for veterinarians? How can we be competitive? And also, are we going to career fairs at campuses? Are we reaching out to veterinary programs across the country and saying, hey, come to San Antonio? People do want to live in San Antonio. They want to live in Texas. We're much more affordable than other parts of the country. And so if we can combine, one, it'll be much more affordable to live here, and then two, on top of that, your compensation will be better than if you were to go to any of these other places. What's the effort there?

Uh, again, it's tough. Every shelter in the country is struggling with the same exact thing right now. And, uh, so it's very tough. Um, I will say we are going this weekend. We are going to be a Texas A&M, uh, at a recruitment fair, trying to recruit the new vet students that are graduating. Uh, so we will be there this weekend. We have, uh, our clinic administrators as well as someone from our HR departments going along with her. They'll be there on Saturday. Uh, and then right now we're actually in the process of negotiating. are trying to get with there's a recruiter that specializes in veterinarians her actual name is the vet recruiter and we just recently one of our advisory boards happened to meet her at a conference and have introduced us with her and so we're hoping to have her on board soon and with her our goal is to we've had a full-time veterinary position there at the shelter that's been vacant for over two years and that we haven't been able to fill so hopefully Her goal is to fill that one first.

What's the salary range for that position?

The starting salary is around 120. I believe it's 120, 160. I can verify that, though, and make sure that I'm giving that number. We do offer a $30,000 sign-on bonus as well, $15,000 when they sign on, and then $7,500 the next two years.

Yeah, we looked at doing a CCR about this once because we were trying to figure out like from vets and we couldn't even get a focus group together of like current vets because they just, it was so hard to get response from the community on it. But one of the things that we had explored was we're thinking about was a tuition reimbursement program. We talked a little bit about this in the budget session, but like if we do, if you are going to Temusa and you see folks like being able to offer that as a payback of loans, because they understand the, Tuition is very expensive for veterinarians as well. So I don't know if we can explore that. So maybe this might not be ready for next month, but I think what would be good in an upcoming conversation is like, what is our vet recruitment strategy going to look like? It's similar to the engineer situation at Public Works, right? You can go out into the private sector and make way more money or a lot more money. And so... thinking about what that needs to look like and how our salaries are comparing. Because at the end of the day, if the position is vacant for two years, it's doing nobody any good because the dollars are being held up and we're not getting any of the outcomes that we're looking to get to. Councilman Castillo.

Thank you, Karen. Thank you, John, for the presentation. I'm thinking about Karen, right, who often staffs the outreach for connecting residents to getting spay and neuter services. And I know she works really hard connecting folks. And then she does follow up phone calls, right? Hey, reminder, you have this appointment. And sometimes there are instances where there are no shows, but she'll call someone else on the list and get someone else there and Again, it's all volunteers, so really appreciate her and that support. But I'm really interested in the idea of a potential modest deposit. So when there's that commitment from a community member and it's $15, and if you show up, you don't have to pay it. Or if you don't, it gets you pay the $15 deposit, I think there's value in exploring that. I know the goal is low to no barriers to connecting residents to services, but if it is costing us, I think there is opportunity for a modest deposit. When I think about it, whether it's a hair appointment, nail appointment, anything, dental appointment, there are now deposits for no-shows. And I understand there is this concern in terms of public safety, but I do think that commitment from the constituent with a modest deposit to show up, you show up and you don't pay anything, it's free. But again, if you're not showing up and taking a slot and potentially costing the city some services, then of course the cost of not fixing your pet as well is something I think that I'm interested in exploring what that could look like.

And just as a reminder too, both these clinics, I mean, they're both gonna hit their target this year. So we're talking about no-shows, but they're gonna hit what we said they could do.

And I'm curious as well, speaking of Karen and constituents as well, what tends to be an issue is transportation, right? Getting to Collins Garden Library with their pet. And I'm curious for a potential pilot or opportunity where ACS can go to the addresses and pick up the pets to then take to get fixed. But again, I think about our team. Sometimes we have appointments, we knock on the door, no one answers, right? So there may be that instance as well. But I'm curious if that could be a potential exercise to see if there's a higher rate.

And we do that through our CASA program, the residents that are referred to through our CASA program. That's our basically caseworkers that are working with residents to provide them all types of services. They will actually transport for the resident.

And is that offered to every resident? Because, again, what we're hearing from folks is transportation is an issue. But if CASA is providing that, is it not being offered? Does the resident have to explicitly say transportation is an issue for it to be offered?

Yeah, and again, it's right now because there's only four costs of people, it's only for those people that they're already working with on a case. So it's not something we just, everybody that calls, we're able to offer just due to capacity, but it's something we could look at.

I appreciate it. Thank you.

Woman Spears.

Thank you, Chair. Well, I guess right there I was kind of going where Councilwoman Castillo was going with that is how many spay and neuters can you do a day or are we doing per day?

It averages greatly by the veterinarian. We have some veterinarians that can only do 15 a day, and then we have some that can do 80 a day. So there's a wide range of what they're able to do. It really depends on the veterinarian.

Well, I was just considering if there's a potential to do, like another idea was a pilot program with a mobile spay and neuter, like bus type looking situation that could go to the neighborhoods where we have high concentration and then in and out, in and out. I know we'd need to figure out funding, but it's just something, is that something that you would have appetite for?

Yeah, I will say most cities have gone away from the mobile screen reader just because of the cost versus how many you can do, right? You can only do a very limited number at mobile depending on where you're able to have those at, but it's definitely something we can look at and pursue. We do have some partners that have that capability, and I'm trying to also develop it. We have one more partner I'm trying to develop a relationship right now that has that capability.

Okay, that's good to know. Okay, just sort of a general question for you. Which one of these metrics is most concerning for you right now?

Oh, wow. I would say probably the, you know, the live release rate. That's what we're struggling with the most capacity within the shelter. Those are the biggest things that we struggle with every day. You know, we're doing a really good job responding to our calls and Um, as far as critical calls go. Um, and so those areas we're, we're doing really well, but capacity is something that our staff, uh, is, is really, really challenged with and trying to determine, you know, where we have this need to actually bring in more than what we're bringing in. And, um, so that, that is a big concern.

And your solution is you need more space or you need more options for space, either or, or a combination?

No, obviously, you know, spay and neuter is part of that, is a key piece of that. We have to reduce that number. I do think we need more programs like our Pet Care Connect program that is out there in the community limiting that number. The easiest way to save their life is prevent them from coming to the shelter to begin with. And so investing in those types of programs, I think, is probably the way that we need to be looking at.

Completely agree. Okay. Can you help me understand what this means? When you say 93.9% response rate on critical calls, what does that encompass? Is that just your closing out this call for service?

On our critical calls, those are calls ran by officers. So those aren't calls that we close out due to, any other reason other than we've ran that call. Now, some of those calls could be canceled by the person that called it in as well, but the critical calls are all of our higher calls from dog attacks to cruelty to sick and injured animals. So we're responding to 94% of those calls that come in.

Okay. And then on the dangerous dog compliance rate, I see it's declined a bit. Do you know why that may be?

Yeah, that's kind of what I was mentioning at the beginning. Uh, it's really a snapshot in time. That number fluctuates quite a bit just based on where we're at with working with residents who have dangerous dogs that may fall out of compliance. I could, again, I could run that number in a couple of days and it'd go up 10%. It does vary quite a bit.

Okay. And then do you know. How much each spay and neuter, what is it really costing us per spay and neuter at the city?

Right now, we spend roughly, well, this fiscal year, we spend roughly around $6 million a year on the spay and neuter, and that's both in-house and off-site and our contracts. That's everything combined. So we're spending about $6 million a year. Like I said, that's more than just about any other shelter or municipality in the entire country. And doing 41,000 surgeries a year, again, there's no one else in the country doing that volume of surgeries when you're looking at municipal sheltering. So I'm very proud of those numbers. Due to the movement of the East Clinic, we actually are going to spend a little less money this year. That's only because of the cost savings we got by having a partner do that.

Okay, that's helpful. Okay, thank you. Thank you for the presentation.

Really quick last question, and on the intake live release rate, can you just, you mentioned this a little bit, and you were just talking about it as your biggest constraint, which I thought was a great question. Why is intake down so much? Is it just because of space?

It varies for a variety of different reasons. We haven't changed our policy on the way that we take in animals, but happy, healthy animals, if there's no capacity, they don't come in. At the end of the day, we, they, they, they don't, we don't bring those animals in. And so that has something to do with it. A lot of it has to do with, you also look at our call volume has gone down. Our request of service has gone down almost 10,000 calls. So that also probably contributes to that number as well.

And what about the returns to owners?

That again, with that, with that decrease in intake and the decrease that we've seen in those areas that, that affects that number, the return to owner number. It is something, though, that I am asking our staff to really examine because I do believe that is a number we can, it should be higher than what it is and we've got to do a better job of.

Yeah, and maybe you can follow up. One of the things that I've been thinking about is, like, how do we know, like, you know, when you're measuring crime stats, you, like, want to see trends and how they're going down because theoretically if it's not being called in or at least that, you know, that isn't occurring, that's the assumption. So, like, how do we know what progress we're making towards our, aside from, the outputs increasing of spay and neuter and things like that. What are some of the other metrics that maybe five years from now we would look at and say, yeah, the decisions we made in our budget today were the right decisions?

I do think intake is a big factor in that. Calls for service is big. I mean, I know there's some people that will say, well, they're not calling because we don't respond. But 10,000 people didn't just decide to quit calling this year. It's because we're doing a better job of responding. Um, and so those numbers are, I think are, are huge. Um, again, and the, uh, free roaming dog study that we do, that's gonna be, I think that's gonna be a big thing for us. Uh, we are finalizing that agreement. Uh, actually, uh, should we go into the city manager for approval here any, any time now? Uh, and that that's scheduled to start in October and November. Okay. Uh, so the study will be done in October and November, and then, uh, we should have the results in December.

Okay.

And I think that's gonna tell us a big story. You know, did we make any progress? The good thing is Southwest Research Institute is going to be the ones performing the study. So every two years, we will actually be able to replicate that same study very easily now.

So they'll really go out and measure how many loose and roaming dogs there are?

Yes. Yeah, we did this study in 2019, and it showed about 34,000 to 35,000 free roaming dogs at any given time when we did the study in 2019. Um, so obviously I think due to the data that we're seeing, we're going to see a decrease in that when they, when they get it, but I'm excited to finally get that going. They've developed some technology when we did it in 2019, it actually was volunteers and staff going one, two down census tracks. Um, they have actually developed AI technology to where they can drive. And actually it was very exciting because when they demonstrate it to us, the AI actually could pick up more than the human eye. So like a human may miss a dog under a truck where AI is picking that dog up. And so we should get actually, and theoretically, it should be a better count because of it's just the way the technology works. So we're very excited to work with them on this project.

Well, thank you. We'll definitely have to bring you back once we have the results of that study too. And Council Member McCruggie.

Thank you, Chair. For intake, what are all the different mechanisms that result in intake? So someone comes and drops their pet off at the shelter, right? ACS officers go and pick up animals and bring them back. What are all the mechanisms? What does that look like?

That's pretty much the two ways. Either they're picked up by an ACO officer and brought in, or picked up by a resident and brought in. Some of them are owner surrenders as well, so that people are bringing their own pets in and surrendering them. But those are really the two ways that we see them.

Do you note that in the data? Yes. Which is which? Yes. Can you break that down in the October meeting? I'd be interested to know what's most really contributed to the reduction in intake, if it is ACOs bringing in less animals or if it's people bringing less animals in.

It's a mixture of both, but we can definitely supply the data. Thank you.

Thank you. And one last thing, if you could, do we have any comparison, like what would a market, comparison market for us be for ACS?

Oh, probably Houston, Dallas. Dallas is probably the closest. They have similar intake, similar.

Can we see in the, if we come back and maybe Maria's still here, maybe their team can help on some comparison city analysis.

Yeah, absolutely. We actually have already started a lot of that and have some of that data already, so we can absolutely do that.

Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you for the presentation. Look, without Council Member White, we finished right on time.

4.03 p.m. Chair, if I may, I just wanted to summarize what we're going to have John come back with. So it sounds to me intake is an area that we want to see data, the segregated surgeries, critical calls, comp data with Houston and Dallas, and maybe we can give just a quick update on the straight and roaming dog survey, just to give you an idea of the timeline and what we're gonna do and then when we can bring it back. Great.

And all in four slides.

Will do. The time is now 4 or 3 p.m. and our meeting is adjourned. Thank you all for staying.