0:01 All right, we're gonna go ahead and call to order the board for Indianapolis Animal Care Services.
0:07 Today is May 18th, 2026, and the time is 8 35 a.m.
0:12 We can start with introductions.
0:17 Angela Finch, board secretary.
0:21 Chris Roberson, mayoral appointee to the board.
0:25 Brett Miles, mayoral appointee.
0:29 Amanda Honey Hinkle, director of Indianapolis Animal Care Services.
0:35 I don't know if we need to.
0:37 Ben Markle filling in as board counsel.
0:42 And first on the agenda, we will adoption of minutes from our last board meeting, April 20th, 2026.
0:50 I think I think technically, since we didn't have a quorum, we probably don't have minutes to approve.
0:55 Yeah, I didn't know if we we tabled everything, so all right.
0:58 Then we will go on to new business for James Finlayson for resolution 0326.
1:05 All right, presenting 0326.
1:08 This is a management contract with the Indianapolis Marion County Building Authority to manage our bright new shiny shelter, which we are very, very happy to have.
1:22 There's not a not to exceed limit tied to this contract as it's just a we pay rent annually to the building authority and they maintain the building on our behalf.
1:36 So and it's a 10-year term.
2:28 Yeah, in the new shelter.
2:30 And they're also on a different fiscal year as well.
2:33 So they I think their fiscal year ends June 30th, I think.
2:39 Um so they do some funky budgeting, but yeah, it was planned out already in this current current year.
2:49 Our building rent is a lot higher than the old place.
2:54 No further questions.
2:55 I pointed out just a minor typo in the last paragraph that will be corrected.
3:01 No further discussion.
3:02 I take a motion to approve.
3:12 And then we'll move on to resolution 0426.
3:16 Um this is another shelter, veteran contract shelter veterinarian.
3:22 Um, she's been pretty eager to get started.
3:29 Grimes, who is previously worked in the shelter before to some capacity.
3:34 I'm not sure when she stopped, but I think it was two, three years ago.
3:41 Um, but she's interested in working with us again, and I think we'll probably continue to have good luck recruiting contract vets in the new shelter.
3:51 So, any questions about Dr.
4:00 Is this is she going to do a set number of hours per month, or is it kind of a that is a billing as needed at the moment.
4:10 Um, haven't decided on her full schedule, but I believe she was more interested in about once a week, once every two weeks, and I just wanted to add some uh enough to the contract to make sure if she changed her mind and was able to do more.
4:31 She we've had the the flexibility to have her in and do more.
4:36 So it sounds like it's structured as like an hourly rate.
4:40 She's paid an hourly and will be paid an hourly rate.
4:44 Um, I don't remember offhand, it's either I think 100 or hundred twenty-five an hour.
4:51 Um and then we have a list in the in the contract attachments that uh includes all the services that generally you could be expected to be doing and then just go off at an hourly rate.
5:09 So it's very similar to Dr.
5:10 Birchfield's contract to all basically there's a boilerplate template we use as a starting point for these contract values.
5:22 Any other questions?
5:31 And then as a formality, would you still prefer us to vote?
5:34 All vote on it instead of just motioning and seconding, even though there's uh only three case.
5:42 We have, I think historically we'd motion and then I'd say all in favor say aye.
5:48 Should we go back to resolution?
5:51 We'll just just we had a motion to approve and a second.
5:53 All in favor say aye.
5:57 And then resolution 0426.
6:00 Um and just actually one there there's a little typo though.
6:02 I think since it was intended to be presented at our prior meeting, it's it's indicating that it was adopted as of the 23rd of March.
6:14 Once that is edited, motion to approve.
6:18 And then we had a motion and a second.
6:20 All in favor say aye.
6:26 Um, one in addition to approving professional service agreements, the one of the board's responsibilities is to approve capital purchases.
6:37 Um, these will be the probably two biggest of the year for our vehicles.
6:42 Uh there was recently a public safety vehicle bid that came out and the contract is still being finalized in the internal system, I believe, as that was the case as of middle of last week.
6:58 So it's entirely possible it's executed now.
7:01 But one of the options and the least expensive and best option for us was the Chevy tracks.
7:07 Uh so we were able to get two of those for 22 and 680, I think.
7:15 Whatever the contract proposal says a piece.
7:18 Um, and they are kind of like little small and expensive crossovers, and they would probably be used as supervisor vehicles, occasionally doing like a single animal transport or just general purpose.
7:32 Uh we have some of our non-animal control truck vehicles are pretty old and kind of not in necessarily the best shape.
7:42 So we figured we would replace two.
7:46 And so at when we purchase these two, we will also be reducing two vehicles.
7:52 No, we don't use as much.
8:04 All in favor say aye.
8:10 And then I will go over the shelter statistics.
8:15 Um we are in the new building now.
8:18 Unfortunately, we are already at a hundred and eight percent capacity.
8:21 Uh that happened very quickly, but we are in the new building, happy to be there.
8:26 Uh the move went great.
8:28 We didn't have any hiccups at all.
8:30 Um we had a team A and a team B, one at each shelter uh for moving.
8:36 Officers did all of the transporting of the animals.
8:38 We had a moving company come in, move all the big stuff, the equipment, and I was elated.
8:45 We're an entire municipal shelter.
8:47 Big pat on the back for all of the staff at IACS that you know took part in that because we had I was it was amazing.
8:53 No issues moving all all of those animals and all the equipment.
8:57 So yeah, kudos to everyone.
8:59 That's great to hear.
9:00 I'm I am surprised to hear how quickly you are over capacity.
9:05 Especially with the big adoption events and pushes prior to the move.
9:08 It was strange for our big adoption events the two weekends before.
9:11 We didn't have um huge numbers.
9:14 I I think part of it's coming into spring and summer and everyone gearing up for their vacations and you know, spring breaks and not wanting to bring animal and home.
9:24 I sure I don't know what else to chalk it up to, unfortunately, but yeah, we didn't we didn't have huge numbers like we have had in the past.
9:29 But yeah, we are already, and we've pushed a lot out to rescues fosters, even first day that we were open, taking in animals again.
9:40 We got I think 38 in one day, so that was just from intake, so not even officers brought in.
9:47 So yeah, as of this morning, we were at 108% capacity.
9:50 And how has the public reception been to the new shelter or just this past week?
9:56 It's been steady, but not we haven't been like swamped.
10:00 The first day there was a small line out the door, um, and then I'd say it's just been steady.
10:04 So curiosity, how is capacity being calculated?
10:09 Because I know in the old shelter there was removal of.
10:13 Oh, thank you, Chris.
10:15 There were removal of um, you know, we only have X number of operational kennels.
10:20 We have so many broken.
10:21 We have it's the same right now because we do have some kennels that are not complete, so they're missing doors, things like that.
10:29 So we're in the building, but there are still certain parts of the building that are still under construction, um, doors being one of them for a certain case.
10:36 We have I think believe it was 29 kennels that were unusable.
10:40 Um, those some of those were fixed on Friday, and then that's also I don't believe counting our isolation and medical kennels, because those wouldn't be for general population.
10:56 Any other questions about the new building?
11:02 All right, so for April 2026, our total intake was 874.
11:09 That includes dog cat and anything else.
11:12 Uh total outcome was 883.
11:16 Out of that adopted was 328, 105 were returned to owner, 347 were transferred to other rescue organizations, 15 return to wild, or sorry, return to field, one return to wild.
11:34 Uh and then euthanasia or passed away in fosters or at the vet clinics.
11:41 Make up the rest of that number.
11:42 Our total live release rate for April was 92.16.
11:47 Uh, I do want to point something out, because I don't think many people realize it.
11:52 Uh, for national standards, 90% is considered a no-kill shelter.
11:58 We do not wish to use that terminology at IACS, but I do want to point out we have maintained and we are only per industry standards a few months away from obtaining that certificate that certification of being a no-kill shelter.
12:10 So I know that some people think it's the opposite, but it's not, I promise.
12:16 Um, so for April, our ACO reports, they did 268.
12:25 Total bites reported were 94.
12:29 They issued 194 summons or citations, had 70 investigation inpounds, and responded to 2,154 service calls.
12:41 Do not do have this.
12:43 I sorry, I might be missed.
12:53 And nothing's double-sided, right?
12:58 Did I have it and just passed?
13:00 No, that's a volunteer.
13:01 I think some of them got mixed up on a printer somewhere.
13:07 And then we're also looking at, I'm just reading a different set, but I'll email it.
13:12 So if you have other questions, things I'm not reading, just let me know.
13:18 And then I'm gonna go to the vacancy report.
13:23 We're at 16% vacant.
13:30 We are still missing a rescue coordinator and foster coordinator, um, but those have been posted, so we are hiring for those and interviews.
13:39 Just waiting to get enough applications, and then of course, what else?
13:43 Veterinarian, veterinarian, still out there.
13:46 We've had multiple assistants still open.
13:50 No, they should be the vet in.
13:52 I got they're in process.
13:54 We've been offered.
13:55 Yeah, I got notifications that they are in process and they ended up being internal candidates.
14:01 So we will for those promotions have to open these areas.
14:08 Yeah, and our vet, um, since we've been open, we had quite a few vets come in and tour.
14:13 Um, so hopefully we're very hopeful that we'll get one coming from that.
14:18 Both of them, well, two of them I should say, were very interested in coming to work, so trying to figure out what we can do there.
14:31 And then volunteer hours for 2026 for April at the shelter were 1,294 at special events was 110.
14:43 We had 100 hours for external service groups and 59 doggy day out hours, giving us a total of 1,563.
15:06 I think you're right.
15:12 It's one hour off there.
15:20 And I'm open to any other questions.
15:26 So just one kind of over uh overarching question.
15:30 I over the past year I think there's been a fair amount of thought put into statistics in general.
15:38 And I think as a new director, taking a hard look at that, maybe refining the way you calculate certain things.
15:44 Do you feel like you're in a good place now with the way everything's being counted?
15:48 Or are there any are there still any issues with underlying data that you don't feel like is a true reflection of what you're trying to measure?
15:55 I don't um that's why I never read off the save rate, because I don't think that's the one we should go off of.
16:01 Um I think I I mean I don't have any issue now with how they're being portrayed or how they're calculated.
16:08 All goes through our chameleon system.
16:11 So every animal that comes in is logged through there.
16:14 Um all of the outcomes, so all of these are compiled from the reports that we can pull directly from that um unless someone was really skewing something or messing them up.
16:24 That's why I read off of this grid and not this one.
16:28 Um I feel like they're pretty solid.
16:32 I don't feel like there's any way they would be misconstrued or could be misconstrued, unless someone was really being malicious.
16:40 Did you did you mention what the big um livestock exotic wildlife intake was in April?
16:46 Uh I think I only out I read out what the uh total was the outcomes were, but for to break it down, the dog intake was 494, cat intake was 294, and intake other, which would be any livestock, small mammal, um reptiles, anything other than cats and dogs was eighty-six.
17:08 That just seemed high to me.
17:10 Was there was there some big like, trying to think we had any big thing?
17:15 No, we've had quite a few bunnies, yeah, rabbits, uh, we had some reptiles, a couple reptiles, rats, birds, um, yeah.
17:26 Honestly, we've not had any large livestock come through recently, knock on wood.
17:32 Since we um since we as a city and county mandated microchipping, and since officers started doing microchip implants in the field, have you noticed with intakes that there's a higher percentage of dogs that are microchipped?
17:50 Or as a proxy, I wonder if there's any trend upwards in return to owners, return to owners.
17:56 I don't I don't think there has been.
17:57 Um that's one thing we I think we that the shelter still need to continue to work on is calling on the microchips when we do get them in a timely manner to returning them to the owners, but a lot of times we call it's not been registered, they've moved, they haven't kept it updated, or a lot of the responses is I gave that dog away.
18:18 And then they don't remember who they gave it to, or don't want to give the information up, so yeah.
18:28 We did bring back this month.
18:31 Our first day open was May 11th.
18:33 We did bring back our adoption fees.
18:36 Can you can you explain how those are structured?
18:39 Uh it's it's mandated by the ordinance at $60 per animal.
18:44 Um so that's what we've brought them back to.
18:46 Uh and we've also been doing return to owner fees.
18:49 When I first started, there were no fees being charged.
18:51 Um so that we are doing return to owner fees or getting citations when you come to pick up your animal unless it's you know you've been in a hospital emergency, you know, out of your control.
19:01 Um, and then the adoption fees.
19:04 Are they are is there flexibility in the adoption fee either at your discretion for a special event to waive them?
19:12 Yeah, and what about on an individual basis if somebody applies for some type of financial based?
19:18 We don't have anything like that.
19:19 It's just if we're having like an event or something, we can waive them in any time, basically.
19:23 Or if we're overcapacity, I think is the way it's worded.
19:26 Basically, any time we need to, we could waive them.
19:29 James, do those fees stay within IACS, or do they go to the general fund?
19:35 Um I think how the municipal code is worded for the adoption fees is that the director, the board can reduce the fee, but it can't raise the fee over 60.
19:48 So the all of our revenues are collected and they go into the general fund, which is what we are also funded out of.
20:06 Trying to think we have any other big news.
20:10 In the process of revising our adoption uh application.
20:16 And I think that that's all I have unless you guys have other questions.
20:20 I mean, just another update, like from a governance perspective, just in terms of transparency.
20:25 Um, two or three months ago, the the city county council introduced a proposal nominating Angela Hobson to the board.
20:33 That proposal was referred to the community affairs committee, which unfortunately hasn't met for the past two months, but there is one nomination in the pipeline, and then we've been exploring another another nominee for the city council appointee, but yeah, we'd love to get them both in here.
20:52 We don't have anything further, we can adjourn.