Okay, I'll go ahead and call to order November's uh meaning for the Indianapolis or for Community Affairs Committee.

We have one thing on our docket tonight.

It's to hear about proposal number 331, 2025, which approves an additional appropriation totaling 710,000 and a decrease of 47,8489 in the 2025 budget for animal care and control services, animal care services in the consolidated county general and city cumulative funds for the purposes of funding personnel costs, additional spay and neuter bills, medical supplies and service costs.

Before I turn it over to you, Director, I'd like to go ahead and have the counselors around me uh introduce themselves.

I'll start on the left.

Thank you, Madam Vice President.

Derek Hahill, District 23.

Uh thank you very much.

Vob Ossilly, uh District 12.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Nick Roberts, District 4.

Thank you, Madam Vice President.

Kristen Jones, District 18.

Thanks, Madam Chair, and good evening, everyone.

Keith Gray's District 9 on the Indianapolis East side.

Thank you so much, everybody.

And I am Allie Brown.

I represent District 10.

So, Director, would you like to go ahead and tell us about what's going on at the shelter?

Yeah, so I've got James Finnlays in here with me tonight to go over our fiscal.

And then I have an update just of um shelter things and my kind of 120 days in review.

So just let me know what order you guys want to hear that in, and I can proceed.

If you want to go ahead and start with per if I guess the proposal first, then we'll follow up to talk about what you've done.

Absolutely.

All right.

Um thank you for everybody here tonight.

And just a brief summary of the different elements of this fiscal is an additional 120,000 dollars for personnel cost overages, an additional 90,000 for supplies.

Uh five five hundred thousand dollars for uh character three, so our professional services for spaying and neutering.

And uh we identified 47,489 reserves to transfer.

And overall, therefore I we identified overtime uh some outbreaks we had earlier, as well as just primarily spaying neuter cost overages.

Okay.

So some of the things we're going to be changing, some of the positive impacts we will be having is we're still actively pursuing full-time veterinarian coverage as well as uh contract vets to either come in part-time or full-time, as well as uh we are looking to get more medical supply vendors on fixed contracts, and that includes Alonco, who we recently had a very successful event with.

They had some vets volunteer their time, and we are going to in the works to launch a shelter program with them where we would receive some discounts anywhere from 10% up to 75% on certain medicines of theirs, which is we're very excited about.

And then um we're also pursuing local foundation grants uh for spay and neuter and vent services.

So awesome.

I'll turn it over to Amanda.

Unless we're yeah, I mean, do you guys have any questions?

Counselors, do we have any questions on the budget uh position so far?

Counselor Kay.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Uh just can I I guess I've heard two different things uh in the the breakdown of this.

Uh so not not from you but separately.

I had been told that the uh the largest chunk of this money was due to the uh the cat virus outbreak, but you're saying it's spay and neuter.

Can you clarify?

Uh spay and neuter costs have gone way, way up uh in the last two years.

I think we're paying well over double for per surgery for both cats and dogs.

And uh the outbreak had more direct costs related to like the actual supplies and personal protection protective equipment uh which one's more like what this is just a three of the spay and neuter overages are the area.

Thank you.

I guess that my my comment on that, and I know we're not there yet, but we are rapidly approaching, would be to reiterate what I've said before that when we get to the new shelter, and I hope that we are not constantly at capacity and waiv fees that I hope that we will do some benchmarking to try to make those fees set uh competitively with I think uh the the donut counties uh in particular, but based on our own costs, so that we're not taking money out of the general fund, but in fact uh taking care of this because I I appreciate that the costs have gone up since we've had that, but I mean this is this is a good chunk of change, and then it based on what you're saying, Spain neuter, it's not gonna go down.

So I think we need to find a a more permanent solution.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Counselor.

Anyone else have questions on this junk?

Counselor Gibson, would you like to introduce yourself?

Sorry, Ron Gibson, District 8.

Thank you.

Okay, if there's no other questions on this part, you can go ahead and uh give us a 120-day update.

That'd be awesome.

Yeah, so I just wanted to bring it, and I think you guys may have a copy.

Um, I'm just gonna read it straight from here.

And if you have any questions, just let me know.

Do we have to vote on the previous one?

We do.

We can either do it right now or we can wait until after the first time.

Okay, thank you.

Sorry.

We're waiting.

Okay.

Okay.

So I just want to start off.

Our volunteer hours have been extended.

Um, they are until 8 p.m.

We do still truly value and appreciate the work our volunteers do and recognize that they are a vital part of our shelter.

That said, we must maintain a safe supervised environment at all times to protect volunteers, staff, and animals.

We do plan to hold a second meeting with volunteers in December, and we'll get active feedback from them on what their stances are, um any challenges they're having, and I will get that date to everyone as soon as I figure that out.

Um, we are also happy to announce that on 1110, November 10th, we sent out new volunteer orientation material to over 800 applicants that have been waiting.

Um so that's super exciting for us.

With those materials out, we fully expect to see our volunteer numbers and hours increase in the next coming months.

Uh, we have hired a full-time volunteer coordinator.

He is now 45 days in, and he is here with us tonight, also if you have any questions.

Our shelter building officially closes at 7 p.m.

Volunteers are allowed in the building until 8 p.m.

Monday through Friday, five days a week, um, when our volunteer coordinator is present.

This is a consistent message that's been given to our volunteers by myself and the volunteer coordinator on multiple occasions, along with the reasoning behind that.

It is generally easier for people to come in on the weekends, you know, throughout the day, so you get more traffic during those times.

So we wanted the hour the later hours through the week.

Uh, the this is an accommodation that goes above our standard operating hours and exceeds the staffing availability we are required to maintain.

For safety of animals, the volunteers themselves and the volunteers cannot be in the building unsupervised.

Um, it is best practice among animal municipal shelters nationwide to not allow unsupervised volunteer access for the reasons stated below.

Examples of those risks include dog fights or bites requiring emergency response, unsupervised access poses risk of injury, dog altercations or exposure to quarantined animals.

Our union staff are also not allowed in our building if there's no supervisors or management.

Uh medication and quarantine protocols, especially for diseases such as parvo, upper rustatory, panluke, those require oversight.

And we also house controlled substances.

Um, most animal municipal shelters do, um, such as euthanasia solutions, sedatives, and controlled pain medications that could be used in humans as well.

Um, our team has also been working significant overtime, uh, which we'll get to why here in a little bit, but they have been working significant overtime is experiencing compassion fatigue and burnout.

Those are both documented high-risk conditions and sheltering fields.

Extended shifts would lead to later um later in the evening would lead to reduced staff retention and job satisfaction, increase the likelihood of mistakes in animal care due to the fatigue, and violate reasonable expectations for work-life balance for them.

Dogs also require predictable quiet periods each evening to relax and decompress.

Studies in shelter animal welfare show that excessive late-night activity raises cortisol levels, which is stress hormone, and negatively affects behavioral health.

Dogs that are not allowed downtime show higher rates of kennel stress behaviors, pacing, barking, barrier frustration, and self-injury.

Extending activity until 9 p.m.

would keep dogs stimulated when they should be winding down, which interferes with the natural circadian rhythm rhythms, makes reactivity and anxiety worse during the next day, and can contribute to long-term stress-related illnesses such as GI upset and weakened immune systems.

The pros of extending hours until 9 p.m.

or in general would be more potential dog walks, enrichment benefit, more volunteer opportunities, and the cons of that is the increased stress due to lack of quiet and settling time, volunteers on site unsupervised and an increased chance of handling errors or dog fights without staff oversight, requires staff staying late, leading to burnout, and would interfere with feeding, cleaning, or nighttime kennel routines.

Another update is we have hired a dog and enrichment or dog and cat enrichment coordinators.

These are both new positions, ensure lower stress levels in dogs and cats and work to lower stress levels.

Our dog emergency work coordinator evaluates each dog for behavior concerns, and she also creates enrichment plans for our already stressed dogs.

And the cat enrichment coordinator evaluates cat concerns and medical concerns for placement and enrichment.

We also have opened up to our public our doggy day out program in early October.

That program allows members of the community.

This used to be only a volunteer-based program.

We opened that up to the public, so now the community gets to sign up where they can come in and take a dog out for a day.

Generally it's a five-hour period.

They're able to come in and take up to six dogs out per day.

We have six spots open, allowing six dogs to get out.

The program reduces stress, allowing dogs outside time outside of their kennels, gets them into the community for us to better evaluate their behavior, and also allows dogs time to decompress outside of a shelter setting, and that would help where if there were longer stays needed for animals that weren't getting out quickly.

Our shelter stats up to date, or as of now.

Our 2024 intake for as of October 31st, 2024 was 6,855.

Our 2025 intake as of October 31st was 7,249.

That's 394 more animals have been taken in compared to this time last year.

With that, our euthanasia rate as of 1031-24 was 1,049, and our euthanasia rate as of 1031 25 is 912.

That's 137 fewer animals that have been euthanized this year compared to this time last year.

Our adoptions are up 12% compared to last year, with rescues and transfers up to nearly 30%.

There are also more IACS animals in foster homes, and more families are receiving help through our Indy CARES program, which keeps animals out of the shelter in the first place.

It's a diversion program.

The average length of stay in animals has dropped from 24 days to 20.

These improvements demonstrate the that more animals are moving through the shelter system more quickly and fewer are dying or being euthanized.

Our managed intake.

We ended our emergency intake only on September 2nd.

So part of the managed intake, when I first started, we were operating on emergency intake only, which meant officers had to call in and get approval before they could bring anything in.

Managed intake allows shelters to regulate non-urgent admissions by scheduling or triaging and is best practice, commonly used across most municipal shelters.

It preserves capacity for urgent cases so that those less urgent animals do not crowd out the animals that need immediate care.

Managed intake is considered best practice for animal shelters per NACA guidelines, best friends, Matty's fund, ASPCA, and others.

Managed intake greatly affects our capacity for care, staff morale, ability to provide quality care and customer service for the people and animals.

And our enforcement staff is actually required by ordinance 531712 to attend and be certified through our NACRA or through NACRA program, so it's also keeping in line with their guidelines.

Very happy, excited about this one.

We have secured a contract vet that does come in now one to two days a week to provide medical care, and she does perform surgeries out of our building.

So that is saving us a little bit of money, and we only hope that that will continue to improve once we're in the new building and can hopefully secure a full-time vet.

Our medical staff is operating under vet protocols in her absence.

We've also started a new partnership with urgent care for our animals that need emergency care in the absence of a vet when she's not in the building and for anything after hours.

The day of service that we have with them, they were actually in there doing surgeries, doing x-rays.

It was amazing.

They loved it, we loved it.

So we're trying to do a partnership with them.

We've met with them a few times now on how to get that going, and they are currently working with our volunteer coordinator on scheduling for that.

We're also running a program with IndyHumane that allows us to send approved animals daily to them when we don't have a vet in the building.

We send it to them.

Well, we ask them, hey, can you take this animal on?

They will either say yes, we can bring it up there to them for medical care, or it goes to urgent care.

Um, and we are still actively looking for a full-time vet.

Our animal control backlog on our runs on July 21st, when I started, we had a backlog of 850 runs in the system.

That means citizens that had placed complaint calls through the MAC Center for service through IACS and 850 of those runs had not been addressed and were still open.

The runs ranged anywhere from just stray dogs roaming loose to emergency runs needing immediate assistance.

As of 1112, we are happy to say that number is down to 92 runs.

And that is in part due to a lot of overtime that was we've got to get these runs done.

We've got to start responding to the community, bringing animals in.

Enforcement supervisor are also now required to be on the street with their animal control officers to be out in the field with them.

Our board for Indianapolis Animal Care Services.

We are working with our board members to start a new process at our board meetings to give updates with our managers attending as well regarding statistics, challenges, and improvements in the agency.

The goal is just to be more transparent and to have more open conversations with our board regarding those things.

Lastly, we are just waiting on an official statement from OCC regarding the use of my case.

Um throughout the country, but I can provide any data or statistics that you guys would like to see on any of these bullet points.

I can provide data one-on-one if you guys wanted to meet separately and have that data, and I can go for more in-depth details.

I'm open to any questions.

Awesome.

Thank you so much for your presentation, Director.

Um I want to say, and I've I've talked about it a million times already.

Uh I was in the shelter last week.

I saw the post about uh quarantine and things like that, and knew it was time for me.

So we went in there and uh adopted a dog, and it was a wonderful process.

We were there for about two hours from start to finish to see all the dogs to go through the process, and it was also really cool because after we had gone in and come out and we decided Blackjack now Reggie is our guy.

Uh I had seen four or five more names pop up on the tail on this on the board.

They have a board there that says who's been adopted and just in the dog section that I had noticed since we had gotten there.

So people are coming in, they're adopting.

It it is the best experience for as going into a room full of a hundred barking dogs as you can get.

Um and uh I got I just want to compliment you, your staff, all the volunteers who are there.

Um, and I want to thank everybody who loved on uh Reggie before he got to our house.

Because he is a wiggle butt full of love, and I just want to thank you for that.

Um so, counselors, do you have any questions on the presentation?

Counselor Graves.

Thanks, Madam Chair.

Um thanks for the presentation.

Awesome.

Um 800 volunteer applications went out, and that sounds like a robust group.

How many would you say would be an ideal number to have?

I honestly I have not been through this process in more than 15 years, and we had volunteer coordinator back then when I when they did it.

Um I don't know how many will respond, but even if we got a quarter of them to respond, that's an amazing number of of incoming volunteers that would increase hours, time spent with animals, um the the doggy day out program.

I mean it's just increase in enrichments to all of those things, even if we had a quarter of them that responded.

Counselor Cahill.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Uh three questions, if uh if I may.

Uh one is uh just I I'm just curious.

This uh this popped in my head.

Did when once selected a volunteer, do they complete the harassment training that we require of all city county employees now?

Or I know they're not employees, but because there is interaction, do we do that, or do you know if we have a mechanism?

Do you mind if I refer to our volunteer coordinator because he just rolled that out with all of the training and quizzes attached?

So these are the microphones right here.

Hi, Council.

My adults on the volunteer coordinator.

Uh, to answer that question.

Currently, no, we do not have the same harassment training that's uh provided to city employees.

We do, however, cover harassment and discrimination and practice like that in our volunteer handbook that I rolled out.

As well as briefly talk about in the orientations that I rolled out.

Okay, thank you.

Uh the uh other, and this is I don't know if it's a comment or a question, but uh on related to the my case, I guess one of the concerns that I I hear in my case would not address this anyway, but I do think there's some valid concern here is adoptions by people that are uh in particular from out of state.

So if somebody has come from Chicago, they wouldn't be in my case because my case is Indiana only.

Uh do we have any process or are you considering anything that would take a closer look at somebody who's not from say central Indiana?

Because to me, I I feel like I could I can totally see somebody from Carmel or I don't know, Bloomington coming to Indianapolis to pick up an animal that they saw on the website.

That seems like a reasonable drive.

But like somebody coming from Chicago, I think.

That is a yeah.

We don't usually we get responses to those when it's like urgent animals that are needed you get people that are wanting to respond because they want to save something.

Typically, people you know, for from statistic purposes, typically people that are wanting to abuse an animal are not driving across state lines to get it because they can get it in their own hometown typically.

I mean, there's Facebook, there's Craigslist, there's all these different places you can get free animals.

Okay.

Um that is something that we can look into right now.

What our process is is our adoption counselors, they kind of they vet the people, they talk to them, what are you interested in?

They try to get a background on them.

If it throws red flags, then they go a little bit deeper into like, well, what did you mean?

You it's gonna be indoor-outdoor.

How are you gonna keep it outdoor?

Are you keeping it locked in your garage?

So they they kind of do that as a as a conversation piece, and then once red flags are thrown, then they can kind of go deeper into those.

Okay, thank you.

And the final thing, and this this is probably more of a uh follow-up for our next session, but we're we're about a year into our uh unaltered dog registry uh program.

Do you have any statistics on how is that going?

Has that helped enforcement as anticipated?

Uh and if if you don't have that, I'd I'd just like to do that.

I do not um our our operations manager is here who kind of is over uh enforcement if we want to refer it to him, he may have more information if Billy wants to come up here.

I'm just gonna throw it at everybody.

IACS.

As of right now, it is still a work in progress.

It is things that a lot of the first steps were education, so we have been educating people on the ordinary or on the registry.

We had a lot of people sign up initially, um, but we are still everybody that comes in gets educated on the registry.

The ACLs have paperwork to pass out as well.

That clinics also send us information of people that they know of breeding that they think need to be on the registry, and we can we cross-check that, and then we can if they put they send off red flags to them, so then we can do welfare checks on them too, and kind of start that process of getting them on the registry that way.

Have but have the have those red flags resulted in any enforcement that we know of?

As of now, the ones that I'm aware of that we have gone on, there have not been violations that we could enforce or any violations really other than they were just breeding.

All right, thank you.

Any other counselors?

Oh, counselor Gibson.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Uh Director, your additional appropriation periods would be reasonably in line.

And um I uh uh happy hear about the success you've had so far on the job.

And with you being there just a few months, uh, want to know how are you doing?

And two uh what can we do to keep you help you be more successful?

Uh I think the support, I appreciate everyone's support, and I appreciate everyone coming tonight.

Um, just and Allie, especially for supporting and kind of sponsoring our fiscal.

Um so we're super appreciative for that.

I think it's just the support is the main thing I need.

Um, and that we'll continue to need is the support from our council and our city.

Yeah.

Yeah, but I'm doing well otherwise.

It's a there's a lot of challenges that we're getting through.

Um, these are just a few, and I know these were my most noted ones that I said in my first you know, meeting with you guys, so I just wanted to address those and kind of give you guys an update in the first 20 days, 120 days.

A little shy of it, what we've been doing.

Councillor uh Roberts.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So this is some these are some really good pieces of information here.

Uh really kudos to the team for this.

You know, I I feel like I am as involved as anybody, and I did not know 95% of this, which really I think is highlighting the importance of how much it is uh really just needed to highlight the wins that we have.

You know, some of these statistics on here about um adoptions going up, um uh you know, the average length of stake going from 24 days to 20 is great.

That's an I know really key metric we look at.

Um couple things.

Um has the the change to the volunteer hours been publicized?

Because I've not seen that.

Has that been widespread yet?

It's been widespread to all of the volunteers.

So emails have been sent out.

They also have a dedicated um Facebook page that they have been updated on.

Um we've been in conversations with them.

I have had emails with them.

I know Lucian, the volunteer coordinator has he had emails with them, so they are it is widespread to all of the volunteers.

Okay, when was that publicized?

The first uh it would have been in September, shortly after Lucian started, he started working eight o'clock schedule.

Well, interesting.

Well, I feel like the narrative out there, whether it's accurate or not, it's not that.

So maybe there's a PR on our end we need to do to help publicize that.

Um the official hours I will say do say, and if you've ever if I'm sure Lucian can share our volunteer handbook with you, um, if you guys would like a copy, we can email it.

Uh it does say that our building closes at 7, so official hours are 7 p.m.

Um, do and I think it says unless otherwise communicated by management or volunteer coordinator, which has been communicated to them, volunteers are allowed in the building till eight.

We just left that in there for flexibility.

Lucian also serves our National Guard.

So if there are cases where he has drill or something like that, we would like flexibility to be able to say we look for coverage for you know while he's gone, and if we don't have it, they would still need to leave by seven.

But they are allowed in the building until 8 p.m.

Monday through Friday.

Okay, that's that's great to know.

Again, that's an I I was seeing things on Facebook this morning that were contrary to that, so I'm happy to hear that.

If one more question's okay, um what one is statistics I was curious on that I hear a lot about is when there are stray dogs, you know, running around or any animal.

I know for a while, you know, it it's not really tenable for families to have to intake if there's like a three-week waiting period on average for uh the shelter taking that dog.

Most families can't take in a dog to their house for three weeks if they have kids or if they have other dogs or anything like that.

Do we have a statistic on the average wait time to be brought in the shelter?

I don't know what it is currently in intake.

Um, I can find that out, and I know I we understand that that is an issue, and that's where we kind of vet them to like is it being aggressive to them?

Is it being aggressive to their animals in the home?

Do they have aggressive animals?

They can't keep it in the shelter.

Can we give them resources to be able to house it in their garage for an extra three days until we make space or those kind of conversations are being had so that we are more open and transparent with our intake as well.

Great.

And just thank you once again for all that you do.

You do not an easy job, and we very much appreciate all that you do.

Yeah, thank you.

Any other counselor questions?

Oh, Mr.

President.

Yeah.

I think I'm gonna join uh everyone else in um in congratulating uh you on the uh the successes that you've had.

Yeah.

I'm curious what the target is uh for the end of this year and what they might be for next year uh in terms of um length of stay, uh number of euthanasia, um etc.

Uh I don't have a target number, it's always less than the year before um with increased intake while keeping our capacity of care to where it's still a reasonable capacity of care, and we're able to provide those things.

Um so we always want to decrease our euthanasia, but we also understand as well that with increased intake, we're probably gonna have higher euthanasia rates as long as we are evaluating the animals properly and euthanizing when it's necessary.

I think that we are we're just hitting our goal of less than last year, but still increasing our intake and opening up intake to the public.

Well, I mean I uh I will say that going down from uh 24 to 20 is uh is great.

Yeah, yeah, and we always would love for decreased length of stays.

We never want to just I mean the the goal would be to get them in and get them adopted right back out as soon, you know, shortly after they're off straight holds or owner surrenders the next day if we could.

Um so that's always a goal is trying to get them, you know, if it means so more social pushes, foster homes, anything we can do to push them out quicker.

Appreciate it.

Yeah, all right.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jeremy.

No problem.

Um we can open it up to questions from the audience or comments from the audience.

Uh go ahead, sir.

Hey, how y'all doing?

If you could give us uh your name and zip code.

Oh, yeah, I'm sorry.

Kendall has to read the the comment statement quick, and then when you uh get up to speak if you're speaking, if you can give us your name and then what zip code you're in, that would be helpful for us.

So go ahead and uh Kendall.

Sorry.

Before we open the Florida public comment, we would like to remind co-medium members and the public of the few ground rules that we want to have a fair chance to be heard.

It's important that we deserve the following rules.

Of course, each speaker will be limited to two minutes.

Second, any public comment must reasonably relate to the agenda item under consideration.

Third speakers who stray away from the items under consideration or become a movie on movie reference issues might be asked, so move on to the next point where we would go on as final attendees who cause who caused destruction that prevents the committee from proceeding through which it might in a reasonably effective fishing manner will be removed.

Please remember that some type of ready speech or six violence are not protected by the first amendment.

And we will we will deal with those issues that they come up, but we don't think so.

Thank you, sir.

You may go ahead.

All right.

Kyle Hendrix 46237.

But I'm Kyle Hendrix, and I'm with Ask Me Local 725.

I'm the vice president.

I know everybody wants to see C quick, but uh unfortunately he has something else to go on tonight, and he could maybe say it.

He says hi, everyone.

Um just just a little base on and if you don't know who asked me, is ask me has people at operations DP Job operations.

We also have wonderful members that work with and around uh uh the director at animal control, and we also have some people in the private sector as well.

Uh we want to speak just a smidgen on our relationship that we have built with Amanda, the director, um, how we have facilitated uh next hundred and twenty days on building that partnership.

All right, that's how we always talk about his partnership on what's good for the facility, the animals, the employees, and management, and it's been going wonderful.

It's the open door policy.

I can just walk up there, I don't have to make appointments.

She doesn't have to make appointments with me, she just come to my office and we can communicate and create a better environment for the people.

You notice that our grievances are down, our disciplines are down, and multiple things like that are down.

So our people are obviously happier with what's going on over in that particular department.

Um we're excited to continue to work with her and uh to build that partnership and see where the next building uh the challenges that we get to face together.

All right, with that that's all I got.

Thank you.

Do we have anyone else from the audience who'd like to speak?

Okay.

Go ahead, sir.

Hello, council.

Again, my name is Lucia.

I serve as a volunteer coordinator for ICS.

I originally joined ICS nearly two years ago as an animal control officer.

Where I developed a deep commitment to supporting both the animals and people of our community.

During that time, I had the privilege of helping countless individuals, families, and pets in their moments of crisis.

Through that work, I witnessed some of the most challenging situations in our city, but also saw some of the very best and best people.

The dedication of our community members, volunteers, and partners who support ICS is inspiring.

And motivating me to step into this role now so I can broaden my impact and help our residents and animals in a more proactive way rather than the reactive nature of enforcement work.

My goal is to build the volunteer program to strengthen our shelter, support our staff, and become a model of what this city can achieve.

I wanted to share a few quick achievements over my first 45 days in this position.

I restarted and rebuilt the new volunteer orientation.

I did this by developing a comprehensive online self-guided orientation process that officially moves applicants into the shelter for their first shift.

I rolled out this new orientation to 835 applicants starting 1110.

This replaced the previous system of lengthy in-person classes which had low retention rates of approximately two out of every 10 volunteers remain active.

I authored the first IECS Volunteer Handbook.

A formal consolidated resource outlining expectations, policies, and best practices for all volunteers.

I then coordinated a large-scale corporate service day with Alanco Animal Health.

During that five-hour service event, and all had over 40 Alanco volunteers.

They provide four hours of outdoor enrichment to over 30 dogs.

They clean and reorganize our shelter's laundry room to reduce clutter and improve workflow.

They cleaned every single outdoor kennel and run that we had, including the entire footprint of the property.

Constructed 50 plus new dog beds to replace the damn one of the kennels, and lock with veterans delivered medical care and completed necessary surgeries for animal shelters.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Come on up.

This is the microphone.

So if you just make sure you're right here.

Thank you.

My name is Angela Hopson.

I currently reside in my organization operates out of 4 stick 222, but we have also operated out of 46208 and 46218, 46218.

You can learn more about what we do at our website, Sword Initiative.com.

I am in full support of the work that Amanda has been doing.

She is a right person for the job, and it has been a relief.

I am actually in April in the dyspurry because I just left the shelter probably around 20 minutes ago working with her team.

I have a video I'll post later.

It's quiet.

The dogs are settled.

They're with staff visible and working.

Things are organized the way you have to organize things when you're intaking processing and triaging animals.

It is a it is just a confidence builder.

My second thing that I want to say is that we're in a transformative period.

There's no reason why any apples have to be in the news to be uh uh uh animal welfare entity that's struggling.

We have all the science and medicine and education and businesses here in our city to this is a transformative period.

Amanda has worked in a shelter through a new build and the transformation and change that has to occur.

That's tough in any business relationship.

Um I'm really looking forward to what we're doing, and I'm hoping that the budget will consider now and in the future um strengthening the vet med um capabilities that our shelter has so that we can serve the city both as a triage and as a shelter has to do, but also the shelter can do the medicine it needs to do in house, which we're doing the city's cost.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Is there is there anyone else in the audience who has any comments?

Okay.

With that, counselors, if there's somebody who'd like to make a motion.

So we'll move around chair.

Second.

So we have we've moved and seconded to send proposal number 331 2025 to the floor with a due pass recommendation.

Uh all those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed, same sign.

With that, it passes.

Um we will be sending proposal number 331 uh to the council with the do pass recommendation unanimously.

Thank you so much to everyone who came.

Thank you so much, Director.

Thank you so much for your presentation.

Um, and thank you for caring for our animals.

Yeah, thank you.

And I just want to let you guys know too.

I almost forgot.

Our new shelter, um, I was auto-called today.

Our update, they they have walls, drywall, paint going up, everything.

So if anyone ever wants a tour to go out there and look around, um, walk the facility and see what it's any walls are up, windows are in, let me know, and I'm happy to arrange that so you guys can get in there and see what it's gonna look like.

I think we would love that.

And with no other nothing else on the agenda, we're adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.