Animal Shelter Advisory Committee - Regular Meeting

I will go ahead and call us to order then at 12:02.

Miss, Dina, can you do the roll call, please? Yes. I can. Okay. Christie Bandu? Here. Esteban Centeno? Present. Doreen Cruz? Oh, hang on. Let me shoot. Hang on, Doreen. Okay. I'm unmuted now. Here.

Okay. Dorian Cruz? Here. Brianna Geddes? Here. Bo Kidd?

Present.

Caitlin Ledesma? Doctor. Sarah Pollard? Here. Kate Shaw? Here. Alright. We have quorum.

K.

So we'll move to citizen comment period. Do we have anybody find out to speak? We do not. Do not? So we could easy on that one. So that'll move us to item four of the minutes. Consider approval by motion of the 02/18/2026 meeting minutes. Those are included in everybody's packet. We do have a little bit of a different format. We're just trying to kinda sync up our formatting for things to where we don't have three different templates. So they look a little different, but they are in there. They match what everyone else in the city is doing. Right. Yeah. We're not in trying to make it very similar for everybody.

So any motions on? Motion to Brianna makes a motion. Second. Doctor. Pollard seconds. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

Okay.

So item five then, items for action or discussion. This meeting, I kind of just this is more planting a seed, I think, for maybe our next meeting. But in your packets, I wanted to have a discussion on what the actual laws pertaining to animal shelters, rabies quarantine facility, and the animal control, what those laws are. The intended purpose of this committee under Texas state law is to ensure that we are in compliance as the shelter and animal control rabies quarantine facility with state law. So I wanted to kind of you know, I didn't wanna give you guys, like, a novel to read, but I here's a list of the laws that are going to apply to shelter operations, minimum standards of care for animals, and shelter housing facilities, previous quarantine facilities, training that we're required to have.

Also in that same part of the packet, included our most recent inspection that's done by the Department of State Health Services every year so that everybody could kind of see kinda what that looks like from year to year. So because the intended purpose of the committee under state laws that we're reviewing those things that I wanna start trying to get that to where that's a regular item. So that inspection's usually done October, maybe early November of every year is when the state comes in. So this is one just from last October. So, I mean, kinda some homework for y'all more than anything, but just to kind of, like, review those things, be able to speed on them, understand kind of where we're falling in those talks with the state and our inspections and things like that.

So that's all I have on it, but I I wanted to make sure that the community had that information. Like, add anything on it? Or Are these ones that say before I slash him probably passing on the most? Yeah. Some of it's, like, yes and no, and some of it is, like, if it's just not applicable, like, of the things that they inspect on.

So But, yes.

So, like, if you look at the very left, any of the ones that are not just a straight, you have to pass, they'll have some kind of notation that, like, yeah, everything's fine, but there's a light bulb burnt out. You know, we pointed it out kind of stuff. So, like, you can kind of go through and see and, you know, and some of it's just really not applicable at all on. I think on the, like, 23, for example, is a gourmet and durable, nonabsorbent material. Yes and no. Yeah. Some is concrete. Some is tile with. That's just a design thing. You know, they know that that's not something that we can just, well, just rip out tile and put in new concrete.

You know? So but they kinda just make note of those things as they go through. So and, like, on that one, like, we have the moisture barrier with the grout, so they made note of that. So it's an ideal material for a shelter board. No. Tile with grout is not. Mhmm. Yeah. So so that's kinda we actually, the stage typically tells us that we're one of their favorite facilities to inspect because we're usually very on the up and up. Like, all of our stuff's in order. The facility is well maintained. They definitely have some facilities that they struggle a bit more with. But we we get told we're the favorite for Regen seven. So anybody else? Questions or discussion?

Or that's a lot to review with the laws, so that'll take a little bit of time. But that's why I wanted to, like just so that you guys have that, you can familiarize. And then as we go through these meetings, you know, there's some focus on, you know, just you guys having that background understanding of what the law actually say we're supposed to do. And Yeah. We used to.

I'm happy to see it.

Yeah. I mean, it's the intent of the committee. So and it's never something that ever really gets brought up or talked about. So but now that we have a full committee again, I'm like, okay. We're gonna make sure that this is being covered when we have these meetings. So

that's

okay. Any other discussion on that one? Questions? Nothing? Okay. So then I'll move us along to reports. Again, in your packets, the quarterly statistics for this latest quarter are provided. General shelter updates. Pitten season's here. We told y'all it was coming. It's here officially. We are just about back to full staff. We have a part timer starting on the twenty seventh.

It's twenty seventh.

Twenty seventh. So that'll get us back to full staff in the kennel area. The hiring process is just a little slower right now with the city. So sometimes when you have a vacancy, it takes a couple minutes to get it filled. Quarterly statistics, obviously, we were up this quarter. We went from winter months to now we're going into the spring months. The next quarterly report will be even higher for those intake numbers, but everything's maintaining pretty steady. We do have a deadline list right now. We have not had to do that in a while, which has been great, but it's just with those increase in numbers coming in. We have nowhere to put more dogs, and I'm not gonna inhumanely house them.

So we have eight dogs on deadline. Three of them found placement. That's just on the first day of that going out yesterday, so we have five more to go. As that's happening, I think another 20 or 30 dogs have come in behind us. So we're not really making a ton of progress. But, you know, it's it's raising the public awareness that we need help. It's not funky to worry at the shelter all the time. If you don't, you know, if you don't show up to help us, This this is where we get to. And so that's kind of a big purpose of that too is people need to understand, like, it's not just some easy we send them off to college, and people are just showing up organically. Like, you know, we can't sit and wait for people to come rescue us.

So that's always a tough tough week for us. We get we get a lot of support from the community for being transparent, but, likewise, we get a lot of folks who just like to say nasty things. So staff kinda has to deal with that as well. And that's what we the big focus for me is not only the well-being of the animals, but the well-being of my staff as a consideration. So just so you know, that's going on and hoping we see an increase with adoptions, and we can kind of hit a little bit of a reset button and have some open space for dogs to come again again.

So stay tuned to see how that kind of pans out. All the dogs on that list right now have some sort of behavioral challenge that makes placement for them considerably harder. They're not just dogs that, you know, any random college kid's gonna come in and adopt and be successful with. They're dogs that are

gonna

require probably some training and and behavioral support on you know, or they're declining in the shelter environment. So that's kind of how that was was chosen and kind of who was the most at need of getting out of the shelter environment. So that's really the fireworks of what we have going on right now. I forget anything. Did you get anything else for

We just had that dog with the microchip that we barely can get home. That's.

Oh, yeah. We had a out of area microchip dog come in. Just one of those, like, really good it was just yesterday. Yeah. One of those good, like, microchips work stories where It

was a false information about where they found the dog, and this dog actually got onto the deadline list, and and was able to find it via social media.

Yeah. No. Yeah. No problem. You're talking about crouton. Yeah. That was yesterday too. So yeah. So we are working on the possibility of maybe adding some microchip scanning stations around San Marcos. There's some, obviously, background work that has to be done on that before we can get that going, but that's something that we're exploring right now with our partner nonprofits. So that might be a cool thing coming up to hopefully divert some intakes and get some animals back home. Yeah. We're all enrolled in some. I know Pewda's. Yeah.

Pewda and Kyle and County County are all kind of exploring this. So that's a cool thing that's going on right now. Anybody have questions on the quarterly report or something I forgot to add that we're doing that's got so much going on my brain sometimes. Can't cross

out at all.

Oh, yeah. We've got some new shade structures in our play yards right now. We've been working through the shelter. If y'all haven't been there for a while, you should come by. It looks different. True. We've been going through area by area painting, kind of redecorating, almost rebranding, working on just general organization efficiency, shade structures out in our play yards, additional feeding for customers, things like that. So Carrie and I have been, like, busy bees just, like, constructing sheds that have been so we still have a few areas that we're working on, but we wanted to get, like, the public facing areas done first and the ones that improve, like, efficiency for staff. So if you haven't been by for a while, you should come look. Like, it's it's looking pretty good.

So cool. Okay. Well, if there's nothing there, question and answer session with PRESK and public will be our next

I have a question, Christy. I forget the capacity of the shelter, but it shows you're currently at a 159 dogs and 47 cats. Total of two zero seven. Is that how how are you on your capacity right now?

Are zero open kennels for dogs. I think we're negative three or four kennels for dogs right now. Cats were okay still. Kitten season's here, but we're still in that early part of kitten season where as those kittens are coming in, it's still very easy to find open foster homes for them because we haven't filled them up yet. So kittens, as those are coming in, we're able to get those out into foster homes a little bit faster right now. It's not just saturated, but dog hills, I think, were negative three or four when I left the shelter. So Yeah. Do we have anybody online or with any spectators with questions?

I have a public person. What is the if the tile shelter is gonna be opening? I know I read someone recently that it was approved by their city council. You know when it's gonna be open and how much relief that will give to you guys?

So I can do you wanna answer the first part of this?

So we are still we're we're It's not still public. We're we're we're doing a short public input time frame. We have a May 7. We're going to have an open house for the served area, and I could show you the map of what's the served area. But that way, we can have some public input from that. Because we already did a planning session for our own building, and now that we're adding the other ones, we're gonna have a a open house for everybody to give in. But but we're still tentatively, like, with construction, design, all that stuff. April '28 is what I have. That's what I was that's I I thought it

would be down the road.

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm pushing this I'm pushing everybody on everything, but that's pretty much as fast as we can as we can go with everything.

Just trying to answer the second half. So right now, we're the regional shelter. We take in everything Right. All county. San Marcos accounts for just under 50% of the actual intakes.

So, I mean, obviously, half of what we're currently taking in now is going to be going to Kyle and then, you know, it sounds like y'all are probably gonna partner for the majority of those intakes. That being said, I don't expect our intakes to cut in half. I think that there's a lot of areas in San Marcos that we've not been able to address animal issues in, that we're gonna suddenly have the ability to go in and and look at those areas and and provide proper service. We don't think we're gonna see a full 50% reduction in intakes, at least not right out the gate. But it does it is gonna relieve us to the point where we can start addressing issues in our own backyard a little bit better.

And and spread the And same thing us. We will be addressing more things than than necessarily been addressed in the past, so let's see.

So with in San Marcos or Hays County funding, do you in the in the San Marcos facility with staffing and veterinary services and the payment of you guys took a maintenance work up there. I volunteered with. Are there like, are you getting enough funding? Is there areas where there's deficiencies that are really important that need to be addressed?

I mean, I think always our biggest hurdle is manpower and staffing. So we could always use more funding for that. We're we're not inappropriately funded for what we can the workload we can do with the number of people that we have. And, obviously, as the money you know, there's more money to spend, you need more people to get out and do that work to do it. So I think that would be the first thing that could need to be addressed is staffing. And then from there, I mean, there's there's even opportunities for grant funding for special programs. We just don't have the manpower to go get it and spend it. So Is there

any way to expand the buildings out there that you guys already have? I mean, I know there was other things going on around it, but do you guys have land that there could be additional building?

No. There's not. And then the other problem is back behind there where the shelter is located. It's all floodplain. So even if you were to build you know what? Like, I always you can build a shelter as big as you want it. I'm gonna fill it up. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, it's the the problem is not that we need more of it. It's kinda like if you had an Ebola outbreak and, you know, everybody's running around going, let's just build a bunch of hospitals. Yeah. I did. I did. We're gonna have volunteers hold big sale to pay for the vaccines over here, you know, and build it, and they will come. So a lot of it needs to be us having the ability to focus on the areas in town where support services are needed for pet owners and things like that.

That's where we're gonna solve it in the funding space. Yeah.

So okay. So the services and these under sort of barriers, so to speak, is is the trappings, spanking, neutering? Is it food for people? Or, I mean, what is it that you would say are the first one or two priorities for those under?

All of them. All simultaneously. I think the first thing we would probably wanna go in and very heavy duty do is, like, really targeted high volume trap neuter and return. Yeah. Because if I can eliminate having all my cat cages full, now I have staff freed up because they're not cleaning cat cages. They can go tackle some of these other things, and that's one that we can go in and really quickly and easily address. That's good. And then neighborhood by neighborhood. So, like, shut off the faucet on one problem and then move to the next instead of just trying to throw everything at all of it at the same time. So that would probably be one of the first things that we're really looking at, damping that program up and doing it in a a targeted systematic way.

That would be great. Yeah. Makes sense. So that that would be first several years. It'd take a few years to tackle it when

we get there. And we've even discussed in our staffing plans. It's having a trapping coordinator so that there could be someone that concentrates on that area.

Even for dogs. Not for cats, but

being for

Yeah. That's really important for you I mean, for everybody, but, obviously, looking at that as a priority and mitigating the issue with Kyle and Brian. That'd be great.

That's important. Thank you. Mean, I've

just tried to follow you guys, and I'm Yeah. I saw this, and I said I'm gonna take my lunch break. Oh, come join us. Thank you.

So, yeah, there's there's a lot of things that we wanna do. You know, like, now, for Doctor. Pollard, if

I go in

and start, like, heavy duty trapping for TNR.

She's gonna want

take half

of them.

Like, right now, she's got to talk to all the county and everybody coming in. So when she's not when she doesn't have that workload, she can fix Martina. But we'll be able to so a lot of it is just we have to look at it in a systematic way. We can just I don't wanna just, you know, throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks and, you know, it's like, how do we systematically go through and address the you know, in a way that is feasible for what we currently have to work with. But that's also effective, and we're not just you know, we mix one cat over here and one cat 30 miles away.

Cool. There's still 400 other cats on it. It just said, yeah, my dear. So that would be first line of order is let's solve our cat problem because then we have more time and resources to focus on dog issues. Is there anybody else that popped up on the line at all? No? It's just us? I sent it so that you could bypass the lobby. So if people are joining, they would just pop up. Okay. Any

anything else? No. I I mean, I could have it list. Maybe I'll just get Yeah. My board.

I can

give you my board just to make it as my I'm talking about what we do. So Yeah. Cool. So with that then, I guess, if we have I have motion to adjourn. Brianna has a motion to adjourn. That's the one second. Any opposed to that? Alright then. So we will be adjourned at 12:23. Another short meeting.