Animal Shelter Advisory Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay. Good afternoon, everybody. We're still waiting on, Bo to get here, but we can go ahead and get started and catch him up to speed when he gets here. So I'll go ahead and call us to order at 12:01. And, miss Dina, can you call the roll, please? Absolutely.

Sorry.

Christie Bandu. Here. Brianna Gettis. Here.

Bo Kidd. Not here.

Estefan Centeno.

Here.

Doctor Sarah Drury. Present. Kate Shaw.

We can see that she's here. Yeah. She's having microphone difficulties.

Back to it. And then Doreen Cruz.

Hold on.

Oh, hang on. Maybe maybe I need to unmute them. Hang on.

Or move them to panelists? Let me let me

do that. Oh, hang on. Okay. You guys okay. There we go.

Y'all can hear me this fine?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

I'm I'm

here. Okay.

Kate Shaw? Here. There we go. And Doreen Cruz? Here.

Perfect. And Bokit?

Oh, it says you're connecting to audio.

Let me just make sure

I got everyone. And Nikki laughing. Hey.

Cool. Great. So that will move us into citizen comment period. We have three minutes per citizen, and I believe we have one person signed up to speak today. You can jump in front of the camera if you want to.

Oh, hi. My name is Caitlin. I'm the new animal welfare services coordinator for I'm under the health department, and I've been working at the health department since August. I actually was an intern, and I was helping the community outreach specialist foster relationships and do different community events. So now I'll be helping with shelter diversion by, doing free microchip events, pet food pantries. We're having one this Saturday and low cost, vaccine events as well. So it's nice to meet everyone.

Nice to meet you.

Very nice to see you again.

Welcome, Caitlin. She's been hanging out with us at the shelter quite a bit just kind of seeing what's going on since she's new coming into our world here. So she wanted to introduce herself. So that's all we have, correct, for Yes. Papers? Okay. So then minutes. So we'll consider approval by motion of the April 2023 or 04/23/2025 meeting minute. Yeah. Think I'm sharing.

You all can see them on screen. Right?

Yes. Yeah.

Motion to approve. Second. Okay.

So we have a motion from Brianna and a second from Nikki.

We can take a vote on that. Is, anybody in favor of approval? Aye. I move to approve the minutes. Anybody opposed?

K. The motion is approved unanimously.

We're moving quickly. Presentations. So, we had a few I think on the last meeting, we had talked about just kinda getting updates from everybody on kind of where their projects are kinda standing so far with the interlocal agreements ending and getting their own shelters going. So we have Hays County update. I don't know if you have any updates to share, Nikki, on

Nothing beyond what's already been made public record. Alright. Commissioner, Amy, and commissioner, Carmen, have been meeting with folks at City of Nile. It's my understanding. But at the last with a nice day, we've commissioning was being said that there's nothing to report on at

this time. Okay. So no major updates for Pays County. Bo, do you have any updates to share just kinda where you guys are at?

We are working on developing an ILA with the city of Kyle. Our hope is that we will be partnering with them or cost sharing with them.

Cool. Awesome. Brianna? I

I have a presentation. Brianna's got presentation.

Oh my.

One Brianna's

been here.

I'm it's actually using another presentation. I'm just repeating the last couple of days. That was an share.

Well, I'm gonna grab the PowerPoint rather than the PDF because I think it's gonna be easier to to share that. I'll get it shared,

then she can Nope. I'm not gonna do

that because that's not the meeting. There we Okay. Sorry. So well, yeah, we'll just go with the the PDF version. Alright. And then just let me know when you need me to scroll.

Okay. Yeah. You can this is just like I say, this is our our presentation that we gave at city council meeting on June 17 year. Still about that. This is kinda all the stuff that you guys already know.

We're in an interlocal agreement with San Marcos, and we are preparing a feasibility study right now with Jackson and Ryan Architects. And we've we're finished with phase one and two of that feasibility study, and we're now going into phase three conceptual designs and all legal restrictions. Probably technical too ahead on this one. Site evaluations and site selection. We evaluated blood playing location, already owned city properties.

All that gray stuff is floodplain, so that's why we stayed away from certain areas. And I've selected Site 2. You can go to the next one. Okay. Alright. It's called it's technically Vista Park. It is over behind Choppa Middle School in the area of Bay C Lane and Beebe Road. It's a total of 39 acres, not in the flood zone, has some connections to our bike trail there. And it's East Side, which everybody loves East Side. You can go ahead to the next one.

This is the proposed site, with the, and with I'll put the little note that this is currently based off of City of Kyle's numbers. This is not anyone else involved in the mix, but there is expansion potential. But at the current time, we're just going with our current our current numbers because not anything else has been worked out, and that was hard enough to come up with with that. You can move ahead to the next one. This is the basic floor plan.

It's a u shaped building with a it's got that suite community spaces. It has intake of flex space and adoption panels. We have a Sally work similar since every shelter has Sally Port Sally Port entry on the side in the building. You can flip ahead to the next one. There are some areas, the intake and public access points to the building.

Next slide is gonna be the vet suite and the community clinic. We have designed into the space, actual clinic space where house or remains a pet or whoever wants to come in and run some clinic time out of the facility, they can. And there's two exam rooms in the community room also for that purpose. We go to the next slide. This is the dog adoption space.

There are play yards galore on this plan. No shortage Alright. Throughout the whole facility, leaking great yard. You can go to the next and next door after that. This is breakdown of the operational cost side of things.

I'm gonna go bunch into that. It's all kind of our estimates for for right now based off of I'm off of our our numbers yet again. Next page. Cost estimates and their ranges because we have certain spaces in a shelter who are conditioned spaces and certain spaces that are unconditioned spaces. So depending on where where we're talking, there's varying cost for those specific areas.

Can do the. The start next steps and timeline for in the middle of the conceptual design portion of things. I have a tentative next council presentation of August 5 to present all the conceptual design and all the final part of the feasibility study, and then we're gonna move forward with the final design contract in October as budget year ends and full design will be complete in 2026 and construction within 2027. And we are still negotiating contracts to decide on sides and ops operational considerations.

Cool.

You. Sounds very exciting.

Brianna's been busy. Swear Whoo. He died. It's trying to just you know? Because we've got a shelter, so it's like, don't reinvent the wheel. Yeah. Like, here's what you need. So cool. So that's it for presentations. We'll move on to report.

In y'all's packets is just kind of our quarterly reporting as well as I give you guys our our euthanasia reports as well, just so that you guys have those kinda month by month, what's been going on with that kind of stuff. Biggest takeaway, I won't sit and read statistics to you. Biggest takeaway is from this from last quarter to this quarter, we're at a 53% increase in intake. So when I say we're under siege, that's what I mean. It was a I think we went from, like, 800 and what was the last time?

833, something like that, to 1,331. So it's about a 53% increase in intakes from quarter two to quarter three. So that's that's kind of the world we're living in right now. General shelter update. Biggest thing we probably got going on right now is Caitlin just started with the Hays County animal welfare division.

So there's been a lot of collaborating going on there, which is really good to see just kind of talking about what ideas we have, kinda getting her familiar with, you know, what's going on kind of in our real world at the shelter so that she can brainstorm and collaborate and hopefully help bring everybody together on those things. And other than that, Broken Wheel here, we're just still in survival mode at the shelter, so just keeping our heads above water. Don't think there was anything really super exciting on our statistics other than the 53% increase, though. It's just that time of the year. So that's all I've got for y'all on that.

Is there anything else I can not think of that's been exciting? Oh, we're working on sprucing up the shelter. That's probably a fun update. I don't know if anybody Yeah. The shelter. We repainted the intake office, so it's not, like, gloomy in there anymore, and we're kind of going with the San Marcos animal mermaid theme. But, like Mhmm. Going with that theme. So we're moving on to the adoption lobby now, and we'll be doing a mural on one of the walls. One of our staff members is very talented mural artist, so she's gonna be putting up a mural on one wall.

We're brushing up the paint, reorganizing thing, decluttering, like, you know, just trying to get to where we have more seating for people. It's just a more welcoming. Since I've been there, I felt like whoever painted and decorated before, was very unintentional. It was like whatever paint was left over with the facilities department that we got for free was slapped on the wall. And so we're trying to go through it with intention.

And so that's been a lot of our time lately. It's this is a huge project. So we're kind of working area to area public areas first, and then we'll be working into, like, the cat rooms to redecorate and freshen paint and all of that probably over the winter months when we don't have 287 cats. So right now, it's kinda hard to shift them around to do any paintings, so we're kinda doing it in phases. But that's it. That's that's our update. We're no fun other than that. Future agenda item. We're moving fast today, y'all. So so you guys know future agenda items is gonna be an item that won't be on future agenda.

I'll let Dina explain kind of the new process of we'll go through, like, if we wanna put items on agendas. Well, it's on here now, so we can kind of plan our next meeting, but Dina can kinda give you guys the rundown on how that will work. Yeah. I'll I'll

come on the camera so y'all can see me. Yeah. Basically, the mayor has said, like, future agenda items is gonna be not on any agenda. Our agenda has to match all the other, commission's agendas. So, basically, it's the same it should be in the model list already that, you know, if one member wants something on an agenda, they email the liaison, which is me.

And then we can I can either ask Christie who's the chair, and she has the authority to, say yes or no to agenda items? And then, if Christie is not available for whatever reason, we can also send it out, to, every member, and we just need one other person to cosponsor it. So you may, every once in a while, get an email saying, hey. We have a proposed agenda item of blank. Does anyone cosponsor? And if y'all just email back, yes, no, whatever your thoughts are. But, yeah, basically, to add an agenda item, email me, and then we will take care of

it from there. Cool. So

Thanks, ma'am.

Agenda for this agenda. What do we wanna talk about the next or do you know?

I I just had a good question today. What's the time frame? Is there a deadline?

Oh, yes. I'm sorry. Yes. A good

question. Yes. So we do need that email within ten days of the meeting. So, just yeah. Thank you for bringing that up, Nikki. Yeah. So just remember, your deadline is ten days before the meeting to add an agenda item. Thank

you. Cool. That being said, what do we wanna talk about as the October. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Isn't it already gonna be out? October 1 is the next month this year, so I'm so fast. So, I mean, I think looking at Brianna's timeline on the presentation, she's gonna have some more stuff kinda happening by then. So maybe it's a good idea to put another, round of updates just as kinda where everybody's at, where everybody land, and how that's moving forward. Yeah. Hold on. Sure.

Hold on a minute.

That would be nice

to get an update on.

Okay. So Brianna said first. We'll go with that as a motion. Sure. I think Kate, is that a second? So we can Yes. Okay. So all in favor of that one? Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Any opposed? Anything else?

Not at this time for me. I just wanna do one other

housekeeping thing real quick. So we've

been sending the calendar invites up from our animal services info calendar. So when y'all respond to the invite, you might get the, auto reply from animal services info. Just disregard it. Yeah. It's just so that, should anything if I'm not here, Christie can take over or, you know, multiple people have access to that calendar invite, you can make any necessary changes. But it might cause some confusion because it doesn't have an auto a reply to every email even if it's just an Outlook, invite acceptance. So just FYI, if you get that email, disregard it.

Alrighty. Anything else? Just move around now. No. Going

I can think of, boss.

But we could still for the next meeting, it's something up. So between now and October.

Right. Yeah. Like, as things are happening, if there's something we can bring to the agenda, yeah, you can definitely do that. Okay. I'll move us on then to question and answer session with the press and public. Do we have any press that were public here? The just the one online attendee. We don't have anybody here in person. Did anybody have any questions, related to this agenda? Going one.

Going twice. Alright. Well, with that, Aika, we can look at adjournment. Do we have to do a motion for adjournment? Never heard her.

Yeah. I

make a motion to adjourn. Okay. That'll adjourn us then at twelve

Second.

Second, third, all of us, get out of here. The twelve, twenty minutes. Alright. Cool. That was it. Yeah. That was a fast meeting. We didn't have really anything on the agenda other than the presentation. So

Which was excellent.

I like it when it's evening. Oh, so you're adjourned out. 12:21. 12:21. 12:21. Okay. Perfect, y'all. Thanks, everybody.

Thanks for so much. Take care.

You. Bye bye.

Bye.