If everybody's gonna talk, can you please talk into the mic so we can hear you back there at home?

Thank you.

Yes, teacher.

Michelle, we couldn't hear you.

You couldn't hear me.

Oh, I know you heard my people.

Let me go in that back room so I can hear you.

I think all that the out.

I'm not gonna answer.

I play the thing.

I don't know what you're talking about, but I please.

I know you talk about Gracie.

Nobody can talk to you, so I'm very used by the I'm just going through all the messages.

Check your text messages about a week ago.

Okay.

I'm not sure.

Uh mayor.

It's five o'clock.

I mean I wrote for the code.

Yeah.

Good evening.

Welcome to the Eloy City Council.

Work session for this evening.

Today is Monday, March twenty-third, and the time is approximately five PM.

Madam Clerk, may I have a roll call, please?

Councilmember of Aldraska.

Here.

Councilmember Curtis.

Here.

Vice Mayor Twingo?

Here.

Councilmember Schneider.

Here.

Councilmember Garcia.

Present.

Councilmember Golindo.

Here.

Mayor Sutton.

Here.

Okay, can we all please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance?

Thank you, everybody.

Okay, tonight's work session is about animal control and options that we're going to explore here in the city.

So I'm gonna put off the unscheduled public appearances till the end.

We want to be sure we get all the information as much as possible so we can try to craft what we're gonna do here.

So with that, we'll go to section number five, discussion items.

Presentation and discussions on the city of Eloy Animal Shelter Needs Assessment and Animal Control Study.

Who is presenting?

Thank you, Mark.

Uh yeah, I can kick it off.

So I believe first up, we are going to have the consultant from the shelter planners of America.

They're going to come up, they coordinated with our police department uh over the last several months to conduct a study of what it would look like to integrate uh animal control shelter back into the city of Eloy, what those costs would be and the necessary uh positions as well.

So thank you.

Uh my name is Michael Barnard, uh principal at Shelter Planners of America.

Um mayor, uh Vice Mayor, City Council members, uh city staff, thank you for uh entrusting us to do your needs assessment, and thank you for having us come out and explain it.

So we appreciate your time this evening.

Uh we have a relatively short agenda.

Hopefully, this is uh not more than maybe 15 or 20 minutes of formal presentation.

Just gonna introduce the firm, uh, speak a little bit about what we consider modern animal shelter design goals, then the findings of the needs assessment study, and then open it up for questions.

Shelter Planners of America is the most experienced animal shelter design firm in the nation.

We've worked with over 750 different animal shelter groups.

Uh those are counties, cities, but also humane societies, SPCAs, and other nonprofits.

Uh our uh uh founder actually operated four different trained as an architect, but then actually ended up uh operating four different animal shelters, so kind of we kind of understand things from the inside.

Uh this map I think shows perhaps the most recent 350, maybe 300 places that we've been.

I was in Richmond last week and going to Pittsburgh next week.

Uh so the goals uh are uh first and foremost is to implement uh current best practices in humane animal care.

Uh some of that includes reducing stress in animals, um, you know, providing proper separation of species, you know, dogs and cats aren't in the same room, things like that, soundproofing.

Um we feel strongly about two-compartment housing.

Um your current shelter, the shelter that you had in operation years ago was an old school approach called single compartment housing where the dog you know lived in the same space, one space where their food, bedding, and water was located, and also had to poo there.

And so two-compartment housing allows the animal to uh you know normal behavior to be able to move out of that space where food bedding and water is located to a secondary compartment where they can uh eliminate.

Uh we like to include uh natural light.

Disease prevention, of course, is paramount.

Uh having proper isolation of you know, if an animal got sick or even you know, rabies quarantine, things of that nature, proper HVAC systems that do not uh recirculate diseased air, uh, and a number of features like that that are included in modern uh animal shelters.

Uh this one is a little surprising uh to folks sometimes is to create a warm and welcoming environment.

Uh many uh animal shelters of the past were dark, damp, wet, loud, like they're not a place you'd really even want to go to.

So we're trying to be more like a retail store where somebody would actually want to go uh to the animal shelter and adopt, you know, find their new best friend.

Uh more opportunities to increase uh animal-human bond.

So within the design of modern animal shelters, there's get acquainted rooms and different spaces where you know the humans and the animals can interact.

We also think that the problem, the challenge of animal overpopulation has been said by organizations like HSUS will be overcome through sterilization, legislation, and education.

So, you know, what is responsible pet ownership like?

And is the animal spayed and neutered so it's not going to reproduce unwanted animals?

And so we think the new animal shelters should at least consider these points as a part of their program.

And last but not least, the staff.

Training new staff is expensive.

So we found that you don't have to spend a lot of money to have just thought carefully about the staff.

You know, where do they park?

Do they have a locker?

Do you know do they have the things that they need to properly care for the animals efficiently?

The needs assessment study itself had these main points to it.

One of the key factors is the human population.

Is it growing?

Is it declining in the uh maybe looking at a 10 or 20-year planning horizon?

Uh the building space program is probably the centerpiece of the document that lists every single room in the building, how many of those rooms do we need, how big is it, what are the features of it.

There's a chapter on site considerations because the site is very important for animal shelters, uh, some key features, and one thing that our needs assessments include is also statements about the staffing and the operating cost.

Because you can build an animal shelter for whatever capacity you wish, but if you don't have, you know, the capacity of care for care of animal shelters is more than just how many kennels do we have.

Do we have the uh human resources to care for the animals?

Do we have an ongoing uh resource financial resource to you know operate it uh for years year after year?

Because quite frankly, the true cost of ownership of an animal shelter is not the first cost, although we're going to talk about that here in a moment.

It's a staggering number, but it's actually if you take you know 10, 20 years, that number is actually a much higher number.

So diving into some of the the details, you know, we look at the human population of a city and the number of animals that come in to the city.

It's not a function of how many are in the city.

You could have a retirement committee uh community that has thousands of animals, but they don't present at the animal shelter because those people all you know care for their animals and you know they're they love their animals more than their children.

Not more than their grandchildren, but more than their children.

Uh so we look at your human population, we look at the number of animals that come in, and it's that ratio of the animal intake to human population that's the key factor.

And there's a national norm now, it used to be much higher, but it's about two to three percent.

And yours is about 2.58, so you're just right there in the national norm.

But what we're told is your human population is expected to go up significantly over the next 10, 20 years.

So when you're planning a new animal shelter, you can't really plan for today's animal intake.

You kind of have to look down the road.

And so that's what we've done.

Looking at the disposition of the animals.

Now I know you're not running your animal shelter, so this is somebody else's work.

But one of the key factors in modern animal shelters sheltering is the live release rate.

And there's a big push in the United States to increase the live release rate and not just you know, round up unwanted animals and euthanize them.

And so we look at of the numbers that we were provided from Penill County, uh, you know, the amount of animals that were adopted versus how many were returned to owner versus how many euthanized, and quite frankly, the numbers are all pretty good.

Uh so there's not really a complaint, you know, from that uh point of view.

Casting forward though, uh using our 2.58% animal intake ratio, and then looking at that future human population increase, we anticipate a lot more animals in the future.

So that's how we determine how many uh animal housing uh units to include in the building space program.

Another key feature of this is the average length of stay.

We need each animal to have a reasonable length of stay, but not excessive, because that's actually not helpful.

That's actually not good for the animal.

We don't actually know for sure what the average length of stay at the animals that came from Eloy.

We know how many, but we don't really know for sure exactly how long each one of those animals were there.

But it was estimated to be about 21 days.

That's a pretty reasonable stay.

Fourteen days is the point where many dog behavioralists will say dogs will go cage crazy, and and so you don't want to go way past that.

Um we felt pretty comfortable with what the staff and the uh others that gave us information from Penal County gave us.

The building space program, as I mentioned, is probably the uh centerpiece of the document, like how big of a building are we talking about, and uh we haven't included it in the in this presentation.

We just took the cover uh sheet or the summary page.

So administrative spaces like lobbies, break room, offices, uh spaces that humans would use, including a little education room.

Um we had uh 3,223 square feet, and you can see each of the categories there medical clinic, animal housing.

Animal housing usually represents a pretty good chunk of an animal shelter, and then all the support spaces needed.

So the total was about 10,000 square feet.

Uh the chapter on site, I didn't put a lot in here in the presentation.

Uh there is uh plan to reuse that site uh that was uh where the old shelter was, tear it down and build a new, more modern type of building there.

It doesn't really meet our criteria that we normally look for for visibility.

I kind of made a joke to the chief a while ago that we just assume it be on Main Street, because again, we're uh modern animal shelters want to be like a retail store.

We are selling slightly used or pre-owned pets, so we don't want to be at a uh you know a dead end by the sewage treatment plant or the city dump.

You know, we want to be visible.

But I think the current the proposed location is reasonably uh accessible and and suitable.

We don't know for sure how much property is is there.

We're pretty confident if we tore down the existing building, we could build a new shelter in that space.

Um but we we weren't commissioned to do a design a preliminary design, so we're just doing it based on you know our experience.

Uh the the next piece is about the staffing.

So since you're not currently operating a shelter, we have proposed a group of staff positions that we think would be appropriate for the uh operations.

Could you do it with one less staff?

Probably.

Um, but as I mentioned, and working in animal shelters is a very hard job.

And so this is the amount that we think is reasonable in a post-COVID world.

Uh we have included here some information that was provided by city staff on what it might cost to hire all these people, uh, a kind of a mid-range and a minimum uh range.

The other thing is just talking about the operating cost in general.

So the current arrangement with the penal county animal control is that there's a contract that's in place for them to pick up, take your animals.

The minimum amount, or at least the amount that was paid, I think in the 2024 was 75,000.

That's crazy low.

That's a very low number, but it's also they don't have the number of staff that they really need to pick up the animals that are in town, which I understand is actually part of the problem, is there's unmet need that that is a source of um some pain.

So if the that other officer was obtained, uh that might bring that contract to 150,000, and that would be more in line with what I would say the national norm, the cost per animal.

But it is important to look at the operating cost uh if you decide to build an animal shelter and don't discount the fact that you gotta have this hit your budget uh every year.

Uh in the needs assessment study that we issued, we had data from hundreds of animal shelters that we uh were saying it was about 350 to 600 dollars per animal.

But since then we've gone through in the last two years post-COVID, the cost per animal has gone up.

We we've been noticing it, but we actually did some data mining, and we're saying tonight, and it's on the slide, uh, it's really more like about, and we're actually going to change our needs assessment moving forward.

It's more like about 400 to 700 per animal.

That's particularly acute for shelters that have this small of a number of animals because you're gonna need a certain amount of staff, and you could you have done you know, 20 more animals, you're probably gonna need that many staff.

So you're you're I'm not being critical, but very small shelters are even harder to operate than larger ones.

And then the all-important, how much is this thing gonna cost?

So we we don't tend to tell people it's an exact number.

We we don't have a design, we don't have detailed construction plans to take bids.

We're just doing it based on a bunch of other animal shelters that we um have uh built, or that we were the architect uh to be built.

So uh in about the middle of the page there, you'll see on the low side 325 a square foot and the high side 425 a square feet.

And so we actually include in the needs assessment pictures of these other animal shelters that we chose to use as go by.

One of them was in Tucson, but it was quite a large facility, so the cost per square foot to build smaller shelters is actually higher than building you know larger buildings.

There's an economy of scale involved.

Uh besides the hard construction dollars, somewhere between 3.3 and 4.3 million dollars, we need to consider the soft costs.

So there's architectural, civil engineering, survey, soil tests, air balancing of the mechanical system because you don't want to leave that to the contractor.

You want to have a professional air balance company do it, uh furniture phones, computers, the whole uh thing, plus a contingencies is always smart to have a little contingency, and then we did include one year of escalation, and so that totaled about 4.1 to 5.3 million uh dollars is what we are saying that this might this 10,000 square foot facility might cost.

And that is the end of my formal remarks, but very glad to answer questions.

There's usually questions.

Thank you, sir.

Anyone on the right?

Sarah.

I have questions.

Sorry, Mayor.

Um I've got questions, but I think it's more you know, where we're going with and what we want to do.

Not so much to the presentation.

Presentation was very um very good.

And I appreciate you coming out this way.

Ryan said it shouldn't be two hours.

But thank you.

So I think you're I did the same thing.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um these can probably wait till the end.

How many shelters have you built in Arizona?

So we we're an architect, so we don't actually build them, but designs.

So we did the Humane Society for uh Southern Arizona in Tucson.

Uh we worked on Sierra Vista twice.

We worked on it, then we added on to it.

Uh Gila County, Western Arizona uh Humane Society and uh Lake Havasu.

Pima County, not the new one that they just built, but about 15 years ago.

And I think there's one more.

I'm I'm oh, page Arizona.

So right, almost in Utah, but it has not been built yet.

Another question, um this may not be for you, this may be otherwise why the other building wasn't considered for remodel as opposed to a brand new build.

Well, that's actually a good question.

And um that was not what we were commissioned to do was to do a study of an addition renovation, which we do do those.

And our um our gen, in fact, I've spoken at this at national conferences.

You know, can't you just reuse an existing building?

And the answer is yes, depends on the building.

And so we've tried to put uh animal shelters in old warehouses that honestly the quality of the building.

I mean, it didn't meet modern energy code, it didn't have enough windows in it, the roof was bad, the AC had to complete like it's not always a a good deal.

Western Arizona Humane Society like Have a Sue.

Uh they were going to build a new building and they were trying to raise the money for it, but the a city council person who was a friend of the organization, it was a nonprofit.

So uh they found a building that was an existing building that was 20 years old that they converted and it saved them about three million dollars.

So depending on the building, that is actually a pretty good strategy.

I did go by the staff that worked on the needs assessment uh study went to the uh the building, but I had not been in it personally, so I went to it today.

I think it's too small uh to meet your need.

Definitely um it only has 12 kennels.

The way they're configured is dogs are looking at each other across the aisle, and that's really not the way we would do it if we did a new shelter.

We'd try to uh build a what we call a bark wall so you know humans can see across it, it's a wall about this tall, but the dogs can't.

They know another dog's over there, but it still helps to block that view.

But it's single compartment housing, right?

And there's honestly just no we we can't just remodel that into the floors are sloped a certain way, it has trench drains, which we're not a big fan of.

But in one of the samples that we put in the needs assessment study in the back was Cleveland uh Mississippi.

They had a single building that was really awful, and we built a new dog building next door, literally it's a separate building, but it was 10 feet away.

And we could get the floor slopes right, dogs weren't looking at each other, it was two compartment housing, and then we took the old building and converted it to include you know, cat housing, because sort of a similar thing.

It it didn't even have an accommodations for other species.

So it was an addition renovation.

Uh, and in that case, it was less expensive than building a new.

They when they hired us, they were going to build a new shelter.

They thought they had enough money to do it, and they didn't, and so we did an addition renovation.

We did that, we've done that many times, and and that is something that could be studied.

It just isn't a part of this study.

Right.

Okay.

And I just asked that because I mean, you probably got the history from I guess Captain Jerome now.

We've got some history where our shelter progressed to where it was before.

Is it him or me?

Oh, sorry.

Okay.

Um our animals used to be housed at the sewer pond in outdoor cages before that was built about 25 years ago.

Oh, yeah.

So I've been to a lot of really awful conditions.

Yeah, it was awful.

And even the one we have now wasn't the best, but comparable.

And I the reason I ask about the building is is we remodeled our police department.

That building was at least, I think 60 years old, if not more.

Mind you, the part I worked in was torn down, but that's why I asked about that block building.

Um, I used to manage that department, and that the people that worked in that building, and so I'm aware of the challenges with that building.

Um, but well, again, we didn't study it, but um, because we've done this exact same idea as build a new dog building because it's would be probably impossible to remodel that and then convert and then gut that and basically revamp it into something else.

It really gets down to the site.

So the the there's a fence around a perimeter fence around that that I think that particular fenced area is a little too small for what you need to achieve, at least if you're gonna look at a 10 and 20-year planning horizon, which we would strongly recommend.

But who owns all that other land around there?

Could we get another 20 or 30 feet to move that uh perimeter fence out and get a little bit more site footprint there?

It might be possible.

And I think this goes to our community.

Um with the growth comes new homes, new families, and hopefully a different mindset than the current mindset.

Where are they moving from?

Are they moving from California or are they moving from Mississippi?

Because what we find around the country is animal welfare is not quite as homogenous as you might think.

And so we find places like Texas where I live, uh is booming.

I mean, people are moving there from New York and California and their mindset about animal welfare because Texas, frankly, has been a little behind uh the curve, or at least according to Best Friends Animal Society.

We're a state that needs to be targeted.

And California's not doing so well anymore either.

We're doing a lot.

We work on San Bernardino, California.

It's $60 million animal shelter, so they're they're working on it.

It's a mess across this nation, but thank you.

If anybody else has anything.

On my left, Joe.

Yes, I just have a few questions.

Um, so one of the I I really like your design.

Um, but one of the things I didn't see is do you have any kind of system or area designated for animals that are not dogs and cats?

And would you recommend it?

I don't think that we included square footage in there for other species, but we have done that in many, many shelters.

Uh different depending on the community.

Sometimes there's rabbits, there's chickens, there's pocket, you know, lizards and all kinds of things that we have.

Yeah, sometimes but I don't I don't recall, and I apologize for not having this 60-page document memorized.

Oh, that's okay.

Um other animals, the space dedicated is zero, but usually for a shelter this size, you'd be talking about 80 square feet, so it's not gonna bust the budget or whatever.

Yeah.

Because we we are situated um along the freeway, we have a lot of travelers.

A lot of times people just use that opportunity to abandon their pets no matter what they are, and so uh that was what uh where my training was.

Um, you said the overall um estimated budget was five million dollars.

That's just for the shelter, right?

That's just to build the building, yes.

And the soft costs that are needed to make that happen.

Do you know from any of the other uh shelters that you've built and stuff?

What are their annual costs to run a shelter similar to the size that yeah, the operating costs that we're showing you in the needs assessment study and that I just talked about updating that number a little bit is from actual clients?

We took I don't know, 50 animal shelter clients in the last two years, and since COVID, the cost per animal has gone up.

The number of staff that's need, you know, used to be a certain ratio of if you had a thousand animal uh shelter that had a thousand animal intake or whatever you knew about how many staff was pretty common, that's gone up also.

Well, yeah, because when I was reviewing your your presentation, you uh also mentioned staff working, the estimation was like eight to five um Monday through Friday.

Is that average or because would you no ma'am?

To be to be honest, we find a lot of uh uh government shelters, particularly if they're under the police department, they tend to run eight to five.

But honestly, for adoption, it'd be better to be open even just maybe Tuesdays and Thursdays till 6 30 and maybe half a day Saturday, but you wouldn't have to open it eight.

I mean, you can literally be closed on Monday so that you could be open on Saturday, and that would generally increase adoption, but not increase your uh annual operating cost.

That's a lesson learned from uh watching a lot of other groups.

And um you had mentioned that uh most of the most of these uh animal shelters that you have built have been for municipalities.

Is a municipality running the animal shelter, or do they work with like nonprofits, or do they work with uh humane societies and areas like that that could actually run out of the that's a a very good question.

I could do a whole uh book on this.

Uh so uh of our clientele, it's about 50 percent, either counties or cities, government uh entities is our client in building the shelter, and about half are some kind of a nonprofit, SBCA, main society, there's actually uh other terminologies that are used, pet resource centers.

Um of those within that, they're not just city run and nonprofit run.

There is about six different models that are different joint venture arrangements.

Um I'd say most of the eastern and northern, eastern, uh there's a lot of humane societies that are doing the heavy lifting, and they have contracts with the government agency to you know pick up the animals and uh care for them.

Uh sometimes they have the animal control officers on their salary, sometimes the city has the animal control officers, and they literally just deliver the animal to the shelter, and then it it becomes their the it's just sheltering services as part of the the um contract.

Uh but there's also uh quasi relationships where you know the humane society is doing the work and there's no transfer of money, they're just doing a really nice thing for the citizens of their community.

And if you have the um uh nonprofit, you know, the charitable donations within the people that live there that that want to do that, that's fine, but that's not very often.

So there's usually some type of um you know cooperation, but there's also ones where it's completely government run.

There's no friends of group involved at all, but there's also plenty that there's the government agency owns and operates the building, they make the decisions about everything, and then the friends of group, friends of the animal shelter group, raise money to do better.

Because the taxpayers are only gonna want you it really just depends on your constituents.

If they you know how they believe about animal welfare.

So this model where the friends of group goes and finds private money, maybe a dog got hit by a car.

I mean, there's thousands of scenarios, and you know, the government-run shelter has a maximum spend.

Like if it's going to be more than $500, we're that we're gonna euthanize that animal.

And the friends of group will go find private money and we'll nurse that animal back to health, like you would your own uh like your own animal.

So that model, I think lets the public that want to help and do you know, help the city do better.

It gives them an avenue to do that, but it the city's not giving over control because volunteers and animal shelters is a double-edged sword.

We love our volunteers, but there are times when it's a little over the top, it's a little overbearing.

So be careful with that.

Councilmember Belinda is also going to jump in there.

So if you look for like a dollar threshold of how much it's gonna look at, I think it was estimated in the report you're probably looking at somewhere between 415,000 to 450,000 just in those six positions.

That doesn't include the purchase of vehicles, maintenance of vehicles, maintenance of the building, upgrades to the building, as well as food and other costs.

So with all that including the other.

Yeah, you're probably looking operational, probably six fifty, seven hundred thousand annually for this operation.

Yeah.

So I the way I see this is the only way it can actually be effective and successful is to have that nonprofit partnership.

They could do the food drives, they could do the adoption days, they just kind of all this stuff that are dedicated staff or our police department that really don't have the time devoted to most joint ventures or whatever the uh relationship is, uh, we find that is the best of both worlds in most communities, but it honestly gets down to the people involved.

It's the constituents that want to vote for a certain level of you know what what's this what's my taxes going to pay for, and then are there citizens that uh want to go the extra mile and that will be of service?

Do keep in mind if you go that route, and I like that route, that whoever those citizens are today might not be there in 15 years.

That changes over time, and you won't have any control over it.

Yep.

Thank you.

I have a question.

Uh you used a baseline of the Pinhalt County today and what they're spending in $75,000 we're getting them.

Um, and you were talking about if we would build a facility playing 10, 15 years from now.

With the population growth in Pinell County, I would guess that Pinell County is gonna have an issue as well with space and so forth.

And so the question has $75,000, which is the real deal for us, may not be such a good deal ten years from now.

And that's exactly right.

And so we've done a lot of studies where there was a whole lot of jurisdictions, and all the other jurisdictions thought the other jurisdictions were gonna subsidize their and and the reality is it should be that I'll just take um what was that name of that county?

It's in New Jersey, there were 22 cities, and uh three or four of them were doing a a lion's share of of the lifting, Cumberland County.

And but as soon as the actual cost got proportion, okay.

Well, there's a thousand animals coming from there and three hundred from there, and you just said, okay, well, I mean we're gonna take this cost, and those that get 300 animals, your fair share is and it's just proportional is that amount, and they're like, okay, I'm out.

Just like that.

And I've seen that over and over and over again.

So you are right, as Penell County continues to grow, they're gonna have challenges as well.

And there could be a point where the contract amount that you're looking at now that I'm saying that's a really good deal three years from now, they might be building a new shelter and somebody's gonna analyze their cost and go, hey, we're only chart charging Eloy X.

It really needs to be Y.

That could happen to you.

It really should be that each community should pay what their cost to do their animals because it's the unwanted animals of that group of people that's the problem.

And if they were responsible and got their pet altered and they wouldn't have as many unwanted animals, the cost to up own and operate it would be smaller, but most citizens don't see it that way.

So your opinion, the joint collaborations between multiple entities is probably the way to go.

At least the city of Eloy and a nonprofit that's within your borders.

Now, if you want to go outside of that, like there's another community not too far from here that we don't have a signed contract, but we probably will be doing a needs assessment study for.

Yeah, there's some economy of scale to be.

But uh I will tell you that uh forging new alliances from scratch is it's not easy.

We're working on a uh joint powers uh uh authority in California, uh not too far from San Bernardino.

Um it's called the Inland Empire uh animal care uh resource center of the inland empire.

It's five cities that were all taking their animals to a humane society for 30 years, and the humane society wrote them all a letter and said, Hey, effective July 1 of 2025, we're not taking your animals anymore.

Ah, so just in case Audra is listening, it's not a rub with Pennell County.

I'll say Panaw County's doing the best that they can with what they have.

From the stats that we see it and the price you're paying, it's we're not getting what we want to pay for.

We we may have one officer when we've asked for two.

Yeah.

At part-time officer at best.

Um the problem is that accounts for the animals that have been picked up.

That's not accounting for the animals people are told to let go.

People are told to will come out later, and then animals disappear.

These are the animals that we're actually accounting for.

And I know for a fact that it happens more often than not that there are animals running around daily that nothing happens to.

Yeah.

Um County does a great job.

They have a nonprofit that works that's with their shelter.

Oh, really?

Yes.

Um, it's kind of like their own nonprofit.

Um, but I also see a problem with that is is the funding, like you mentioned earlier.

You have it's up to donations.

Um I think it's great if we manage our shelter and have a nonprofit work with us.

And that's just because when personalities may not get along, things could go really sideways really quick.

And so us managing that shelter, um, at least we know we have our building and we have the capabilities, and we can always go find another nonprofit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I uh one thing is not written in the report, I'll just share with you anecdotally of uh having observed a lot of different cities and nonprofits.

If you want control, you should have your own shelter.

Then you'll have control.

When you're at a contract with somebody else, you're just not gonna have that kind of control.

However, if you want control, generally speaking, you're gonna pay for it.

It's probably gonna cost more.

It's kind of a trade-off.

Okay, anybody else?

Go ahead.

Have you seen any successful scenarios where um the city kind of has their own officers, but they're bringing the animals to, say, you know, a Penell County shelter or something like that?

Yeah.

Absolutely.

You would probably need to renegotiate your contract to where it's just sheltering services and not the field services components.

That's actually pretty common in the uh Atlantic along the East Coast and up in the Northeast, that's a pretty common scenario.

Okay.

Anything further so we have to move along.

I could probably go find I we wrote a whole report about the six different methods.

I could probably go find that.

I think that was for New Aces County, Texas, Corpus Christi, that we wrote wrote them all out.

Uh it was the only time that we'd wrote it out.

I'm sure I could probably go find that if you're interested in it to Brian.

Right, sir.

Thank you for your time.

All right, thank you.

Who's next?

Chief or uh Captain Jerome, did you guys have anything you wanted to say regarding the study or does council have any questions for staff?

Yes, we do.

So, yeah.

See if I can raise this so I don't get Michelle Lawland up there.

Good evening, uh, mayor, vice mayor, city council, city staff, city manager.

Uh first of all, thank you, Mike, for that presentation, very informative.

I appreciate the working data working with us collaboratively to get that report done.

Um, I brought uh Captain Brian Juan up here with me as well to answer any historical questions they may I may not have the knowledge of since I've only been here uh uh under two years.

Um I wasn't here when the animal shelter was in in operation.

So with that, I'm welcome to answer any questions you might have.

I see like pre-pages, guys.

Okay.

All right, well, thank you.

Um I think you know what we saw in the presentation is you know the gold standard for us.

It's obviously probably a bit out of our budget right now.

Um might not be in the future as we go.

Um having said that are there hybrid solutions, such as the one I just last mentioned that we've explored and kind of looked at where we could renegotiate our deal with Pinau County or possibly another neighboring shelter that we like and think could do a good job and housing animals where we have some control until we can afford you know a building into Sapphet like this where we can actually pick up the animals we need and respond to calls off the street, some sort of something that's in between this gold standard that we'd love to do one day, and something that we could possibly pay for now that is improved situation.

Yes, um, there is some alternatives.

You know, one thing we have to look at as a city, how do we best serve the citizens of the city?

How do we best serve the citizens when it comes to animal services, animal shelters, animal control?

Um thing I would look at definitely be look at how come we don't have the last shelter?

Why did we move away from animal services and we're sheltering here in the city of Eloy?

What were some of the pitfalls?

What were some of the issues at that time?

Why did we seek out services to county?

Um was it operational costs?

Was it our capability of intaking the number of animals in the city to properly care for them, whether it be medical nonprofit groups to support that effort through rescues, etc.

How why do we move from that?

With that now, as we look at the possibility of futures of shelter of a shelter in the future, what is our goal?

What are we trying to accomplish?

Uh what I would like to see is what exactly does a uh a suitable animal services program look like for the city of Eloy?

Are we looking at um uh euthanasia rates?

Are we trying to go into a no-kill facility?

Are we looking at um bringing up our adoption rates?

Um are we looking at um what it costs to properly care for those animals?

Are we looking at the the time of stay in our facilities and the ability to adopt them out?

What hurts us as well is our geographical location as far as working with nonprofits.

I do have a little bit of experience in running an animal shelter.

My last police department, I was the animal services manager for over a year.

Uh we did have a community of about 185,000 people, 40 square miles.

We did have a larger facility.

Uh, with that, even with the number, and I know Mike mentioned it, with having staff and volunteers and numerous nonprofits rescues available in our resource, it was still a difficult operation to get housing proper um placement for animals because of the number of intake that we would get, and also the operating cost.

Um recidivism of employees as well.

So what I would look at is how we tr what are we trying to accomplish and what that's going to cost?

Uh we talked about control and cost.

Um if we want control, we want it a certain way, it's going to cost us.

Some of the things I did explore and think about and have discussed briefly with my captains and also the city manager as well was how do we best enhance our current situation?

Can we work better with Panao County to enhance what we currently do?

Do we explore options as far as one-time money's as far to expand their capacity at the current animal shelter?

Right now, if we did go to an animal control officer that's employed by the city of Eloy, that can respond specifically to calls for service in the city of Edoy.

My understanding is that we could only um intake approximately 30 animals per month at the animal shelter if we had our own.

Um 30 hours, and I know the vice mayor is shaking her head up there.

Um we would probably pick up 30 animals within a couple weeks.

And the average stay being approximately estimated at 21 days, a lot of those animals would still be in the shelter as we pick up other animals.

So, where do we take them?

Um so I would like to look at maybe some options.

How do we enhance our current agreement with Panao County?

How do we enhance that?

Is it one-time monies from our um our budget to help them expand their capacity at the animal shelter?

Um, and then maybe those numbers of 30 or a maximum of 30 animals intake in 30 days, maybe that's some number that we can increase.

Um, but I think yeah, I would look at that.

And um, there is other alternatives, but I think we really needed to find what we're trying to accomplish, what's that gonna look like, and what's gonna best serve the citizens of Eloy?

Thank you, Chief.

Um I think you hit all five questions that I had that they weren't really questions, but they were statements to saying points of interest.

Where do we need to go with this and you know which route, you know?

Is it the left, the right, or down the middle, right?

So I don't think we're gonna solve that in the next 10 minutes, but at least we've got the um a start on it, and it's been long overdue.

So thank you.

Yes, sir.

You're welcome.

Chief, could you make a guess of how much time your department actually spends on animal control?

The time we actually spend, it all depends on what kind of call comes in for service for us.

Some calls are immediately uh transferred to uh Panao County directly, and or other calls we necessitate the time of officers responding to that call.

Will it be a vicious animal and injury that's involved or something like that?

Um so it really kind of varies.

Um there may be some weeks where we spend an hour or two on an animal call.

There may be a week goes by we spend no time on animal call.

So it's really hard to estimate, yes.

Okay, Chief, to answer your question, what I feel our goal is is to be able to have 24 hour seven services available to the city citizens of Emoi when it comes to dealing with animals that are either um causing a danger or causing a danger to themselves, or could possibly cause a danger to uh the community.

So with all due respect, a lot of the times the people that we hire to service to provide this service for the citizens of Eloy are not here when the majority of these incidents happen on the weekends in the evening.

A lot what I've heard a lot of complaints about is people getting up early in the morning when it's cool to go out running and be chased by vicious dogs.

At that point, what do they do?

They call the police department.

They can't call Pinao County because Pineau County isn't going to come out and get them.

Pinaw County only serves as uh operation where you can file a complaint and they will come out and investigate.

I don't think that's serving the citizens of Eloy.

I think the citizens of Eloy need someone that they can call that is gonna give rapid response.

Um I know our police department can't handle constant calls about animals under control and stuff.

So I think we do need dedicated people on the staff that can be able to service those needs.

Um whether those are people that come from Pinell County that are dedicated to do that for the cities citizens of Eloy, or whether we hire our own, you know, we that's what what I feel is we're being negligent in, is that we're not being able to serve those when they actually need the service.

And to address that, uh, Council Bomber Galendo, um you are correct.

If we need 24-7 um ability to respond to those calls, we're gonna have to have animal control officers, animal services, um, technicians who can immediately respond to that.

But that means uh you know, having staff on duty 24-7, whether it be two shifts a day, three shifts a day to be able to respond to that.

Um if there's truly dedicated to animal calls.

Um officers can respond to animal calls in the event of an attack or vicious animal.

But I'll be very honest as well.

Sometimes we only have three officers working on duty.

Um if there's a critical incident that's going on, uh, whether it be a traffic collision on 9-10 or on one of our surface streets, or a serious call that's in process that that's it it's happening that requires all our officers to be there, whether it be with uh mutual aid of DPS or Panao County Sheriff, um we may not be able to break free to hand on animal call at one o'clock in the morning, two o'clock in the morning, ten o'clock at night.

Um but to have staff that's totally dedicated to responding to animal calls, then we're gonna have to have the ability and capacity, personnel capacity to be able to respond to that.

Can I respond to that?

Yes, yes, so just like we have you know, officers that are on duty but have special tasks, but if they're not performing that special task, then they can help do other duties.

Is is that feasible?

Is it feasible to have someone to say, okay, well, you're our animal control officer, but if we have to pull you away for a shooting or accident or something like that, you're gonna work this shooting or accident and stuff.

But if you're not doing that and there's an animal control call that comes in, that's your priority.

And currently that is our our our protocol as well.

Um we do respond out, but we do have those those call types.

If it doesn't amount to an emergency as far as uh a vicious animal abyant or actively chasing somebody, if it's a report of a serial walking down the street, we're not gonna uh assign that to an officer, we won't forward that call to animal services.

Um so the officer will not go out, and and our officers are technically not trained in um picking up dogs and and doing that kind of stuff unless it's a serious event.

Um so yes, answer that question.

Um the officers are would not be available for those type calls unless it amounts to like a vicious dog an attack or an injury.

Um and just one quick comment.

I'm I congratulate you on doing the vaccination clinics, and I every time I get calls like what's going on in the city of Inboy, there's cars going all around City Hall.

And then I find out it's one of your vaccination clinics.

So thank you for doing that.

Well, thank you.

We work in collaborative with the county to get those done.

And add one thing the captain will draw any of and we also respond out to tethering if it falls outs outside of our municipal code of tethering.

So we will respond out to those reports as well.

Yes.

Okay.

Um the tethering, because we know county won't do that anymore, because even though our contract says that they will follow our um city codes, they're not doing that work for us.

So our code enforcement has to do that as well.

Um what I would I mean, obviously, if Brian Wright will give us five or six, seven million dollars.

Good luck.

Uh right?

I know.

I don't even look up.

We won't even look.

He's like this, this study was amazing, and I'm like, oh, this is the Cadillac study.

We know that the problem is not ropes and ranch.

We know Toltec has some problems, employee proper has the biggest problems.

That is the need for animal control.

Um I would say we need a minimum of two officers on our own, um, paid for by the city, because those people, just like our cops, build relationships with our community.

They build relationships with our citizens.

They help those citizens to make sure that they can keep their animals, they can um educate them better.

We were promised education.

We're not getting that.

We're not getting what this city agreed with the county that they would give us.

We only paid $75,000 because county can't hire people, whether that's their choice.

It's not because people aren't applying because we know they are, it's just they're not hiring them.

Um that's why we only paid $75,000 is because county didn't have enough people to give us.

Um we've had animals attacked by neighbors' dogs.

Um cops will show up, county will come out on Monday.

That's not acceptable in my opinion.

That's a safety and the security of our citizens.

Because yes, that's their pet, but who's to say that that dog wasn't going to attack that person as well?

We don't know that.

But what we're currently have, it's not acceptable.

We can contract with the county to take our animals, but I I find it odd that they would only take 30 a month from us.

But again, that's where those relationships are built with our citizens and we get animals home, not having to go to the shelter.

But it happens.

But that's why our kill rate was so high.

And that's why they shut down animal control here because we killed too many dogs.

But that's because of the citizens in this community who don't care about their animals.

It's easier to go find another puppy from a backyard breeder than it is to go claim your dog who they most likely wouldn't charge them to come get them.

Anyway, um I we still need to remodel the shelter to a certain extent because there are gonna be those call-outs.

I would like to see on call animal control again.

We used to have it, but the city would take every benefit to our animal control officers away, so our animal control officer said, if you're not gonna give me a benefit, I'm not gonna do it anymore for you.

I would like to see on call animal control.

I would like to see our shelter remodeled just to the point to where if we have to um keep animals overnight because county's not there, they're only there.

Bankers hours, if not even that, um, then we would take them the next day.

But we also have to be able to put animals to sleep because we know that in emergency situations, they have to have access to the drugs for that.

Um but until we get the money, I would say we do the hybrid thing.

There is a gnat up here.

It's bugging who is it?

Um I would like to see the hybrid, at least for now.

We work on getting our own animal control officers.

We're gonna have to pay for it.

They're gonna have to make decent money.

Casa Grand struggles, we won't be able to contract with them.

They can't even get their own animals out, let alone taking on our dogs.

Um, but then those officers will build those relationships, and we'll have a bigger chance of getting animals back home, or and not even ending up at the shelter is what we hope.

But that's what I would like to see, and I would like to see.

Yeah, we can't do this anymore.

This community needs more than what we're getting.

It's not acceptable.

County does an amazing job, they don't kill dogs.

And we see, I see it every day where they're trying to get dogs out of the shelter that have been there over a year.

That's unacceptable.

You're going to have to put animals to sleep.

But that I digress because I could talk about this forever.

And you know, managing a shelter for a year, I can't imagine from a community if it's anything like the culture here.

I can't even imagine.

I mean, we see it.

Maricopa County, even Panaw County, but thank you.

Quick, quick, quick.

I just want to support what Michelle said, what Joanne said.

I think um our takeaways here, we need to give staff some direction.

Um, and if I'm hearing the group correctly, we need to expand on that hybrid solution with some sort of you know, close to 24-7 response times.

Um, maybe that means renegotiating with Penel.

Maybe in addition, that means remodeling or creating some sort of smaller building, or maybe that needs bring means bringing in another shelter in addition to Panel.

Um, whatever that means, I think we need to work on that now.

Thank you.

To your point, Councilwoman.

I really think what everything the way everything seems to be pointing here is first once we renegotiate with Panel and see where that brings us.

A renegotiation with them and options, explore options with them.

Because once we know from a renego renegotiation standpoint from them, we know what leverage we have to build a shelter, remodel the shelter, or get offices.

So I think we gotta take these step by step, and step one will be let's get with Panel and find out what options we can get from them, and then we can explore right down the line.

So does my council feel that would be a good direction for staff to start with the renegotiation?

Go ahead.

My only comment is is they have an on-call.

They have one officer on call for the entire county.

They don't come out for anything other than person attacks.

Otherwise, we'll see you next week.

What I mean with the renegotiation is to find out can we give to them if we were to have our shelter?

Let's find out all the options.

Because with not knowing the options, you really don't know where you can go.

Yeah, I've exactly I think maybe you put together a little uh study group, include people from now, can I have people from here and say, okay, guys, you are think tank, you guys get together and start pushing things in the wall and come up with how would you solve this problem?

Get down to the county.

So it's not that and see what they come up with.

Uh see what options uh between the joint effort is it's uh it's not negotiations, just okay.

Hey, think tank.

Okay, here's the problem.

Uh what is take whatever sticks to the wall.

I mean, it could be a hairbreed idea, but come up with something and see what comes out of it.

You never know, and maybe there's an approach there.

Well, stakeholders should be involved in that, maybe like the city, Panell County, and any rescue groups we have here within the city.

Maybe not profit.

Mayor, really quick.

Um correct me if I'm wrong, especially to the the season council members here.

Wasn't our original contract with Panau County was to give us a full-time animal control officer that was gonna come too that was gonna come and provide that type of service.

So I think one of the questions that needs to be asked to Penaw County is why are we not giving that service that we were contracted we would get and that we've been paying for?

Yeah, that's the purpose of renegotiate this whole thing with them.

Because they're proving to us what they can and can't provide, and we can prove to them.

Yeah, we're paying for sure.

You guys are interested, Matt?

But setting up somebody to uh speed at this?

Yeah.

No, I mean I'll I'll work with the police chief and Captain Jerome on putting together a kind of how we're gonna assess this moving forward.

You guys pretty much answered all my questions, Mayor and Council, regarding our next steps, because that was my biggest thing.

It's we have the last study that was completed back in 2023.

If we keep moving this along, it's gonna be another three years before we're back here discussing the same exact thing again.

Uh so I'd like to definitely get this moving forward.

We'll figure out whether it's a hybrid approach or how we're gonna handle it and renegotiate with the county, and then from there we'll bring back the potential options to council for consideration so uh we can get this squared away.

Let's throw a date on this because we're not gonna sit here open-ended.

Yeah.

Let's throw a date on this.

This is the end of March, April, May, June.

Let's say by July 30th.

See if you can get everybody together and come up with some options by July 30th or the end of July, and we'll we'll take it forward from that.

Are you good with that, Chief?

Of this year, Mayor.

I was quite clarifying this year, okay.

July 30th, 2026.

Okay.

All right.

Anyone else anything for Dr.

Gavel?

I'd like to thank everybody who came tonight.

I'd like to thank our consultant, Chief, Captain, for being here.

And thank you, uh, Council, for showing up and your input as usual.

We're gonna take a 10 minute and then we'll come back for the uh regular meeting.

Thank you.

Thank you.