Council members want action, updates to improve city animal shelter

Members of City Council want ongoing updates from the Animal Services Office about the conditions at the Austin Animal Center, which a recent audit found to be routinely overcrowded due to a variety of management issues.

Council’s Audit and Finance Committee received a briefing on the audit Wednesday and told top city managers and the shelter’s lead supervisor that they expect more regular communication on progress to address the audit’s findings, including possible requests for more funding or other resources.

The audit, which was called for last year by Council, found the no-kill facility is often beyond its capacity and lacks the data, staff and processes to meet the city’s 95 percent live-release goal. The shelter has consistently met the 95 percent threshold, often at the expense of providing adequate boarding and physical activity for the animals, which occasionally number more than 100 past the facility’s capacity.

The audit also found relationships between the shelter and stakeholders including the Animal Advisory Commission are strained and affect working conditions, and the shelter lacks data to track its activities or make the best operational decisions.

Council Member Leslie Pool said the audit’s recommendations of creating a new strategic plan and improving data management and employee training should already be regular activities of Don Bland, chief animal services officer, who last summer received a vote of no confidence from the city’s Animal Advisory Commission.

“I am extremely disappointed that we find ourselves in such a fundamental disconnect between the responsibilities of this office and the fact that these are the recommendations coming out of an audit, which means that these responsibilities have not been fulfilled,” Pool said. “I’m concerned over the lack of action in a number of areas too, for example, the dashboard data, which a few years ago we directed the animal services office to work … to establish that data collection and the portal and to have it be accurate.”

Bland said he expects the hiring of four new staffers approved in the new city budget will improve issues related to animal care and could provide managers with the bandwidth to more easily focus on other persistent problems.

Assistant City Manager Stephanie Hayden-Howard said she’s worked in recent budget cycles to correct a history of unmet funding needs for animal services and identified that staffing changes that would provide the most relief related to the issues highlighted in the audit.

In response to a question about the creation of a long-term plan for the shelter, which cares for 16,000 animals per year and has occasionally had to stop intake because of overcrowding, Hayden-Howard said the city may need to establish satellite facilities for adoptions or other specific services. She said the city recently hired an outside consultant to help shelter management carry out the recommendations of the audit.

“When we look at other cities our size, they typically do have other locations or other satellite sites where even if they’re only doing adoption in those other sites … we don’t have that,” she said. “There’s various strategies that we can look at as a city, because we have to always keep in mind that as a city is growing, we have to start to kind of forecast out how we’re going to be able to keep up with the trends and how we’re gonna be able to meet the performance measures.”

Council Member Alison Alter pressed Hayden-Howard and interim City Manager Jesús Garza to expect more scrutiny over the performance of the shelter, with updates expected approximately every six months.

“One of the things that I’ve talked with the city manager about the past budget process is that we were not (informed of) the unmet needs beyond what was raised to be the high priority at the director and city manager level,” she said. “I don’t believe we as a Council have a sense of what it would take to adequately fund animal services so that we could accomplish all of the goals with the right management team in place.”

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