By the top of 2022, ACS’s reside launch charge — which means the share of animals which might be adopted, transferred or returned to homeowners — was at its lowest in seven years, 88%. That’s even because the shelter took in 32% fewer animals than it did in 2019, numbers so regarding they caught the eye of nationwide animal welfare nonprofit Petco Love in addition to shelter employees.
“Our staff is a mixture of battle-hardened and brand-new. They all love animals and this moment in history is eating us all alive and is soul crushing,” ACS Chief Operating Officer Bethany Colonnese mentioned of the state of affairs in a Dec. 17 e mail obtained by open information request and shared with the San Antonio Report.
With the division’s help, Petco Love sponsored a shelter advisor final yr to evaluate ACS operations and assist enhance its reside launch charge. But the advisor’s observations had been by no means offered to the ACS Advisory Board or the City Council.
Interviews and emails documenting her work shed new gentle on a division that previously yr has grow to be the goal of investigation by native activists, drawn the priority of state lawmakers and been given a close to clean test from the City Council to enhance its effectiveness.
“The claims about ACS’s unwillingness to implement change are patently false,” Sims wrote simply eight days earlier than Najera was attacked and killed by dogs with a historical past of aggressive conduct. “ACS must maintain a balanced and sustainable approach to making San Antonio a safer place for people and animals.”
But subsequent lethal canine assaults and near-lethal maulings have more and more put ACS in a defensive posture. Less than three months after City Council elevated the division’s price range by 33%, Sims introduced he would retire subsequent summer time.
Animal Care Services Director Shannon Sims speaks to residents throughout a District 7 public security assembly in August. Credit: Bria Woods / San Antonio Report
The council, metropolis supervisor and ACS Advisory Board stood steadfastly behind his management all through a tumultuous yr, however are actually making an attempt to determine what the town wants in a brand new chief.
This yr residents ranked animal points amongst their high issues in a city budget survey , with greater than half of respondents indicating that Animal Care Services wasn’t assembly their wants.
ACS personnel offered their very own evaluation of the division’s challenges to City Council this fall — crafted with the assistance of a advertising company — and secured a price range improve they are saying will permit a chronically underfunded division to pursue modern options to San Antonio’s complicated and enduring animal downside.
Meanwhile, longtime critics of the division have launched their very own marketing campaign to push ACS in a brand new course.
“We need somebody who is not in-house, who is new and fresh, because [ACS] needs a lot of internal changes,” mentioned Lea LaPort, founding father of the group No Kill SATX, which advocates towards shelters that euthanize animals.
LaPort is among the many activists who’ve been inundating the division with open information requests, a few of which had been shared with the San Antonio Report, about spay/neuter numbers and shelter outcomes and following harmful canine circumstances by way of the court docket system. Lately, they’ve additionally begun presenting their work to City Council members and advisory board as proof of management struggles inside ACS.
“Maybe [Sims’ strategies were] a mile wide and an inch deep, or maybe it wasn’t enough time,” mentioned Lorena Havill, a medical scientist and animal rescuer who was appointed to the advisory board in 2021 by Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2). “But we need an acute set of solutions to these problems, data-driven things that we know work from other communities.”
An outsider’s perspective
Working with San Antonio’s Animal Care Services was an uncommon task for Kristen Hassen, who has managed a number of municipal animal shelters and is well-regarded throughout the metropolis’s animal rescue group as a useful resource on how one can remedy difficult issues.
Unlike her agency’s traditional purchasers, which pay roughly $25,000 for a two-month session, Hassen’s work at ACS was sponsored by Petco Love , which has given the division greater than $3 million in grants over the previous eight years.
With ACS’s numbers on an alarming destructive trajectory, Petco Love CEO Susanne Kogut and Executive Director Chelsea Staley met with Sims and Colonnese in November of final yr to suggest Hassen’s assist. Chief amongst her {qualifications}, Staley mentioned, Hassen had experience working a shelter in Pima County, Arizona, which serves a group with an identical demographic profile to that of San Antonio.
Sims, a retired U.S. Marine, had labored his approach up on the sector operations aspect at ACS. Like his predecessor, he didn’t have a background in animal shelter operations, and he enthusiastically welcomed the advisor’s assist, based on emails on the time.
Hassen made her first go to to the ACS campus to begin assembly employees and evaluating processes in early December 2022. That month Sims additionally directed ACS employees to show over uncooked shelter knowledge to Petco Love for a deep dive on division procedures and outcomes of animals coming into the shelter.
While most profitable shelters are set as much as welcome the general public and promote adoption, fostering and volunteering , Hassen mentioned in an interview final month, San Antonio’s then 175-member group included comparatively few employees members devoted to these duties, paired with one of many largest enforcement divisions — officers who reply to animal cruelty circumstances, harmful dogs and different incidents — that she’d ever seen.
The dynamic was inflicting the shelter to euthanize animals for capability almost every day, whereas providing a “phenomenally short” window for them to be reunited with homeowners or discover a new home, Hassen mentioned.
ACS’s coverage is to put up footage of animals coming into the shelter on-line instantly after an officer picks them up, beginning the state-mandated 72-hour maintain time earlier than they grow to be eligible for euthanasia. Animals that seem to have homeowners get a five-day maintain. During that point, homeowners can declare their animals, and rescue teams can tag them and take away them from the ACS shelter after the maintain expires.
Animals whose homeowners give up them don’t have any required maintain time, which means they’re eligible to be euthanized the day they’re introduced in if kennel house is required.
Hassen’s 14-page report submitted to ACS leaders on Dec. 12 really useful giving all comparatively wholesome animals at the least 72 hours to discover a new home, rededicating some employees to misplaced pet reunification and reinstating partnerships that transport animals out of state to locations the place they are often adopted. She additionally prompt transforming ACS’s software course of to make it simpler to foster pets and proposed sending ACS operations employees to go to the municipal shelter she as soon as ran in Arizona.
“Witnessing a similar shelter (size demographic etc) will allay any disbelief that it can be done and will also clearly show the how tos to make this happen,” Sims wrote in a Dec. 19 e mail to Hassen.
But implementing new concepts in San Antonio proved tougher for Hassen.
Animal Care Services workers are photographed throughout advisor Kristen Hassen’s time on the shelter. Credit: Courtesy / Kristen Hassen Early disagreements over Hassen’s authority prompted the Dec. 17 e mail from Colonnese to Petco Love calling for the partnership to decelerate and evaluate the adjustments earlier than deciding whether or not they had been appropriate with the town’s public security wants. The settlement was for Hassen to watch and submit options, reasonably than search to implement them in actual time, she wrote.
“I can completely see how it looks from the outside, when animals are dying, that us not willing to immediately move on suggestions or ideas can feel or look like we’re not on board that something needs to change,” Colonnese wrote. “That is 100% the farthest from the truth.”
‘There could be other outcomes’
A month later, nonetheless, disagreements over finest practices boiled over when the behavioralists Hassen despatched to work with ACS sought to co-house dogs from completely different properties in the identical kennels.
Hassen says the observe is efficiently utilized by different shelters in Texas, which have fewer kennels than ACS and save many extra animals. ACS contends that even when animals are vaccinated upon coming into the shelter, immunity doesn’t grow to be efficient for a number of weeks, making co-housing a severe well being hazard.
“We deal with very spreadable diseases here, like distemper, that are almost entirely fatal to animals without extensive medical care that we can’t provide,” Sims mentioned in a Dec. 7 interview.
The animal behaviorists grew pissed off with ACS’s unwillingness to co-house animals, and in the end sought to personally foster or discover properties for animals on the euthanasia record that day. An e mail from Sims known as the thought “highly irregular,” and suggested employees even visiting specialists would want to observe the division’s regular placement insurance policies sooner or later.
After the disagreements with the behaviorists Sims says Staley twice requested him to fireside Colonnese, together with reside launch supervisor Jessica Travis and shelter supervisor Heather Guthrie, based on Sims’ letter to the town legal professional. Staley denies Sims’ account of their dialog, and all three workers nonetheless work at ACS.
Sims mentioned later he determined to doc ACS’s interactions with the advisor and Petco Love for the town legal professional’s workplace due to the rising scrutiny of the division’s operations, and since rumors concerning the advisor’s expertise at ACS had been beginning to flow into amongst native rescue teams. In the letter he wrote that Hassen’s suggestions had been “based solely on short observations and a limited number of staff interviews, and lacked professionalism.”
“What still sticks with me about San Antonio is just the number of very highly adoptable animals that are being euthanized there, when there could be other outcomes,” Hassen mentioned final month.
A girl seems to be at dogs within the kennels within the San Antonio Animal Care Services shelter. Credit: Brenda Bazán / San Antonio Report Public security vs. saving animals
Nearly a yr after Hassen’s observations, Sims says ACS has truly embraced a lot of her suggestions. It just lately restarted the out-of-state switch program and budgeted for extra employees to help with adoptions.
But different concepts — resembling retaining extra animals on campus for longer intervals of time — Sims seen as unworkable as a result of house is required for continued consumption of sick, abused and harmful animals.
“I think there was a lack of understanding from an enforcement perspective of the scope of the problem,” Sims mentioned of Hassen. “She was able to focus on the very specific live release aspect … and didn’t necessarily have to be concerned with intake cruelty cases, dangerous dogs — things that are obviously a high priority with City Council, with the city manager’s office as well as with the residents of San Antonio.”
ACS declined the San Antonio Report’s requests to accompany animal management officers as they reply to calls.
Hassen contends that efficient shelter operations go hand-in-hand with public security targets.
“You can both save the vast majority of animals, and you can maintain a safe, humane community and shelter,” Hassen mentioned. “I don’t understand the message of, ‘We can’t do this, it’s impossible, we’re already doing everything we can.’”
‘Not meant to pad the numbers’
Hassen provided to proceed working with ACS, however her contract was not prolonged after the two-month session. Despite plans for her to current her findings to ACS’s Advisory Board, she by no means received the chance.
Among the issues Hassen and Petco Love hoped to convey to the board’s consideration, emails to Sims and Colonnese point out, had been the outcomes of the info evaluation indicating ACS had been together with animals on its “intake” record that had by no means stayed on the shelter.
Doing so just isn’t a recommended practice in the industry . Hassen says her knowledge indicated the division’s reside launch charge was truly about 5% decrease than ACS had reported, when the three,300 diversion circumstances had been faraway from the 26,500 whole intakes.
Colonnese confirmed in a Jan. 10 e mail to Staley and Sims that labeling animals that by no means stayed on the shelter as “intakes,” although uncommon, was executed deliberately. ACS hoped to show that an experimental “diversion” program — which seeks to show group members who discover pets into short-term foster dad and mom — was working to scale back euthanasia charges. “It’s not meant to pad the numbers,” she wrote.
ACS has since ended the diversion program because of concern that foster stays won’t qualify for the state’s required impound maintain earlier than animals are adopted again out, based on Colonnese.
Sims mentioned in an interview that he didn’t recall listening to issues about live-release knowledge from Hassen or Petco Love. He mentioned he requested advisory board’s government committee in the event that they wished to listen to instantly from Hassen after her session ended, and so they declined to place it on the agenda.
Petco Love wrote to Mayor Ron Nirenberg and the City Council in April advising them of ACS’s sinking live-release charge, and concerning the advisor’s failure to get a gathering with the ACS Advisory Board. Staley mentioned she by no means acquired a response.
Among animal welfare advocates, reside launch charges stay a extremely scrutinized metric in shelter success.
In a price range presentation this August, Sims informed the council ACS’s reside launch charge was at 81% earlier this yr, down from 88% in 2022. While that’s “not something that we’re happy about,” Sims mentioned, ACS was nonetheless doing higher than Dallas’ 75%, Fort Worth’s 73%, Houston’s 78% and El Paso’s 77%.
After the elevated price range was permitted, Nirenberg pointed to the division’s 44% response charge to calls about aggressive animals, animal neglect and cruelty as proof the town wanted to be “more critical” about “the metrics that we’re elevating.”
But council’s efforts to fund much more ACS employees to reply to calls about aggressive animals, animal neglect and cruelty had been in the end declined by Sims, who mentioned it will end in 1000’s of extra animals coming by way of the shelter’s doorways with out satisfactory plans in place to search out them properties.
In an interview after the August price range assembly, Sims pointed to the town’s old strategy of amassing tens of 1000’s of animals off the road with little regard for his or her future. Animals coming into the pound acquired almost no adoption providers, and had a couple of 4% survival charge, based on a 2004 Express-News report .
“I don’t want to go back to that,” Sims mentioned. “I think we’re always going to manage intake.”
A void to fill
With his retirement now in sight, Sims counts the elevated ACS price range, together with the division’s new strategic plan , as making good on commitments made when he turned director.
“When I took this job my intent was, when I leave, this place is going to have the resources it needs to do its job effectively,” he mentioned. “And I think that none of that happens without that contract between us and City Council, saying this is the plan moving forward.”
In a press release, City Manager Erik Walsh praised ACS’s new strategic plan for figuring out areas of enchancment, and mentioned Sims “will play a role in ensuring a smooth transition” to the subsequent chief.
In the meantime, animal rescue teams say the group is determined for somebody to fill the void of providers.
For instance, ACS now not accepts stray animals discovered by members of the general public until they’re in want of important medical consideration or until they’ve house on the shelter that day.
A stray canine stands on the intersection of Carney Avenue and Santa Monica Street close to San Pedro Avenue. Credit: Scott Ball / San Antonio Report One group experiencing the outcomes of that’s the Footbridge Foundation, which locations animals with fosters however doesn’t function a shelter.
In the span of every week final month, Footbridge founder Wendy Black mentioned her nonprofit was provided a complete of $8,000 by residents who wished her to soak up animals they’d discovered on the road. Footbridge can solely settle for animals when it has a foster lined up, and Black needed to decline the presents.
Footbridge’s state of affairs isn’t distinctive. On Thursday, Petco Love will give $1.5 million to no-kill shelter operator San Antonio Pets Alive to buy property for a brand new shelter.
“Everyone is finding animals and they are desperate to get them placed,” Black mentioned. “They don’t want to take them to ACS because everybody knows ACS will kill them.”
ACS desperately desires to vary its status. As a part of its strategic plan, it just lately embraced a brand new organizational mission centered on bettering the “ethical standard of care” for animals in San Antonio. The metropolis is now working paid promoting on radio and TV to strengthen the thought.
Some animal rescue teams complain that strategy underscores considered one of ACS’s greatest shortcomings: focusing all of its power on unhealthy actors, whereas alienating animal lovers who need to assist extra pets discover properties.
“If you look at the websites, the marketing, the communications [of successful shelters], their relationship with the community is vastly different than ACS’s,” Hassen mentioned. “They give everyone the benefit of the doubt and treat them as a helper.”
Sims acknowledges his perspective of the group’s relationship with animals is “probably skewed.”
On a recent afternoon, only one potential adopter walked round ACS’s Westside campus, taking part in with a candy, chubby canine named Gordo who was being fostered by employees member whereas its hair grew again from a pores and skin irritation.
Though the person appeared completely charmed by the canine’s affectionate nuzzles, it wasn’t a match, he mentioned. He already had dogs at home, and employees informed him Gordo didn’t get together with different dogs.
Many of the dogs within the kennels that day had been sporting collars or bandanas they’d on once they had been picked up by ACS, indicating they’d homeowners. One even wore a Christmas sweater.
ACS estimates that 93% of the town’s estimated 35,000 stray and roaming dogs have homeowners, however Sims mentioned the division faces a myriad of challenges of getting these homeowners to vaccinate, spay and neuter and hold their animals restrained.
The division’s strategic plan requires a significant give attention to addressing these points, by way of ads letting individuals realize it’s unlawful to let dogs roam, new spay/neuter clinics locally and employees to assist pet homeowners in robust circumstances from needing to give up their animals.
“I know there are probably hundreds of thousands of good solid pet owners in the city of San Antonio, the problem that we’ve got is the folks that don’t believe in that standard of care,” Sims mentioned. “On a daily basis, I’m seeing the influx of the bad.”
