In February, Ramon Najera and his wife were the victims of a dog mauling that ultimately took the Air Force veteran’s life and left his wife and two others badly injured. This incident shed new light on deep-rooted issues with the city’s Animal Care Services Department.
Among these issues are the department’s low call response rate and lagging live release rates. The department has been chronically underfunded and has failed to develop an updated organizational strategic plan to steer investment in departmental services since 2011. But an injection of funding could help the department address longstanding issues — with the right strategy.
San Antonio City Council responded to the horrific events in February with a mid-year increase to the ACS budget in fiscal year 2023 to support onboarding 15 new staff as apprentices to eventually transition to full-fledged officers. Additionally, the fiscal year 2024 proposed budget includes a 26% increase year-over-year, raising the ACS total budget to $26.9 million and representing the greatest city departmental budget increase.
Supporting this budget increase, the data shows that today ACS receives 80,000 calls per year, of which 50,000 are deemed critical. But the department today only responds to 44% of critical calls. Additionally, the ACS live release rates — the percent of healthy animals that avoid capacity-driven euthanasia and find a home — have languished for many years, with the current rate of 80% falling far short of the 90% target outlined in the department’s own annual report. And finally, roaming or stray animal populations in the city continue to be measured in the tens of thousands.
The lagging live release rate has also been propped up by nonprofit shelters and individuals who completely bypass the city shelter and seek alternative options. This saves many animal lives, but it also results in an artificially high live release rate. If these animals instead ended up at ACS, capacity would be further strained and the live release rate would drop further still due to increased capacity-initiated euthanasia.
While accurately quantifying the number of animals that go directly to nonprofit shelters or receive informal shelter from good samaritans across the city is difficult, the rescue community has for years acknowledged this is a major challenge in holding ACS accountable for the true volume of animals on San Antonio streets. ACS must make efforts to quantify this number if the department hopes to project accurate funding and staffing needs.
The data leaves no question. ACS needs major changes. Certainly, an increased budget is part of that need, but how did we manage to get this far behind, and will blindly throwing dollars at the problem efficiently move the city toward a long-term solution?
A long-term strategic plan which maps out the city’s current state of animal welfare, goals defined through collaboration with residents and local shelters, and the resources and time necessary to reach those goals would illuminate the next steps.
In January 2022, Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2) and Councilwoman Melissa Cabello Havrda (D6) submitted a council consideration request for an update to the decade-old existing ACS strategic plan to bring it into alignment with current needs and industry best practices. These efforts resulted in a four-page document identifying high-level goals for ACS. What the document lacks is the actual strategy necessary to arrive at the defined goals. What key performance indicators will be tracked to quantify progress toward these goals? What data will be collected in order to measure progress? What synergies exist between the identified goals, and how can the city invest taxpayer dollars to most efficiently reach defined goals, exploiting these synergies wherever possible?
During the ACS budget session with City Council on Aug. 17, City Manager Erik Walsh stated that, prior to this year, ACS was completely unaware that the majority of critical calls were never addressed, and comments from council members throughout the budget session showed varying levels of frustration in being blindsided by these deep ACS organizational issues.
Councilman John Courage (D9) had biting feedback in relation to the proposed outreach and training budget of only $59,000 out of the $26.9 million dollar overall ACS budget. After stating that he felt this was “a big mistake,” he went on to say that he’ll be working with city staff to find more dollars to support critical outreach and education initiatives. Councilman Marc Whyte (D10) followed Courage, echoing concerns about ACS budget allocations, noting that “all too often we spend time on stuff that doesn’t directly address the problem.”
At their root, the majority of concerns raised by council members regarding the ACS budget can all be distilled down to a concern that where dollars are being focused must be based on a data-informed analysis of where we are and where we want to be as a city.
ACS unquestionably needs significant investment to address the city’s growing animal crisis. Still, in order for these invested taxpayer dollars to have the desired impact, ACS must critically have the right data-informed, long-term strategic plan and a leadership team equipped to execute the plan.
