Animal Shelter Advisory Committee - Regular Meeting

Now it is.

Yeah, now we're recording so we will go ahead and call to order at 12 one. He am Dina if you can.

Call the roll. OK, here we go.

Alright, Christy Bandu here.

Esteban Centeno is absent. Doreen Cruz is also absent. They both let us know ahead of time. Brianna Geddes. Here.

Bo Kidd. I don't see him.

So we'll mark him as absent for now. Caitlin Ledesma.

Here.

Dr. Sarah Pollard. Here. And Kate Shaw.

Here.

Okay. That is five people. So we have four.

All right, citizen comment period. Do we have anybody signed up to speak, Dina? We did not. Okay, so we'll move past that one quickly. Item four is minutes. Consider approval by motion of the April 15th, 2026 meeting minutes. Anybody?

I move to approve. Who is that? Kate Shaw.

Kate was first. Brianna second. OK, all in favor.

I. I need. Any opposed?

Right, so I think we're good on those items for action and discussion. We'll just go through these one at a time. The first one we have was discussion of Kyle Shelter updates. Brianna, if you have anything you'd like to share. Any new information or kind of where that stands?

I know I have a council meeting on July the 30th with some updates on where we are with everything. But there's a little limbo going on, but we're still moving ahead with everything. things there's just hiccups because there always is so uh we'll know a little bit more on the 30th there was a landing issue right um yeah there's there's a little little issue but there's backup there are the backup options um so it's not nearly as dramatic as it's being made to made to sound like so typical politics it's we've got couple of different backup options for land okay okay cool anything else on that one questions or no nothing on my end unless anybody has questions so is the meeting on the 30th um um

part of the city council meeting, like a presentation, or is this a different type of meeting? Like if citizens are interested in getting an update?

So it's kind of to walk through that whole land issue. It's three parcels of land. It's not one big chunk of land. It's three different parcels. A couple of parcels were technically set aside for parkland in a developmental agreement. So they're They're just going over the history of that. And I think a lot of the issues is people don't quite understand how new shelters are built and don't understand that we are going to mediate sound and the plot of land that it is, it's not like right next to the neighborhood. It is, it's, I've done like Google map lengths. It's about 900 feet away from the property line of those houses.

So we did. But I think we can.

No, we're OK. It's just ended up being that. So, yeah. Yeah.

They came and see if we needed screens. You don't need to be on camera, Nikki, but if you want to sit down.

We're already in the meeting. We're already in the meeting. We're just wearing it off the laptop. We appreciate you, though. Thank you.

Thanks.

So, yeah, we're in a weird room. Everything is just weird this meeting. Yeah, I think an activity center forgot about us.

I saw, thanks for the update, Brianna. I had seen in a prior Kyle City Council meeting there was Agenda 18, where they were talking about the use of that plot. So I'll be curious to see what happens with all that.

Yeah, like I say, I like the location because it's very community-centered, close to lots of subdivisions, close to multiple schools. So that's why I originally liked the spot. But people are getting nitpicky about it. noise and not understanding that noise can be mitigated at a shelter. It can only go so far. You're not going to let them, there's not going to be 10 dogs out in the play yard just barking up a storm. So there's some education that I think could help, but I don't know. There's some very uh set in their ways people but if they don't like that location then we can move to a location that i don't like as much but uh we'll live with it if that's what we have to do um i'd like to be i'd like to be in a and not a normal shove you in the corner shelter kind of situation but we'll deal with what we get um and we'll do the best with with it that we can so that's the plan yeah okay

I believe Shannon has a question.

Hey guys, my camera's weird too, so sorry. I had a really quick question for you too. So I know location is also an issue, but I have not had a chance to look at the council agenda item that you're speaking of, but I also saw something from our city manager here in San Marcos sent something out about Kyle, and we're all in a deficit right now, but it looked like Kyle was in a a pretty big deficit as well. So do you know if the animal shelter is still going to be prioritized right now, even given some shortfalls? Do you have any idea?

I'm continuing to be told that it's still priority because it's it's got to happen. They know they have deadlines. And every council member mayor that I've heard, they're continuing to say they know it, they know it needs to be prioritized. We're just trying to figure out some of the logistical issues that were that we're seeing.

So thank you. Appreciate that.

Oh, anybody else any?

Appreciate it, Brianna. The second thing we had to talk about was the kind of what we talked about last time. The discussion of laws pertaining to animal shelters and rabies quarantine facilities. I know it's been a minute since we met, so just refresher on that. You know that the. The purpose of the advisory board as far as it being required by state law is that that's one of the things we're looking at is the shelter in compliance with the state laws that govern animal shelters. So I had sent you guys a list of what those laws are that kind of govern everything from shelter operations, rabies, quarantine, you know, all of that. So hopefully everybody's had a chance to kind of read those laws and familiarize it. Just wanted to kind of have a discussion. Is there anything... you know, one questions and I know reading law is very, you know, legally. Does anybody have questions about those laws or kind of how this team should fit into that moving forward? Ideas on anything we want to talk about or implement as the advisory board on making sure we're meeting that objective?

Just one of my questions. I had a few questions. One is. who was our local animal rabies control officer or whoever's in charge of that, both at the county level and the city level.

For the city of San Marcos, For the city of San Marcos, I'm the local rabies control authority. For Hayes County, I'm not sure if it's all of animal control is named or if it's specifically their supervisor, but it would be, it falls to the animal control. So it typically falls to the supervisor of the team, and then they can designate the team as their designees. So it's me, and then my designee is typically Harry, who's the animal protection supervisor. So if I'm on vacation and there's a positive rabies case that would delegate to him. So I just have my folks here in San Marcos that are trained to handle that in my absence. But it's me. I got one to do as soon as I get back. We just had a positive as I was walking out the door. So as soon as I get back, that's my next thing to roll to.

And I'm for Kyle. And then I'm pretty sure John's been designated for county.

I think it is John for county.

Yeah.

And then for Buda, I'm not sure if it's BOA or if they just have their animal control officer listed. Some jurisdictions will say just their animal control officers are the local rabies control authority. Some will designate a specific person.

Our ordinance in San Marcos designates it to the shelter manager. So whoever the shelter manager is, is the local rabies control authority. Does that kind of make sense?

There's a little bit of discretion that jurisdictions have when they assign that role.

Okay, gotcha. And I saw that Hayes County leaders passed a resolution, I think in June about the rabies to possibly maybe hopefully secure some more funding for education, vaccinations, etc, etc. Does that play into what you guys are dealing with right now? She is a

So I think their resolution was that they were going to just talk to is basically like talking to Department of State Health Services about oral vaccine. The Department of State Health Services, the Zoonosis Control Division that oversees the shelters doesn't do the oral vaccine program. That's a different division. There are talks at the state level of possibly coming in and getting us some oral vaccine baits that go to wildlife. That's still in the works. That's typically only done on the US-Mexico border is where those are dropped in Texas. So because what they're trying to do is not necessarily prevent rabies. They're trying to keep other strains of rabies that we don't have here from entering the state, if that makes sense. So that's been the objective with the oral vaccines. But there is some talk just because we've had such a hot spot here that They may be looking at doing some oral vaccines here. They're also looking at, there's a new test, kind of interesting, this is a side quest right now, but kind of an interesting thing. The state is possibly getting some, almost like a snap test for heartworms, but for rabies. So for like our cases where we don't necessarily have a human or animal exposure, where we really wanna send that brain in and have it examined for rabies, But we still want to know if it's positive. We might be able to start doing some in-house testing. All of that's super in the works. I've talked to the state about it. There's just not a lot of direction on how those things are going to go moving forward just yet.

What's the best way to support the shelter in our county on the rabies prevention? Is there like an education prevention component?

We've been sending a lot of education on our social media. If we are having cases, you know, especially where we might not know if somebody is exposed, we're doing some press releases. It's a lot of education. Most of our exposures are completely preventable. You know, like don't go pet that stray animal, like call us, call animal control instead. Some of the ones we've had have not been preventable. It has literally been a fox running out of the woods and attacking somebody like sneak attacks. So, but I think just, you know, vigilance and our wild spaces, like we do know that it's in our area right now. It's just education. And then what to do if you are exposed, like, you know, I don't know if you guys saw, there was just a child in Canada. about two weeks ago that passed away from rabies. And the parents had actually woken up in the middle of the night. There was a bat on the kid's face or something. And they just said, ah, it's probably fine and didn't take him to the hospital. And he passed away from rabies. So like, you'd be surprised how many people don't know that if they're exposed to something like that, that they need to get help. So just education, just talking to people, making sure, you know, people know what to do if they're exposed to wildlife. That's really all you can do. But it's amazing. There's people that don't know that if there's a bat on your face when you're sleeping, it's bad. That's bad. So, but yeah, I mean, and really like as far as rabies goes, I will say like, yes, we are in an outbreak. We're still considered a very mild outbreak in the grand scheme of rabies outbreaks. There was one year, like 2011, Seven or eight. I think it was. It was a long time ago where we had like over 600 positives in the state and it was like statewide. So like in the grand scheme of things like yes, it's an outbreak. It's still classified by the state as a mild outbreak. They just are starting to look at maybe because it's been so ongoing that maybe we try to mitigate it with vaccines, but. That'll be up to them to decide. We unfortunately don't have any access to those without the state providing them. So.

Any other? Thanks, that's all the questions I had.

OK.

Anybody else on on any of the? Log maybe specifically looking at shelter operations, rabies, quarantine facilities. I do. Do you guys want to see our annual inspections at one of these meetings so that you guys are are seeing those and we're going over those and looking at what the state? Gave us feedback on. That might be some, usually our inspections are in October. So maybe that's a like first of the year meeting is we just, that's provided to you guys. We can kind of see where we're at and discuss if there was any deficits or anything like that, the board.

Yeah, that's one of those things that we hadn't seen for a while until I think you did the last one. That used to be kind of a regular part of the advisory board is we'd see those inspection reports. So, yeah, I think that's a good option to have us review those and make sure everything's good.

maybe like in a standing agenda item for that, at least that first meeting. It's only once a year that they come in and inspect. So they haven't come this year yet, but it'll be in the next couple of months. Okay. Anybody else? Anything? Questions? Ready of the laws? Like wonky, didn't make sense.

Sometimes you read laws and you go, huh? Okay.

So we'll, we can add that, right? As a standing agenda item for that first meeting of the year. Okay. Okay.

I mean, it wouldn't be standing. It would just be like, you can say like, we'll always do it on the first place. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Like standing means every single meeting. Right. Yeah. But you know what I mean? Like just as a routine item. Okay. So that way that might get y'all a little bit more familiar for those of you who are at the shelter every day. Most of it'll make sense, you know, for those of you who aren't there quite as often, you know, it'd be good to just kind of see those things. So, okay. Anything else on that one then? No. OK, so we'll move to discussion of the 2027 meeting schedule. This year we had decided to only do three meetings, so this is our third now, so we'll have to plan our next ones. I do think that for this upcoming year we probably want to spread these out a little bit better so that we don't have such a large gap. In between them. So like if we've typically done, it's like January, April, July, and October. But if we're doing three, maybe we do like January, May, and November, that'd be right. Every four months or. But I'm.

Well, what about January or February, you know, an early summer one? And then if you could, is October okay instead of November? Yeah. Just because November is usually so, such a busy, the holidays kind of ramp up.

Yeah. Maybe we do like a February, June and October.

That sounds perfect.

Okay. I'm just trying to spread it out. I have to count months. February, June. Does anybody have any date and preferences? We typically do them on Wednesdays. Get my calendar out here. So like Wednesdays and right here, February would be. Why is there a dot on the 10th? What is February 10th? Is that a holiday? I don't have anything. So like for February, if you want to stick with Wednesdays, the 3rd, 10th, 17th or 24th.

That's fine. February 10th. The reason why you're seeing is a dot is that that's Ash Wednesday. Oh, so that's why that's showing up.

It was like it's showing. Yeah, I just have it on my phone. I was like, it's showing it's some kind of holiday. Well, OK. How about February 17th? That gives us. Sounds good. February 17th and then we'll go to June. If we want to stick with mid-month, the 16th is like right smack in the middle of June. This far out our calendars are probably open. February 17th or 10th? 17th. Okay, thank you. And then so June 16th, does that? And then October 13th or 20th, there's only four Wednesdays in October, so it doesn't matter to me. October 13th is an easy date to remember. 13th, yeah. At least it's not a Friday the 13th. Wednesday the 13th.

It's just slightly unlucky, but not the most.

So, I mean, we can do the 20th. Yeah. I don't know. I like 13. I always thought 13.

Are you doing the 12 and 7 back and forth? Like an afternoon and then an evening? They're all going to be at 12?

Yeah. Is everybody good with those being at 12? Or? Okay.

Yeah, I think it would be nice to have an evening option, but I know that most of this board is comprised by all of you guys who do work in the shelter and it just makes for a really long day when you also have to pop into an evening meeting.

So yeah, it really does.

Yeah.

Okay. Okay. So Dina can send out all the calendar invites and information to everybody. We have February 17th, June 16th, October 13th. So y'all want to stay to dates, but Dina will get something out to you guys as soon as she can to save the dates on those. OK, any other?

Thoughts on that one anybody?

OK, I'll move us to item 6 reports. So staff reports Dina just sent these out. They didn't come out with the package. She forgot to attach him, but they just got sent to you guys. They should be in your emails are quarterly reports and then are quarterly. The euthanasia reasons as they send you guys each time. As you'll see when you look at those, we're just up on everything. I think we just did statistics for June, and I think it was like 521 intakes. So we're jumping through our tails this time of the year. Lots and lots of kittens if anybody wants to bottle feed. With that, pretty much everything else is up. So outcomes are up just as much as the intakes are up. So just typical summer stuff. that we're seeing, but you guys have those to look at. They're also available on the website for anybody who wants to look at them. And then the euthanasia reasons are as well. I like to always release those with everything so that everybody has a really clear picture, you know, when we're having to make those decisions. Why? General shelter updates. I don't have much. We don't have any big projects going on right now. We typically don't this time of the year. We are getting ready again. Our inspections coming up in October, so just making sure that you know if there's anything that we're being that needs to be repaired, you know, before that happens, just that they do a full facility inspection, making sure that all of our staff have their training certificates, because that's something that gets inspected for a required certification. So making sure everybody's up and up on those things, hasn't missed out on any training that they needed. missed a class or something that we signed them up for. So it needs to make up some time for CE. That's really, that's really the majority of what we have going on right now. So that's really all I've got. My cat has a lot to say. I don't know if y'all can hear her.

So any questions, thoughts? Any statistics or reports? Or what's going on around the place right now?

OK. Well, then we'll go to question and answer session with Preston public. Do we have any press for public?

If you're a member of the public and you'd like to speak, if you could just raise your hand, that icon should be at the top of your screen. Next to people, there'll be a little hand that says race.

Jacob, could you try raising your hand? I just want to make sure it's working.

Yes, it's working. Yours is working.

Well, we have a member of the public here in person who would like to speak.

Oh, that webcam's broken.

I'm sorry.

All I really wanted to say was that I think that the redecorating of the shelter that everybody put so much hard work into looks really great. And I think it's really brightened up the place. And I think it's made a huge improvement all round. So I just want to say thank you for your hard work.

Thank you, Nikki. We did. We, Carrie and I, were there late painting a few nights, like till nine o'clock at night to paint the ceilings. So that was a lot of work. We still have a couple areas to do. So if anybody wants to come have painting parties with us, we'll probably resume those in the later fall when it starts to calm down a little bit is when we start to tackle those things. So if anybody wants to have painting parties over the winter, come and your painting close we'll let you know we're going to do those but thank you it's been a lot of work it does look a lot better though it's not cluttery and we're trying to you know got the mermaid thing going now so cool oh looks like sherry blue yet that's for hamburgers give me a sec cherry and i'll unmute you okay go ahead sherry

you have to unmute yourself now sherry i've allowed you to use your mic and now you have to unmute yourself and then you can go ahead hi i just wanted hi i just wanted to do a shout out because when i was up there volunteering on saturday um there were some members of this staff that were helping out on their days off and i know how hard you guys are working anyway but um willie was there taking care of little sick animals and um Her name is Emma, who was volunteering while she was off in the cat room. And that's just that's just beyond the call of duty. And I was just wanting to do it. Compliment to the staff. And Nick was doing transport stuff and people were helping him. I didn't get everybody's name because they were moving so fast you couldn't even see him. But I mean, it was it was just. a reflection of all the commitment and dedication. I wish that some people could just be videoing all that love and commitment to the animals.

Thank you, Sherry. I'll pass that along to the staff. It's nice. We don't get thanked often, so it's nice when we do. We appreciate it.

Anybody else? See anybody else online?

I see a couple of people. Sherry, if you wouldn't mind putting your hand down. I see we've got a couple of other people. Did either of you want to say anything?

Matthew or Joshua? I guess I'm good. Well, if no one else has anything, then we can move to adjournment if somebody has a motion.

I make a motion we adjourn. Ready second. I'll second that.

Think.

If there are no objections. Anybody any objections on upturning?

If not, we will adjourn at 1228.