Thank you.

Chair staff is ready when you are.

Okay. Thank you so much.

Hello. Good evening. Welcome to the November meeting of the newly named

Sacramento Animal Wellbeing Commission.

So that is now our name official as of the end of October, I believe.

We will catch up with my brain.

The meeting is now called to order.

Will the clerk please call the roll to establish a quorum?

Thank you, Chair. Commissioners, if you can please unmute.

Commissioner Middleton.

Hi, here.

Commissioner Heffner.

Commissioner Robes-Belly.

Vice Chair Bell.

Commissioner Treet.

Hi, here.

Commissioner Garcia.

Here.

And Chair Morris.

Here.

Thank you. We have a quorum.

Thank you.

Okay. So I'd like to remind members of the public and chambers that if you would like to speak on an agenda item,

please turn in a speaker slip when the item begins.

Any speaker will have two minutes to speak once you are called upon.

After the first speaker, we no longer accept speaker slips.

So we will now proceed with today's agenda.

Please rise rise for the opening acknowledgments in honor of Sacramento's Indigenous people and tribal lands.

The original people of this land, the Nisanan people, the southern Maidu, Valley and Plains, Miwok,

Petwin Wintun peoples, and the people of the Wilton Rancheria, Sacramento's only federally recognized tribe.

May we acknowledge and honor the native people who came before us and still walk beside us today on these ancestral lands,

by choosing to gather together today in the active practice of acknowledgement and appreciation for Sacramento's Indigenous people's history, contributions and lives.

Thank you.

And now for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.

One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

So we've got a little bit of some business that is joyful and change before we get to our regular business with the consent calendar.

And for one thing, we wanted to welcome our newest commissioner. We are now all commissioners team.

And Christy Middleton is our new commissioner as of this month.

I have asked Christy to share a little bit of her background that was of interest of her or her interests in joining this commission.

I also want to thank Christy for stepping up fairly quickly to make an application and council member maples for appointing Christy and for the clerk's office and the rest of the city council city hall staff for making this appointment happen.

Christy, welcome.

Thank you very much. I'm really excited to be here.

I'm Christy Middleton and I live in Oak Park.

And I moved to Sacramento about two years ago from the Bay Area. But my background in animal welfare is long.

My first role was as a volunteer at the animal assistance league in Chesapeake, Virginia.

When I was 15 years old, I'd have my mom drop me off at the shelter so I could go and walk dogs.

Immediately after graduating from college, I went to work in animal advocacy and spent about 20 years of my career doing that from variety organizations.

I worked in animal shelters, doing marketing, but also did animal rescue during Hurricane Katrina.

So lots of hands on work, but also a lot of advocacy in the East Bay.

I worked on political advocacy for animals. I was on the founding board member of East Bay Animal Pack helping get elected officials in the office who care about animal issues.

And I'm transitioning out of that role since I'm no longer in the East Bay.

And I currently work in sales to help get more plant-based options on menus and help animals in factory farms.

So from wildlife issues to helping dogs and cats, animal welfare has been my life's calling.

And after having moved to Sacramento, I wanted to find a way to get involved.

So I'm really thrilled to be a part of this. And thank you so much.

Board Chair Morris for continuing to stay in touch and letting me know about this opportunity.

And I'm really excited to be here and looking forward to what I can contribute.

Thank you so much. We're excited to have you.

Your experience will be a wealth of knowledge to help us as we move forward next year.

So speaking of moving forward next year, we get to look a little back word so to speak.

Mr. Robustelli.

Joe Robustelli. This is Mr. Robustelli's final meeting.

He made it to get to be a commissioner from a committee member.

And basically Joe, we wanted to thank you for your service to the front street animal shelter to the community of Sacramento,

to the animals of Sacramento, to the staff that worked so hard at the animal shelter.

Joe came on this round and helped me out here.

But you came on to this committee when I and San Verilla bus rejoined and reconstituted the committee in about 2022.

But you were, you had history provide and you were and you were also a member previously for a few cycles.

Yeah, I think I was appointed in 2017 or 2018, 2017.

I think.

Well, Joe, I know for me personally you gave me a lot of background about some of the activities of this committee and some of the challenges and the work at the shelter.

And so I know I always felt really welcome and appreciated you filling in some of the areas where I needed to learn and understand some of the background of this committee.

So I appreciate that so much.

Other folks want to offer any words for Joe?

Well, I'll say a few things.

Again, I'm at Joe volunteering, actually to put on some of our events prior to us getting this.

The previous animal care citizens advisory committee back up and running this more formal process.

So Joe put in a lot of time and energy to support the shelter, not only in this role, but in many other roles and hopefully we'll continue to see him in those other roles as well.

Madam Chair.

Yes, ma'am.

Yes. So I'm not the new kid anymore.

This is great.

But Joe, I've really enjoyed serving with you.

We've had some talks about different mutual things that we've done in the past.

And I'm going to miss you.

So maybe you'll be one of those that is sensing all those little questions.

I can actually make comments now.

Well, Joe, in honor of your service and support to this committee now commission.

We've got a couple of little gifts for you.

And let you take a thank you for everything.

Yes.

Appreciate your service.

Okay.

So I think we're going to just.

I'm sorry.

Sorry.

And I'll make one observation on the agenda.

It says Commissioner Denise Bell, who we would be giving some recognition to.

We think there was some layer of trying to make sure that we keep consistent with terms, but we understand that member Bell has reapplied to be appointed.

And it's our understanding that she has been interviewed by council member bang.

And so it's our hope or her intention to stay on this committee.

And we would love to continue to work with member Bell.

So while there is notation here, we hope that it'll be a seamless transition from 24 to 25.

Given that, the city clerk has some.

Thank you, Cecilia Ventress from the Office of City Clerk.

As this is the last regular scheduled meeting before your current terms expire, the office of the city clerk would like to extend our sincere gratitude for your service to the animal well-being commission formally known as the animal care citizens advisory commission.

Your service has been invaluable to the commission as well as the city of Sacramento.

So now I'm going to go ahead and pass out these certificates.

I know you guys have already shared.

Your thoughts and stuff.

So if you'd like to continue, we can or we can move on to the agenda.

Whenever you have any comments or.

As I said, our hope is that Ms. Bell's position on the seat is seamless.

But formally, her last, she would be turning out formally.

We hope she'll continue on commission.

Okay. So our next item and then we have some guests we'd like to introduce.

But our next item is the consent calendar.

And I just want to note that the commission meeting minutes are basically what's on the consent calendar.

Some of you may remember the follow-up log that previously was on the consent calendar.

But it has now been moved to a discussion item, which I personally think is helpful because we do have things on the log to talk about.

So right now the consent calendar is strictly the meeting minutes from the October 9th, 2024 meeting.

Are there any public comments on that consent calendar?

Thank you, Chair. I have no speakers for the consent calendar.

Thank you. Any members of the committee want to share or correct anything on the minutes?

The consent calendar minutes.

Seeing no members, does anyone want to make a motion please to move the minutes?

No moved.

Thank you, member Hefner. Do we have a second?

Second.

Regarcia, all those in favor say aye.

Aye. All those opposed. Any abstentions?

We adopted the meeting minutes from October.

So we have a lot to celebrate tonight.

We have three full-time veterinarians at the shelter.

Thank you.

Thank you.

From when this committee was reconstituted in 2022, the shelter in my observation has been recruiting, working, trying to find some veterinarians that we that would come aboard and work at the shelter.

And we finally have three full-time equivalent veterinarians.

We're very excited. And thank you for coming tonight.

The three are here to give us just a minute to introduce themselves to us.

Tell us maybe a little bit about your background and your interest in working with us at the shelter.

And we hope that we can engage with you in the future about some activities at the shelter.

Maybe some presentations on some of the work you're doing.

I'm seeing Dr. Smalley. I've been trying to invite her in to do a to do a presentation, but she's been so busy she has not had time.

So thank you both. Thank you all three for being here. Dr. Smalley, maybe you could start for us.

Good evening. I think I've met just about everybody on the commission up there. Thank you for inviting us.

My name is Dr. Victoria Smalley. I have been with the shelter for a little over two years now.

Prior to coming to the shelter, I was actually an equine veterinarian over in Amodore County.

And was looking for a little bit of a change and a friend of mine who worked for Front Street told me about a great opportunity with the homeless outreach and assistance program.

And I thought about it and I applied. I did get the job at that time. The other two veterinarians left.

And so when I came on board, I sort of transitioned to the shelter where I've been for the last two years.

Doing some of the HO program here and there. Recently in the last couple of months, we've hired two more wonderful veterinarians to work in the shelter.

And I have started transitioning back out to our HO program. So I'm very passionate about working with the homeless outreach program.

I was sort of involved from the very beginning in the sort even before I was hired.

And I really like the direction the program is going in and I'm looking forward to making it just more seamless, getting animals spated neuter in our community before they end up in our shelter, providing some medical care to them.

And just being part of a community medicine program. I'm very passionate about that. My other passion is disaster response. I'm very well trained in disasters.

And I'm continuing to do that. Hopefully we won't need one in Sacramento. But if we do, we'll have somebody on board that knows how to handle that.

Our new commissioner has got some background in that too. It sounds like.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Dr. Smolley.

Come on up.

Hi, I'm Dr. Christina Hanson. Happy to be here. Happy to join the front street team.

I am a local grew up in Davis, California, went to vet school at Colorado State.

Was a private practice veterinarian for a few years out of school.

When I decided it looked like maybe I was moving to Utah to work at best friends animal sanctuary, which was a big move and a big change in my career and introduced me to shelter medicine.

I was there for almost seven years. It was a pretty amazing experience and a wonderful introduction to working in a sanctuary essentially.

From there I moved to Reno. I was in Reno for about the last four years working at the SPCA of Northern Nevada.

And then recently made the move back to Davis to be closer to family.

And so I was looking for a shelter, more shelter work in this area.

So I guess a little bit about where I came from and why I'm background and I'm happy to be here.

I see some familiar faces. I don't know everybody yet, but looking forward to getting to know you all. Thanks.

You.

Hi. So I'm Abby Judge and I'm also one of the new veterinarians. So I've been with the team for about two months now.

And my background I'm a Bay Area native, went to UC Davis for my vet school training and did a lot of things.

I'm a wild life emergency teaching research general practice before finding shelter. About six years ago now I moved into the shelter world.

I have a lot of background and passion for surgery. I am trained in HQHB which is high quality high volume spain later.

And so I'm excited to bring that with me. I have spent the past two years in New York where I worked at the ASPCA and their adoption center, managing their adoption shelter population primarily.

So very applicable in certain ways, but in other ways very different as a nonprofit and a large one.

So this is my first time moving into a municipal setting and I've been looking for this opportunity. I'm excited to be here.

I ultimately am very passionate about our relationship between animals and the community and that's what municipal services do.

So that's very important to me and I'd like to be involved at all the levels of how we relate to animals in our community and both the individual animal and as a population.

So I'm excited to be here. I have met a few of you, but I would love to meet all of you. I sure you all know that you're more than welcome into the med building and I would love the opportunity to shake your hand and chat and learn more about all of your backgrounds and what you see as a vision for what we're doing.

Thank you.

Do we take public comment on this? Any public comment? Are there questions?

Jerry, have no public speakers for this item. Okay, thank you. Any members? Member Treat?

Yes, I'm Paula Treat. I think I've met a couple of you. I wanted to, one, thank you so much. This is such a needed, such a needed everything.

We've needed a full house for a long time. For Dr. Hanson, I've volunteered at best friends for years during the victory dogs. So after Michael Vic, you know, and it's a great facility and that's wonderful training and just thank all of you for your background for being here.

Other community members? Any questions or comments from other folks? Well, I just want to say again, we are thrilled that the three positions are filled and thrilled of the experience that you're bringing with the world of shelter medicine and your willingness and excitement to be with this shelter and expand our programs help us learn what we could do to support the medical clinic and the shelter medicine programs.

And we are just thrilled to see you here tonight and thank you so much for coming in. We look forward to working with you in 2025 as we start to figure out our work plan for 2025. I think there's probably some opportunities to look at things specific to the med clinics. So look forward to working with each of you individually. Thank you. Thank you so, so much. And feel free to contact any of us.

If you ever have any questions or concerns or just want to let us know how things are going, appreciate that. Thank you.

Okay, so we have our animal well-being commission follow-up log. You're welcome to stay. You're welcome not to stay. It's up to you. You could listen in or whatever works for you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, so the commission follow-up log. There's a variety of sort of older issues on here that we can do some cleanup with on and some maybe newer issues.

So the 3-1-1 customer service line. I guess I will ask if there's any public comment on follow-up log before we.

Thank you, Chair. We have no speakers for the follow-up log. Thank you.

So I'm just going to kind of go through each line and then ask related committee members about any input on those other, those lines and or other comments related.

The 3-1-1 customer service line. We've kind of, I know that for me personally, I've sort of stopped and started stopped and started on this idea of the issue being and I'm looking at our newest member.

About more than a year ago, we learned that the 3-1-1 call center, about 10% of the calls are animal related calls.

We've also heard from the community that sometimes those calls are challenging. They're not always helpful to the community and we also recognize that the staff and the team at 3-1-1 has many, many, many types of services that they are supporting.

So what we talked about was trying to maybe do a special program where we could pilot a subset of the 3-1-1 call center that would be a dedicated staff for animal calls.

At the time, we thought we might partner with the SPCA. Changes happened at the Sacramento SPCA. So the issue kind of went to the side.

We talked briefly one other time about possibly re-inviting the manager of 3-1-1 to come and kind of do an update for us.

And I was thinking that we might do that in January if the committee is interested. It is still an area that seems like there's a fair amount of opportunity for some improvement.

And so that's a thought that we have. So I'll just leave it at that. I know Commissioner Heffner was interested in engaging on this topic.

If there's other folks who want to engage on this topic, maybe anyone want to make a comment or engage now?

I would just say that I think we worth it to have a presentation from the 3-1-1 folks. Obviously there's a huge volume of calls in.

Large number of them are animal related. And it's a question of how do you allocate the scarce resource of the expertise that we have at the shelter?

Do you do it serve at the front end? Or at least maybe move a little bit of it toward the front end and maybe prevent some back end problems?

Maybe a deeper dive into the data would give us some ideas about that.

Great. With that, then I can work with Philip and we can invite Ivan to come back to us and give us another presentation from January.

Community workshops, council member visits to the shelter. I'm pretty sure we almost completed that.

I'm going to ask Member Garcia and Bell to tell us how this is going.

Pretty close. We've had member Kaplan came through. Now we're looking at the two new folks that will be coming in to 4 and 2, District 2 and District 4.

Dickerson and I'll let you say the other name. There you go. To getting them in and through the shelter.

Has Member Bang been able to make an appointment?

They have told us probably January. That was the told us Denise.

So they're looking at January unless they have a cancellation where the first on their list.

Great. And then the various community activities, community workshops. I know we're going into the holidays and that's sort of going to be in a lull.

But maybe we can think about what level of continue activity out at these various neighborhood associations, et cetera.

Garcia and Bell had sort of taken the lead on that. Any thoughts on that?

I'd like to continue with those. It seems to we are able to answer any questions that the residents may have.

And we can talk about the shelter, talk about the needs that the shelter has. And I've found them very beneficial.

What do you think? I do too. We've gotten some engagement. We've gone.

Another request from my think it was District 2. We've actually seen her at two of the city mixers that we've gone to to try and engage some more activity that way.

So they will be inviting us to one of their home owners. It's a different. I forget which district she is in two, but it's not the same ones we've been to.

So another. Yeah, that's what it is. Yeah, community member. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. So so hopefully we'll be invited to one of those soon.

Well, if the two of you are still interested in kind of leading that charge, that'd be great. That'd be great.

No, so just a kind of a moment of a bit of update on the shelter needs assessment effort and activity.

Yesterday, Philip, and I had the opportunity to be interviewed by Channel 3, Channel 10 to look at the needs assessment and to do some observation of some of the challenges at the shelter, the physical campus of the shelter.

And reporter Becca cannot think of her last name, but she was very engaged and she said that she would let us know when she anticipates the segment to be aired.

And very much we were focusing on the needs assessment and the idea that the shelter campus has some challenges and what what we think is we ultimately will be looking at somehow looking for new property and a new shelter.

We had the opportunity to get some public awareness of this through working with Channel 10 previously Channel 13 was with us and did a little piece on that.

We had the opportunity to connect with the mayor's office about whether we would be able to bring this to the council this year.

And it appears that this is probably not likely to get on the agenda for this year.

There's some folks may remember and Phil's going to speak to it. There's an audit that's happening at the shelter.

And so there's some interest in sort of seeing what the audit shows as well as pairing that with the needs assessment in terms of next steps with shelter concerns.

So the feedback has been will continue to work with the leadership in Phillips department.

So it's not going away. We're definitely talking to the leadership in Phillips department and then we'll come back to the city council and make presentation either through the PNPE or next steps.

But we definitely are not going to let this just sit on a shelf.

So thanks to everybody for all the work on supporting the needs assessment and we're all going to be having opportunities to maybe do some outreach to interested parties whether that's additional neighborhood associations or potential landowners who might want to donate property to us or I know several of us have attended some of the meetings in council member bangs district because they have that 102 acres.

Piece of property that they're doing some work on what to do next with that. So that's an option.

I'll remind folks that at the back of the needs assessment is a selection criteria listing of the kinds of property that we would be targeting to find.

So as we move forward with possibly looking at property those kinds of criteria will be important for us to look at.

There's also an interim improvement list of items in the needs assessment that we also don't want to lose sight of.

It's things like a canopy to create shade in an area to way finding signage to a variety of other areas that could get some attention in the interim of building a whole new shelter.

So I think our committee again being a force to kind of keep these interim improvement requests moving forward and the thing I was wondering about with Philip is that it would be great to have a process to kind of prioritize that list.

And so maybe we could do a little bit of brainstorming about how to have a collaborative time with some of the staff and some of the volunteers and maybe do some prioritizing of that list.

Maybe in December we could do something I'm looking at Philip given we don't have a meeting in December. Maybe we could do some prioritizing of that list.

So when we come forward to the city council next year we can bring a prioritized list of improvements. Any questions or comments on that? I'm ever treating.

Yes Madam Chair considering the budget situation that the city is in right now do we have any idea of how much Friends of Friends Street can help out as a recent donor?

That specific question hasn't been asked to Friends of Friends Street but I will be very clear and thankful that the Friends of Friends Street have participated in the process of needs assessment.

We are fully aware of the list of interim improvements have been helping us kind of do a little brainstorming about how to move forward with the needs assessment and interim improvement list.

I think if we were to whittle our interim improvement list down to some small chunks we could probably approach the Friends of Friends Street.

Some of the ticket items are kind of bigger than what Friends of Friends Street could do but maybe some of them are not so big.

Especially if we have a collaborative input on what are the priority items like I'm just going to throw out way finding.

Having taken channel 10 through yesterday way finding is a big challenge at the facility and so that might be that may be something that Friends of Friends Street could help us with.

Any questions or comments on that? Christy did you have?

Yes for things like the way finding do you already have an idea of how much that in particular would cost and like if you mentioned like breaking it down into chunks if you were to approach.

Let me look at my interim improvement list here and see if it's specifically outlined.

So the expert consultant who provided the work on the needs assessment gave us a low cost and a high cost and they just.

Thank you. Yeah. So actually that looks reasonably doable. It says signage 5,000 is low cost, 10,000 is high cost.

So that seems like you know something we could talk to Friends of Friends Street about.

Paul maybe you have a little you and member Bell did a little bit of work on this topic maybe could fill us in.

Yeah so we've done a couple things.

Remember Bell and I met and had a bit of a discussion before we both left the area for other reasons but I did visit both.

Sacramento SPCA and Bradshaw and took some pictures and that sort of thing just to take a look and sort of do a little comparisons and it's a little bit like comparing apples and oranges because both those

are both newer and also more public facing more designed to be accommodate the public and so there's sort of some built-in challenges with way finding at Front Street that are going to be pretty hard to overcome.

However I would say that even though they are a little bit more intuitive for example when you walk into Bradshaw I mean it says adoption center across the front and you walk into the lobby and the animals are like right in front of you.

And of course it's sort of it's got a sort of public flow right design to it but even considering that they also do quite a bit more in terms of helping people understand where they are in the shelter and where to go in that sort of thing.

And in the process of kind of looking at this I've discovered that there are actual consultants about things like way finding and so I've tried to put together a list of those folks and start to see if there's some possibility of reaching out to folks and finding out how close that estimate might be to something that we could we could reasonably use and that sort of thing so hopefully have more more info on that to come.

Great thank you just to kind of be sure I'm hearing I think there's the cost of the actual signage so whatever that costs but one of the other things I've heard is that we might actually have some people who could be experts in the field of designing the signage that would have a charge for them so that might be another ask fix a friend's of Front Street about some support on that because might be good to hear from people who this is the business they're in is to feel.

And I know when in human health care hospitals way finding is a challenge and so there are people out there that know how to do this so maybe a member Heffner has agreed to look into that a little bit further.

Member Treat.

Madam Chair I guess Commissioner Heffner did you also look into I understand there are people who actually know how to do ways to get places but on the actual signage itself did we look into maybe sex states art department or I mean there's a lot of groups around that I think we could get the actual signage done as a project or something.

Versus actually paying for it but you'd want to have it done in the right way that it was designed so.

Exactly yeah I think that when you consider the how our buildings are very piecemeal and located all over the place and nobody knows where the category is that sort of thing that the key it seems to me is to is to get it done right and to dress those big how do I get to the

category how do I know what buildings have available dogs in it that sort of thing and then the actual making of the signs is really sort of like to say there are lots of there's lots of options so the majority of that money I guess is in the actual experts on I would presume so okay but yes okay I can help you on that too so.

That's actually really good question for us to take back to the needs assessment team is when they gave us that price was that the price for printing signs or was that a price for hiring some expertise to help us not that it necessarily matters but I feel like we know we need kind of both so thank you commissioner treat.

I have a question. Yes I don't know how feasible this would be but something like donations someone goes to an oning company says hey you know front street shelter we need an oning can you make us one yeah you know and you know it's probably I'm sure some sort of right off for them or something but that maybe a way to get some of the items covered.

Yeah you're raising a point that I actually wanted to make an observation about a little later in the agenda which is this committee is going to be bigger and so with more human power we might have more people who can do things like reach out to potential donors for an oning once we have a sense from the volunteers and staff and people who are at the shelter if that's a priority among the other things that's a priority.

Hopefully members of our committee can do the footwork to help track some of that down and and take any of that burden off of the staff at the shelter while they're doing data or electrical or HVAC anything that might.

Yeah so as we as we grow we'll have some more human hours to do some work on resource finding and hoping it I'll get into that a little bit later in our agenda on terms of ideas about a work plan for next year.

I'm going to go to the increased adoption presentation and again I want to remember mine myself is that a separate item follow a work plan.

No maybe Paul you can give us a little update on the adoption effort.

Sure so maybe remind folks what we talked about last time.

Yeah for at the last meeting we spent a lot of time looking at the work being done by human animal support services and with shelters across the country they were doing a lot of data gathering about foot traffic in in shelters and how

frequent folks were coming to shelters how often those who came to shelters were actually leaving with an animal that sort of thing and so we took sort of their model and tried to apply it with the data that we could get out of the folks over at the shelter.

Phil was real helpful in getting us some info so the first look was really just at the July statistics and the key metric that these folks have landed on is what they call the conversion rate so for every set of feet that come into your door thinking about adopting an animal what percentage of them actually leave with one right and so for July what was the first set of data that I was able to get out of the shelter.

So I had a data that I was able to get a hold of where we had 421 folks sign up for the wait list to meet a dog and we did 83 adoptions so that gave you a conversion rate of about 19.7%.

So fast forward to September and I think there's some outliers there but for September the numbers are really quite a bit different but had some of the same characteristics so we had a huge increase in the number of folks sign up to meet animals then 548 as compared to 421 and we did quite a few more adoptions 129 as opposed to the 83.

And so that gave us a conversion rate of 23.5% of a substantial improvement.

A couple things to note one was that we did an extensive free adoption period during that period so you might remember from the last time one of the things that we saw was that conversion rate varied quite substantially especially by day of the week.

And in particular we saw our in generally our higher conversion rates were during the week during the weekdays and our low conversion rates were during the weekends.

So a little bit sort of opposite what you might hope because we get definitely get more visitors on the weekend but what happens is more of those folks leave without animals and so we were trying to sort of sort through that and figure out what we might be able to do about that.

The September data does sort of track with that so between July and September of the 12 days where we had significantly higher than average conversion rates all of those were weekdays.

And then the five days in September that had significantly lower conversion rates again all of those were week and days.

So and in fact interestingly the pattern held even during free adoptions so in fact we some of the lowest conversion rates we had were our weekend free adoption rates.

We moved a lot of animals but compared to the increased fee number of folks we had come through we didn't really pay off in that same way.

If someone came in on a Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday they were much more likely to leave with an animal so that's something we can continue to talk about and continue to work on.

Some of the things we talked about last time was about how we might sort of try to win the weekends and improve those numbers.

First thing was we talked about was requiring folks when they sign up to meet an animal to actually provide us with the animal ID number which up until that point they didn't have to do that.

And so frequently they were not doing that which sort of delayed the meeting process because those of us who do adoption counseling we weren't able to say oh okay we know what animal you want to meet there's four other people who want to meet that animal first.

So Phil and his folks switch that and I think we've seen some improvement in that there are still a few ways people can kind of get around it if they try but for the most part we are getting folks to sign up and say this is the animal I want to meet which is it's a little teeny speed bump but it's one.

Signage and way finding is something that we've talked about is something that we want to focus on to improve.

More weekend adoption counselors I did two training sessions for volunteers to bring in more folks to do weekend adoption counseling and we are seeing a few of those folks stick with it if you are a volunteer and you're looking for a role at Front Street adoption counseling is like the best thing.

We are still I think I have not made much progress yet or we're still trying to figure out how to deal with our online versus in paper adoption applications we still ask people to do things both online and on paper and I know that's maybe the city attorney's office is listening and they can provide us some help on that front.

And then we've talked about and I think that's still something we need to maybe think about doing is working on creating that feedback loop for folks who leave without an animal some sort of text and follow up surveys those kinds of things have been particularly helpful for those other shelters to sort of see those folks as future customers and try to draw them back in so that's kind of that's my update for the moment I haven't got a chance to fill was very gracious and provided me with quite a bit of data but I was not able to complete my analysis.

I was able to complete my analysis of both October and August yet so maybe by the next time I'll have more robust data but the numbers are actually moving in the right direction so that's that's positive.

I guess what I would ask is that is it coming in for the first time in adopting that day or are there people do you know if they're coming in on the weekend and looking around and then coming back to adopt.

I'm not going to ask you a question so I don't know about our data I didn't sort by that frequency but nationally what the what the host folks will tell you is is that unless you do some sort of outreach to folks after they leave without adopting an animal only about 16% of those folks are going to actually come back to your shelter and adopt an animal.

If you treat them as your future customers if you do some follow up and maybe find out maybe you know Paul wants a small dog or Paul wants a young dog Paul wants something like that and then provide them a little bit info keep them plugged into the website things like that that's more likely to get those those feet back in the door.

Because when I have people that I know who want to get a pet I just say we'll go to front street there's lots to see I never tell them to go online to look up a number of a pet.

Yeah make an appointment.

Yeah so maybe that's an educational thing that we should be doing too.

Yeah yeah.

Is encouraging them to look online.

I do think that we're getting a lot of and Phil you might know better about the web traffic of people who come in that's an interesting question.

Easily be another question that we get asked on when they sign up for a wait while.

Yeah.

You know where they where they why are they there do they look up on the website and saw an animal did someone tell them.

Again whether it's when they first come in or if it is what that follow up question.

So is every just clarifying question for me is every animal that is a doctor that is ready to be adopted has a picture and a number and it's online.

So you can say I want a kitten and I'm going to go and I'm going to look what's there so you could come to the shelter prepared to ask for kitten number 1702 or whatever.

Oh that's it that's yeah people are much more shopping online these days and if we think of these as customers which I think we are doing more and more recognizing that it's a customer relationship because we want them to adopt an animal.

Well in part of what they're finding nationally is that you know everything you can order everything on the internet now and you can you can order yourself a dog.

And what will happen is or you know any other kind of animal and in some cases you got folks who are sort of posing as adoption agencies who are really simply just engaged in a sales transaction.

And for the right price you can have basically any size shape and you want you know if you're willing to pay the right price delivered to your door.

So that's part of kind of what we have to push back against.

Essentially the competition that is the competition.

Other questions or comments Paul I have a question lately and I don't know if it's just lately and maybe you you know this or you don't but on next door that availability is daily.

Every it seems like every animal that goes in is now on there and posted we're seeing that on absolutely a regular basis multiple times a day and I'm wondering how much that is helping because it is it is out there every single day cats dogs whatever is this your dog do adopt a dog.

We found this dog but a lot of information is out there next door daily that's probably the most item you see on on next door now I'm wondering how much that is helping with adoptions or returns or what have you with that.

I mean I think increasingly people just assume that they can and should do everything online I know as an adoption counselor folks come into me and they see a dog that's not yet available.

You know you give them the stray whole date when it's likely to be lifted and you tell them please check the website because as soon as that animal comes available it'll pop up on our website and that will hopefully encourage folks to come back.

Any other questions? Yeah I have a question I was curious about the conversion rate and if we have a comparison to other national data like are these good or these poor because it seems like 20% or 25% seems pretty good to me.

Yeah so the five shelters that Hoss worked with to get this project off the ground the low end was 8% and the high was 50. So yeah they're there and now they weren't all municipal shelters some of them were rescues which you know operate on a different model but so quite a quite a big range and their basic proposition was by making sure that they were not going to be a big range.

So by making adoption is easier to do less paperwork and all that sort of thing by providing support afterwards and by you know treating those folks as future customers everybody could move their numbers up.

And then I do have one other question regarding the free adoption days probably more for you Philip is do you see returns after that because I know there's like the perception of it was free so it's you know there's not a price tag on it.

Yes so at our shelter and nationally there's there's not a higher return rate on those but again what the conversation is with the staff and again this what Paul's talking about is yes we can put on an event but are we going to have enough volunteers and enough staff to actually be able to serve those people otherwise they are just going to walk out the door.

So yes you know we were having the conversation today because we are now back up to 170 dogs in the shelter. Could we you know put on an event this weekend we could but is it actually going to result in actual animals being adopted because there would be just so many people and not enough people to serve them.

When other just a complete side note to about September was we happen to do free adoptions right on top of one of the hoarding cases where we brought in what was it 20 30 24.

Yeah. Chihuahua's that most most there were two Huskies and I think the rest were Chihuahua's and oh my gosh they were some of the most timid scared animals and of course people wanted to adopt them and you know it was it was a little it was a little tough that was it was a tough couple of days but here you go I mean it's the nature of the beast.

So thank you Paul thank you for diving into this about the adoption it seems I mean it does seem to me that one of the goals of any shelter is adopting out animals and getting as many animals adopted out as possible so looking to the science looking to the industry of shelters and how other shelters are changing or adding to how they encourage adoptions this is great in my opinion to be able to get it.

I think I need to help with that. I think I can just say I can't help but I feel like I can give you my opinion to be able to use our team our commissions time to look into some of this stuff and start to bring some of those pieces of information back the staff is crazy busy with so many day-to-day things so to the extent that we can learn about methodologies and then work with the staff there about changing some things and seeing how it goes and measuring outcomes et cetera.

interesting that we have a higher conversion rate during weekdays because that just suggests

to me that maybe people are a little more intending to come to adopt when they make a plan

to go there on a Tuesday versus on a Saturday or Sunday where they may just be shopping

or hanging out.

I think Joe was pointing out there is a very, it's like a family outing day just to go.

Which kind of leads me to the text follow up of, hey we noticed that you left today without

a new family member.

Can you tell us about that or whatever so we can maybe look at that a little bit more.

Thank you.

The last item is the Review Committee Work Plan.

So this is for 2025 and I'll talk a little bit about that when we talk a little bit more

about our ordinance update because I think that's really what should be guiding our work

plan for 2025.

So I don't think we have to take an action on the follow up log.

It's an information.

Oh, pass a motion adopting the follow up log.

So with that discussion is there a motion to adopt the follow up log?

Some of them.

Second.

Mr. Treat and Commissioner Huffner.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed.

Any names?

Thank you so much.

We have adopted the log.

The work plan review for 20 so 2024 if you can give you go to the next page you'll see

a document that I drafted a few months ago which is titled 2024 Animal Care Citizens Advisory

Committee Work Plan.

The first page was the duties that were in our ordinance.

You can see a red box because that language isn't even, wasn't even applicable anymore.

The second page were sort of projects that we were interested in engaged in and started

to do some work on.

And so as a way for me myself to kind of track what we were doing and where some of our

time and energy went I drafted this idea of a work plan.

It's definitely helped me kind of keep a sense of what are we working on and where are

we going.

I think it could definitely be it should be revised more in the coordinate.

It's been a long time since we've been working on the ordinance and we've been working

on the ordinance with our ordinance update and looking at what is our charge now in our

updated ordinance.

So basically just wanted to kind of put it out to folks that the idea of a document that

captures what our work plan is and that we make it match what our charges in our ordinance

are.

Anybody is already public comment on this topic.

Thank you chair we have no speakers for this item.

Thank you so much.

So any comments from the commission about a work plan a way of kind of capturing things,

something that helps organize our thinking, looking for input from folks.

Anybody member, have you.

My question is how is the work plan different from the follow-up log because it looks to

me like there's some interaction of the two.

Which isn't a certainly bad thing but just so my own edification.

Yeah.

Thank you.

So I'll just jump into that.

The log was always frankly a little vague to me what the purpose of it how we use it and

since it was on consent calendar it didn't really allow us to get into things very deeply.

And the log was generated initially just ideas that kind of were out there hanging around

there and we got some advice from the clerk's office to start a log.

So I think the log was sort of a tale that kind of came along with us trying to organize

ourselves.

Is there anything you can add to that from your understanding?

Yeah.

I mean most boards, commissions, city council.

They have a follow-up log.

Everybody uses it kind of differently.

Again, as you mentioned, it was suggested that this be more of a discussion item since

it tends to be discussed.

I don't think it's, you know, if we are going to maybe continue on putting the follow-up

log on the discussion calendar, we may read the tube in.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that's a possibility.

And as we move forward into 25, any new officers may want to make some adjustments to these

items.

I just dived in where I could honestly.

And so I appreciate the observation that there's somewhat matching and somewhat a little.

And honestly, I'll just again say there were things in the ordinance that weren't on our

log because we hadn't had any activity around them.

And so it kind of felt the need to be sure we were looking at stuff in the ordinance and

kind of at least thinking about whether we could do something on that or not.

So yeah, marrying the tube and making it sort of a work plan log could be a way to move

forward.

It kind of makes sense as you pick a topic and move it forward from a work plan into a follow-up

log, you know, it becomes something that you follow up each meeting and stuff as we pick

certain topics that we're going to focus on.

It kind of makes sense.

Other commissioners, any comments?

I'm going to ask the staff of the attorney or the city clerk.

Have you seen anything with other commissions that we could learn from in terms of how they

organize themselves and keep track of?

Unfortunately, yeah, there's no great tip out there.

Yeah, we can model ourselves off.

Well, so the idea is to keep it all uniform across.

So yeah, yeah, sounds good.

Thank you.

So that is just kind of a quick review and we can look, the committee commission can

look at marrying the tube.

I wanted to take us to the ordinance which was included in your packet just to kind of

give everybody a minute of review of the powers and duties.

I know we talked about this last time, but I think now that we're here and that this

has been adopted fully at the end of October, we have these powers and duties of the commission.

And so we are moved on to item five.

Thank you.

And any public comment on that topic, sorry.

No chair, we have no speakers for item five.

Okay, thank you.

So item five is the updated ordinance and part of what I was hoping to bring again, folks

attention to is the powers and duties of the commission.

And so some of these are very grand ideas about helping keep people and their pets together

and how would we get granular on that?

I recently read an article about goals and plans, are different things.

You can have a goal of something, but you got to kind of figure out a plan to get to

that goal.

And so what I want to suggest is inviting the commissioners to look through this outline

of duties and powers of this commission and pick one or two that you have an area of interest

in so that we can start to ask commissioners to have some authority, some agency in that

particular topic and seeing what we can do to move forward in a positive way.

I had a moment of sort of brainstorming meeting since we don't have a meeting ourselves

next month.

If people were interested in having coffee and kind of looking at this list a little bit

more, you know, sort of a chat over coffee about some of the areas that one might have interest

in working on.

I'm going to pick on our newest commissioner, Christie.

Item four talks about us ensuring animal care services meet or exceed standards in the

association of shelter veterinarians guidelines.

I'm guessing maybe some work that you've done previously with the Humane Society or

Commissioner Treat, work you did with the rescue program.

Maybe there are things that we could hone in on.

I'll remind folks that those standards are a document that is at the back of the needs

assessment.

It is an attachment to the back of the needs assessment.

It's my understanding.

It's also a tool that's being used for the audit in terms of looking at where we have

challenges with meeting some of those standards and where we're meeting or exceeding those

standards.

But those are standards in my understanding that are guiding shelters.

And so sort of our charge is to support the shelter team in meeting standards and ensuring

we're doing right by our animals in our community.

So I really ask the members of this commission to kind of look through this set of duties

and see if one or two of those resonate with you.

And if you're willing for me to meet and have coffee with you and talk about ideas around

that, that would be lovely because I hope that in 2025 we can really continue to dig into

some other activities, kind of like what we've done on the needs assessment or like what

we were starting to do on adoption rates.

I have a couple of points I wanted to make about sort of 2025.

So I'll put that out there right now, which is we will need new officers for 2025.

So folks need to think about that.

I am precluded.

I'm not sure if my member Garcia is precluded, but I cannot be the chair.

In my next year, I will have served for two calendar years.

I'm looking at the clerk.

I'm pretty sure that the rules are two consecutive calendar years.

So we'll need another chair.

It was confirmed to me that I could be vice chair, but I cannot be chair.

So those of you who might be willing to take on that role, I am willing to work to put

the agenda together for the January meeting since we won't have a new chair until January.

They're just letting you all know that, but I work with Philip and the team to put the

January agenda together.

We also have our annual report that was adopted at our last meeting that is to be presented

to PNPE committee in January unless people have any concerns or complaints.

I would be interested in presenting that to PNPE.

And so I'm putting that on the table is just to make people aware that I would be interested

in making that presentation.

Commissioner, treat.

So we go into January with no chair or no vice chair.

I think it's a little, well for now, I just meant it has to be.

How it worked by the council, right?

No, we select our own chair and vice chair.

No, I meant for Denise to come back as a member, the council has to approve it.

So we could go into January without a chair or vice chair.

What if nobody wants it?

It's a task.

Well, I think just respond for my own experience, which is this commission previously committee

struggled a bit to keep a quorum because I'm going to guess that some people didn't feel

like they were doing work that was worth their time to come.

I think we're doing worth this well our time.

I just never want to be chair of a commission again.

So anybody else want to step up?

That works for me.

I will make it known that I'm interested in willing to continue to have a leadership

position and continue to do some of the work that I've done.

If in the vice chair role collaborating and partnering with a new chair, so whoever

might be a new chair, I would let you know I'm interested in continuing as vice chair

and would not leave you alone to somehow find your way.

Because frankly, I was sort of doing, we were doing a bit learning how the commissions

worked.

You have a very good point there, Commissioner Treet, which is seven people makes a quorum

for this commission now.

We are at seven.

We lose Joe.

So we all need to figure out how if we can do some outreach for new interested commissioners.

That's my understanding from Philip that because we have a new seat for a youth commissioner

and apparently there are some applicants for that seat that will be interviewed by P and

P.E. on November 19th.

So if anybody wants to listen into that meeting on November 19th, apparently there were three

youth commission applicants to this.

So that would, I think they're a voting member.

They count towards quorum.

So if a youth commissioner is seated, then that would help in terms of robustellies seat.

I know council member Wang is working on a member, Commissioner Bell's seat.

We hope she recites commissioner Bell.

But apparently there were some other applicants.

So we're hopeful that there will be quorum in January, but it's a good point.

Madam Chair, do we have a list of who hasn't appointed anyone yet?

We sort of do.

Let me think out loud with you all for a minute and.

Because I can talk to those city council members and have them step up.

Number treat, it appears that you will be in the council member Kaplan's seat.

Council member Dickinson who has not yet sworn in has a vacant.

Council member Talamante's might have a vacancy.

That's a little unclear because a few of us are going to get reappointed into new seats.

So Dickinson Talamante's probably a plucky bomb, right?

Plucky bomb that's district four.

Christie is this then seated in district five council member maple council member Gerra and

council member Jennings just reminding folks that Garcia and myself and Hefner all live in Jennings district.

So one of us will likely end up in that seat.

I believe that council member I'm sorry commissioner Hefner is being slotted into the seat,

which is a seat that PNPE fills for a long term volunteer.

So there's a little bit of behind the scenes.

I'm not sure what where I'm going to be moved maybe into a mayor appointment.

I'm not sure about that.

So there are there's still some moving parts.

Anybody jump in if you have any more knowledge on this?

Well isn't it going forward?

You don't have to live in the district that the council member is a point.

We can meet the them to point somebody.

You don't have to live in the district.

You do have to live in the city.

I will work on Talamante's and plucky bomb.

Sounds good.

Someone also have to take Dickinson.

And then the other seat that is open and accepting application is someone who is employed

in the field of animal shelter work, but not at our shelter.

So we think we have an applicant who's a veterinarian.

We think we have an applicant, a veterinarian applicant.

I don't know if this person's retired or still working.

Still working but not sure if it's in shelter medicine, but it's an animal correct.

So that's a seat that's out there for a person employed.

We anticipate Paul will be slotted into the seat for somebody with a long term volunteer

experience.

So those are kind of what I know about that.

I have a question.

I believe my position around the seat was only for the rest of the year.

Did the weather get stuck to the tree open?

That's a very good question on the listing that I pulled down from the city's website.

It says that you actually said that you started 1-1-23, which we know is not the case.

And that you're in through 12-31-26.

So at least we have a little bit of time to sort you out.

And this is public information that I just went on to the seat website and look for the

boards and commissions in our seats.

So I am aware that behind the scenes there's some shifting around for those of us who are

already seated, not with standing member Bell whose term was coming up anyway, but those

of us who are already seated are being shifted into appropriate seats is the best I understand.

Does that make sense?

Anybody?

Our hope is that we have a replacement for Joe, maybe a youth member, and we continue

with Member Bell so that we continue to have 7 people for a quorum in January and maybe

more as seats get filled.

I actually was had the opportunity to talk to the Land Park News, one of the writers

from the Land Park News, which Kathy is familiar with, that it's broader than Land Park

News, it's Curtis Park and Greenhaven, et cetera.

And they said that they would put an article in to promote the open seats, so trying to

work on that.

And again, if anybody has anybody listening in, there's an application available on the

city website, so please apply.

Are there applicants in these districts that know that they can be appointed by the council

member or not in this district?

Where do the applications get funneled to since anybody can appoint for it?

And the district has been there and they're in their district.

How do they know?

Where is it funneling up from?

They go to the clerk's office.

Okay.

And then they funnel them out to maybe the districts that they live in or?

It is up to, I mean, again, this is a kind of as Lee was explaining, there's just people

that were slid over because of the new ordinance, but going forward, so the new council members,

the mayor, they will be selecting their, if there's an applicant or, yes.

So Christie, you're the most recent person who filled out an application.

You did it through the city clerk's office, correct?

And it goes to a sort of generic central application submission site.

And then I'm guessing the clerk's office screens to see what district somebody may be

in and then they may be approached that city council member.

Yeah, in my instance, I filled out the application and there's a drop down for which commission

you would like to apply for.

And then I also reached out to Katie Maple's office because I knew that there was a pretty

urgent need.

So I don't know if that I would imagine kind of change the flow of things.

And just for the commission to know, Christie had applied in December and interviewed with

P and P. So it was, it was already, she was a known applicant and had interviewed by P and P.

And P. Member Maple, council member Maple sits on P and P.

Was familiar with Christie's application.

In fact, complimented Christie at the meeting.

I happened to be there and member Garcia, we were there and we were both reappointed to

our seats and there were only two vacancies.

So when we discovered that our commission was growing and we had a vacancy, I approached

Christie to see if she was still interested and then we sort of let it go through the process.

Any?

All of the questions.

Yeah.

Did people have that little in Sacramento that is at their incorporated first?

City of Sacramento.

City of Sacramento.

No, nonetheless, they're a long-term volunteer or something works for it.

I mean, it used to be that you filled one of those.

Let's look at our ordinance.

It used to be that if you filled one of those special categories that you didn't have to live in the city.

A friend of mine who lived in Davis was on a commission for a while.

Yeah, that's a good point and since we've got a new ordinance.

I believe it's not in our ordinance.

There is another ordinance.

It's in the broader ordinance.

Right, so our commission is under a broader set of rules that govern commissions.

Which includes everybody needs to understand that they're going to be approached to fill out something called the form 700.

So good luck with that.

Folks will all follow have some training on equal opportunity employment settings.

Paul and I happened to sit in on the same webinar today.

So keep an eye out for that webinar.

Were you on there?

Okay, it's a two hour training.

So you must complete that training to stay in line with the city of Sacramento requirements.

There was one other thing I was thinking that I can't.

Oh, it's my understanding clerk if you can help in any way.

Absences are now being counted strictly on a calendar year basis.

Maybe there was sort of a rolling 12 months and I know I was always confused when did the 12 months start.

But I'm pretty sure absences are now strictly on a calendar year basis.

And I don't know what the number is of absences.

It's maybe two, maybe three.

But it's in a calendar year so you can have a better sense of where you are.

And if you have any absences, excused and unexcused teams seems to be a little still unclear to me about excuses.

Or unexcused, but definitely the number, the calendar year is a way of counting absences.

I'm just to make sure you eat today with the car's office and the center.

Three.

Okay, so no more gray or about excused or unexcused.

The other thing is the calendar schedule for 2025.

I hope people have seen it.

It is published.

It was sent to all of us just as a reminder to all of us.

We are the second.

We are supposedly the second Wednesday of the month.

But in January, we're the third.

I'm just looking at this right now because of the holiday.

So you gotta keep an eye on the calendar because of dates changing.

But generally we're the second Wednesday of the month.

We go on recess in July and December of every year.

So no meeting in December.

I think that's all I wanted to point out about the ordinance and some updates.

Thank you all for your interest in looking at those responsibilities and duties in helping figure out which ones to work on.

Thank you so much.

I think I am done with item five.

Do we have a manager's report?

Yes.

We're ready for the shopping manager.

So we're going to have a meeting.

That's it.

All right.

So some exciting news where we are making headway.

This was as of yesterday.

Tomorrow afternoon.

We have an interview for our chief animal control officer.

We have two animal control officers that have passed their backgrounds and they are waiting for their start date.

And then we have one additional animal control officer that's currently in backgrounds for our homeless outreach assistance program.

We are staffed except for the two animal control officers and we're currently interviewing for those two vacancies.

We have one customer service representative.

We are waiting for interview dates for those candidates.

We received close to 300 applications for that one position.

And we are also waiting for interview dates for our public information coordinator, which we also received close to 100 applications for that position as well.

In our veterinary services section, we have one registered vet tech that we're waiting for a start date.

We are conducting interviews tomorrow and so we'll have two additional vacancies that will be interviewing for the next couple of weeks.

In our shelter operations services section.

We have two animal care technicians that we have offered positions and we're awaiting their start date.

And then we have our volunteer services coordinator vacancy.

We have sent the names and we are also waiting for interview dates for that position as well.

So with this current staffing, we're down to 22% vacancy rate.

I think with the highest, we were up in the low 30s at one point.

So again, major progress and again, bringing on some of these people here in a very short period of time.

Hopefully, you know, we can get it under 15 to 10%.

I was number I would budget.

Yes, exactly. So again, kudos to my staff for coordinating all these interviews.

And you know, it's it is really intense when you're interviewing for two days for some of these positions.

But making making good progress.

Some general program updates.

We held our gala on November 2nd.

And many of you were there.

We was our largest gala get almost 300 guests.

We raised approximately, these are real rough numbers right now.

186,000 dollars, 298 cents.

And with a net gain of 152,958 dollars.

Again, these are still soft numbers.

We're still working out some of the details.

This was well over $100,000 more than we raised at our last gala.

So again, huge shout out to one of our friends or front street board members for all of you that were there.

She did an incredible job.

She never put on a gala before.

And so she really she showed us how it could be done.

I think it was also tremendous that basically every one of us was there.

And I hope that our commission continues to collaborate closer with friends and front street because there are colleagues.

So thanks to everybody for being there.

And this is so great for love.

And it was really a lovely event.

And thanks for making sure that we knew about it.

Yeah, absolutely.

Not that I'm comparing myself with my previous shelter, but we actually raised more money than we ever did at our gala.

What's that?

I haven't called them and told them yet, but I do it is on my agenda.

You know every October, the ASPCA has a soup.

Adopt a shelter pit month where we partner with one of our local Subaru dealerships.

Made a Subaru is always generous and always chooses us.

And not only do they actually hold an adoption event at their location, they also come out to our monthly vaccination clinic and send an employee out.

It's been the same employee for the last two or three years and he's just awesome.

He shows up and he just dives right in and helps the staff.

And you know when we're serving four to 500 pets, we can use all the help we can get.

So again, just huge shout out to the ASPCA and to made a Subaru for always choosing us.

We just had our, well, seems like we just had our free vaccination and microchip clinic, but it was actually November 10th at the Oak Park Community Center.

We serve 392 dogs and we have our upcoming one on December 1st at 8 to 12 at the North and Thomas Community Center.

You know, we received some feedback. You know, why do we continue to hold it at the North and the Thomas Community Center?

There's a couple of reasons. One, it is a location that is set up really well for us to be able to serve dogs and cats at the same time and more people.

And again, I would like to also just give a huge shout out to the team that works there.

They love when we come there. They love the community coming in and they again also jump in and help out and help us set up and break down and anything that we need.

They're just really, really good to the team.

Some shelter stats. This was as of November 11th in the evening. We had 96 cats.

141 dogs and one chicken at the shelter for a total of 238 animals. And again, I would like to mention, you know, before I left the shelter, we were at over, it was 171 dogs in the shelter.

So as fast as we're getting them out, they're coming in. So we're doing the best we can. In regular foster care, we have 277 cats, 131 dogs, one livestock and three others.

So total of 412 and in fostered to adopt. 487 cats, 336 dogs for a total of 823 animals.

Total animals in our care, 1,273. Again, just like to point out that, you know, we have made some progress at one point this summer, we were over 1800 animals.

So we are making progress. Our new veterinarians have made a very lofty goal by December of next year. They would like us to stop doing fostered to adopt.

The scary thing is to date, or I'm sorry, as of November 12, we've taken an 8,580 animals.

And total calendar year that we took in was 9,368. So as we see, we're, we still have a good month and a half left in the year.

So we are anticipating that we will surpass last year's intake numbers.

Positive volunteers are again, just continuing to amaze us as of November 12. We had 1029 volunteers log 82,649 volunteer hours. And I can guarantee you that's probably at least 25 to 50% actual hours that they actually provided.

You'll be of it myself, not logging my foster volunteer hours. And I know many of the staff and other volunteers. I'm looking at Paul.

Again, we just all get busy. And it's a real challenge. Again, our volunteer coordinators do a great job of reminding all of us.

But we all know that we're just going 100 miles a minute. So again, just super impressive. And again, just shows us how much support we have in our community.

And as was mentioned earlier, you know, we we are currently undergoing as audit. This is an audit that was supposed to well actually did start back in early 2020 by the city auditor's office.

It was just a routine audit as every department and division goes through. Obviously, we all know in 2020 there was a pandemic. So the audit was was stopped at that time.

City auditor's offices had staffing challenges as well. And then some other priorities in the city regarding audits took precedence over ours.

And so we've been doing that since the end of summer. And we are hoping to have the initial findings sometime in December.

And so that'll probably come out sometime next year.

So the findings come to the department by the end of the year. And then do the findings go to.

Can see council or where did they go from the department.

So after yes, after we have a chance to review them, then they will go to the budget and audit committee. And then they will go to the full council.

I just happened to as I said, I have the needs assessment. And so I was looking back at historical intake numbers.

And I can't do the math quick enough for cats and dogs, but it looks like last year we had about 5,000 dogs and another 4,000 cats.

So are we going in the right direction in terms of having fewer animals or is this.

We're going in the direction of having more more animals.

So that's interesting that these figures are a little different than.

Yes, those I don't know are these dogs and cats are they using all animals dogs and cats. And this is shelter in cake data is correlated by the Davis vet.

Yes, so this this is all animals. So that's the birds, the chickens, the again, those aren't on our dashboard.

It would be helpful maybe in as we progress in terms of how we look at your statistics to kind of say, this is what we had, you know, within the like a chart of for the five years.

Because I find myself wondering in terms of intake. I can just think of three reasons that animals are brought in. I'm sure there are more, but I'm curious, you know, I'm curious if off the top of your head.

Are they coming in because they're stray, are they coming in because some family has to surrender an animal, are they coming in because an animal control officer confiscated.

And how like which of those is the like are those appropriate.

Yes, so stray is our is our number one intake.

And so we are working on by January 1st, we want to have a owner surrender prevention program.

And so we're going to be working on putting that together. We're not going to recreate the will. There's some wonderful organizations out there that are already doing that work.

Again, the research that I have done and the people that I have spoken to that have switched over to an owner surrender prevention program did not see a huge spike in increase in owner surrenders or in intake overall.

When you don't have an owner surrender prevention slash owner surrender program, you force your community to lie to you and say it's a straight.

So we hope to again be able to have those conversations and take take in the animals that we must take in, you know, whether that's an owner requested youth in Asia for a 16 year old dog that is beyond being able to be saved.

And that owner can't afford the four to $500. Youth in Asia bill.

And that animal that has to stay in the shelter for the three day hold period.

Because you know we're looking for an owner that that is not coming because we force them to lie to us.

So our veterinarians are on board for that. They they want to be able to provide that service because one it benefits the animal.

It benefits the owner and it also benefits the medical staff because now the medical staff can actually use their time and energy focusing on the animals that may need some additional medical but not an animal that they're just trying to keep comfortable for the three day hold period.

But the intake would be stray surrender confiscation. Is there any other reason that animal I know they're hoarding.

Yeah, so yeah, new confiscation. No, those those are the main we weren't we're not a transfer agency.

We we have occasionally, you know, if we have a partner agency that has a lot of cases and they're highly adoptable animals that we can move through our shelter system very quickly.

But again, those are very, very low numbers.

So really stray animals that end up on the shelters.

Responsibility those become adoption adoptable animals. So hence working on increasing adoptions or doing what we can to try to work on that conversion rates.

Yeah, I mean adoptions and return to owners keeping animals from coming into the shelter.

So return to owner will be a big shift especially when we get our officers fully staffed and trained that they can actually take the time to do some of that reunification out in the community right now.

You know, they're running from call to call the call. They don't have the time.

You know, even if they have owner information like it's easier for them to bring those three dogs into the shelter.

Get them processed some back out into the field to answer additional calls.

Could question the return to owner issue.

The host folks did another webinar on owner returns. I don't know if you had just to see it, but at least one of the shelters they're working with eliminated their reclaiming fee, which was interesting from a cost perspective because what they found was

by eliminating the fees they did increase only marginally the number of folks that were the number of animals that were returned to owners.

But for those RTOs they were going out much faster. So your length of stay shrunk a lot for those folks.

Has that something anybody's looked at? I don't know.

We currently wave it. We currently wave all RTO fees. Unless it's some type of investigation or criminal abuse and or a repeat of interest.

And when I say repeat, I mean when we're on the fourth and fifth time.

And again, you know, that is just a reflection also of the services that we can provide because if somebody's animal is getting out four or five times, we should be having a conversation being able to have the time to go out.

You know, you need four fence boards fixed. That's an easy fix. So again, it's just really it's a staffing resource to not be not being able to provide that service.

Is there any public comment on this presentation?

Yes, I do. I have public comments for the same.

Other members of the commission, any comments or questions related to this?

The made a Subaru adoption event resulted in two adoptions. Is that is that consistent? How many hours are spent on that event?

We had a lot of people this year. We last year we had we had taken six, I think was 16 dogs. They all got adopted. We actually had to go back to the shelter and get more dogs and come back.

Again, we don't know me. Subaru did media outreach. But again, it kind of just goes back to that overarching thing that we're seeing that, you know, people just aren't adopting at the rates that they were before.

So again, not to get too far off the topic about outreach and shelters and getting people to come to shelters and rescues.

Cal animals is working with some of our large national nonprofits. So hopefully in January, I'll have some information to share about a California statewide initiative to get the word out there to, you know, the community of why it's important to come to shelters and rescues to.

Get your next family pet. We've not seen too much of that on the outside of, you know, the media, but on television promoting the importance of adopting from shelters and rescues.

So I'm really looking forward to that here, especially in California.

And also the some of the activities that were being done to increase span neuter rates, the mash program, the team from San Diego, those happen or those still in place.

Those are all scheduled for the the mash clinics are all scheduled for next year.

Thanks.

And we are still in the process of securing locations.

Thank you.

Any other questions for many commissioners? Thank you.

We are now onto the commissioner comments ideas and questions.

Anybody have any questions or ideas that we haven't already chat about?

Seems like people are quiet.

What's a good.

Okay.

And then public comments matters not on the agenda. Are there any?

Thank you chair. We have no speakers.

Sounds good.

So let me look at I had my own little notes.

You that again, gala audit update.

It looks like we've covered all the little questions I had sitting out here.

So my favorite part of the meeting everybody knows just to use the gala and say first of all, thank you to Joe for years of support to this committee now commission.

And thank you all.

Hope everybody has a great end of the year. We're adjourned.

They have them scheduled periodically.