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We're ready for the new one

Let's begin

Good evening and welcome to the

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25th

2025 meeting.

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Commissioner Fu. Vice Chair Morris.

Here. Commissioner Garcia.

Here. And Chair Heffner.

Here. Thank you. We have a quorum.

Well, thank you all for being here today.

It is so great to see such a large group here.

And thank you to everybody from the public

to who are joining us for this meeting.

It means a lot to us that folks would brave

the inclement weather to join us to talk about

animal well being in Sacramento.

And when folks will take the trouble to come,

to address a meeting of folks who have no budget,

no staff and no authority, it really speaks to how important

it is to folks that we take good care of animals

here in Sacramento.

As we get started, I will say that the word transparency

gets tossed around a lot these days.

And I do think that it's important that this commission

in particular be an open book.

We are here to get information from the public,

to learn from you, to listen to you.

And to me, that's our most important function.

So with that, I will remind folks that if you want to speak

on an item, please turn in a speaker slip.

No later than when the item begins,

you'll have two minutes to speak when you're called on.

After the first speaker for an item,

we will no longer accept speaker slips.

So that gives folks a notion to please get those slips in.

If there's an item that you would like to speak on,

we'll now get forward to this agenda.

And we will have a commissioner treat.

We'll be leading us in the land acknowledgement and the pledge.

Please rise for the opening acknowledgement

in the honor of Sacramento's indigenous people

and tribal lands.

To the original people of this land, the Nieson people,

the southern Maidu, Valley and Plains me walk, Patwin Wintoon,

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 today.

Active practice of acknowledgement and appreciation

of Sacramento's indigenous peoples,

history, contribution and lives.

Thank you.

Very much.

All right.

Yeah. Good to do the pledge.

I don't.

And rise again.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America

and to the republic for which it stands when nation,

under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Where did they get this chair?

They don't know. He doesn't know what he's doing.

Okay.

So let's start with the introduction of our new members.

We are so grateful to have four new members of the commission.

And I'd love to have each of them introduce themselves,

give us a little bit of their background

and what inspired you to join us in this crazy adventure.

So who we got a list.

First on the list, I believe was commissioners.

Abishay.

I'm still getting the hang of this.

Hi, I'm Ava.

Yep.

I'm a veterinarian in Fair Oaks.

I'm originally from LA, but I came here for vet school

and then I ended up staying here because I really like it.

And I chose to get involved because I like volunteering

and giving back and I haven't done that for some time.

So I thought this is a good first step.

Wonderful. Thank you.

Welcome.

Commissioner Bagley.

Hello.

Katie.

I consider myself a pretty open book.

Would you like to hear animal welfare history

or animal welfare passions and ideas?

What would you like me to start with?

Anything you'd like to share with us?

I've been an advocate for many years.

I don't know if the mic is on.

In the mid 80s, I served on the board of the local SPCA.

I was also a volunteer working in the kennels,

doing adoptions, everything that you do, Paul.

And at that time, I was also trained

by a gentleman named Doug Fackema in Euthanasia.

And from that, I submitted a proposal for the county

to switch over from the carbon monoxide gas chamber

into lethal injection.

And of course, they rejected that.

That was in the late 80s.

A few years later, of course, that was banned

in our region and in our state.

I also worked on anti-pound seizure.

I don't know if you know what pound seizure is.

It's when shelters sell animals

that they don't find adoptable to research sites.

In this case, it was UCD in the research labs.

Animals were being sold for $5 by both the county and the city.

There was a massive movement in anti-pound seizure

at that time.

We collected signatures, got it on the ballot.

It did not prevail.

But then within a few years, that also was banned.

In the state.

Then I became a prosecutor and I dealt with animal cruelty.

I'm an expert in animal cruelty and neglect, criminal procedure,

and bringing the cases, triaging the cases,

the investigations, the search warrants.

I have taught every law enforcement department here

in Sacramento.

I've taught district attorneys.

I've taught out of state, out of town attorneys,

out of county jurisdiction attorneys.

And of course, every animal control agency.

I always took animal cruelty cases in the 30 plus years

I was a prosecutor, including in homicide.

I even had animal cruelty cases.

The only time I didn't was when I was in gangs,

because I had so many cases, but I still triaged search

warrants and investigations and cases in filings.

From there, since I've retired, while actually the last three

years, I did exclusively animal cruelty.

I've seen every type, every dark side of animal cruelty,

the malicious, and all levels of neglect.

And I look forward to training some of you on cruelty,

because I think it's rampant.

In fact, I'm positive of it, and I have many, many power points.

Since I've retired, I've been on the team board at Bradshaw

for fundraising.

I'm also their primary scheduler for span

neuter with their mesh events.

They're three-day animal balance that you're now

doing in the city.

So I've had a chance, because I'm the primary scheduler.

I've talked to well over 1,000 people who

are getting their animals fixed.

And I've picked their brains.

And I've really been interested in knowing

how educated they are in the humane treatment of animals,

because I think that's what's really lacking.

So with that, now I'm on this board,

and I hope to expand some of the passions I have.

I think everything starts and ends with span neuter.

You can't say enough about it.

We're not doing enough about it.

Any humane treatment of animals.

Yeah, I think that's it.

Wonderful.

Well, thank you for joining us.

Thank you for sharing.

Commissioner Bagley?

Mr. Moose, sorry.

Can I get names wrong for a bit?

But I'll get it right eventually.

I'm sorry.

That's OK.

I answered anything.

So I'm Jennifer Mausis.

It's really great to be here.

I'm very honored to be up here with everyone

and look forward to the work.

I am a criminal defense attorney.

I work for the Sacramento County Public Defender's Office.

I started that very recently.

Before that, I at first was a prosecutor.

I actually prosecuted cases with Hillary.

And Hillary, as she said, handled the animal abuse cases.

So she honored me with the ability to prosecute those cases.

And as a defense counsel, I had the opportunity

for 18 years to be in private practice

where I was able to devote portions of my time

to advocating on behalf of animal rights groups

and animal rights causes.

I have always been an animal lover.

I am an animal lover.

And I am extremely involved in the community in many ways.

And I see this as a way to expand my involvement in the community

and to help make the community a better place

by helping the animals that we are going

to be discussing in the policies that will impact them.

So again, I'm very grateful to be here.

And thank you.

We're happy to have you.

Welcome.

And Commissioner Snell.

Hi there.

My name is Doug Snell.

I just recently retired from California Department

of Corrections after 27 years.

Over the years, our family has had animals just about everything

you can imagine from horses and cows and goats and ducks, chickens,

dogs, cats, just about everybody who lived with us at some point.

So I would just love animals.

Worked a little bit with animal programs in the prisons.

That was a very fun experience, a really interesting experience

to see the difference animals can make in a state prison.

So anyway, looking forward to being involved.

Wonderful.

Welcome.

Thank you for joining us.

All right.

I think our first order of business today

is approval of the consent calendar.

Clerk, are there any members of the public who wish

to speak on the consent calendar?

Thank you, Chair.

We have no speakers for the consent calendar.

All right.

Thank you.

Any members who wish to speak on, I think all that's

on the consent calendar is the minutes.

Just FYI, my intention in the future is going

to be to add the follow-up log to the consent calendar.

So look for that next time appearing on the theater near you.

Chair.

Just one correction on the consent calendar

was on the first vote.

It mentions Robesalli, who's no longer on the commission.

Ah.

Clerk, softies, can get that adjusted.

Thank you.

Any other comments on the minutes?

Your motion?

The move.

Move by.

There's a commissioner Garcia.

Thank you.

Is there a second?

Commissioner Morris?

Sorry, that was the first by Garcia.

Perfect.

Seconded by Morris.

Correct.

And then, Commissioner, if you can please unmute your microphones

for vote.

Commissioner Trey?

Yes.

Commissioner Snell?

Yes.

Commissioner Abusey?

Yes.

Commissioner Middleton?

Yes.

Commissioner Bell?

Yes.

Commissioner Malziz?

Yes.

Commissioner Bagley?

Vice Chair Morris?

Yes.

Commissioner Garcia?

Yes.

And Chair Hefner?

Yes.

Thank you, the motion passes.

Excellent.

A quick bookkeeping note here.

I want to take a couple of items out of order.

I'd like to move the follow-up log to the end of the agenda.

So that will now be item eight.

If that number serves.

And that way we can move directly to the item regarding animal care services hours,

which I believe we may have some public input about.

And I would like to move the volunteer staff folks to immediately after that item, which

I think is currently item six, if I can recall correctly.

Yes.

Yes.

The volunteer service is, we'll move that.

That will now become item four.

With that objection, we're going to go ahead.

Yes?

Excellent.

Good.

So that brings us to item three.

Item three.

This is position item three.

Three.

Which is the change in animal care services hours of operations.

I believe that is your item, Mr. Manninger.

All right.

Just to give you a little bit of background.

So prior to the summer of 2019, the shelter was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.

When we say closed, closed for adoptions, closed for stray intake, the shelter was still

there for other items such as spaying and neutering of animals, general population care,

rescue work, all of the other items that the shelter does.

Field services was still there.

And in the summer, they decided to open the shelter seven days a week.

There was no additional staffing provided to cover those additional two days.

And so there presented to be some staffing challenges.

Pandemic comes.

We then saw a major decrease in intake.

And so we were able to get through everything that we needed to do.

And then as the shelter intake increased, staffing, we were having severe staffing shortages.

We were really feeling the impacts.

There was just no getting caught up, whether no matter how many volunteers you had,

no matter how many staff you had.

So again, we thought that that was going to be a good choice.

And the main driver was to increase adoptions and RTOs.

However, over the years, Paul has some recent data on our recent adoptions on,

that take place on Wednesdays, for example.

And we're just not seeing a lot of high volume adoptions.

And so as we'll discuss later, you'll see some of the efficiencies that get created by this model.

And it's pretty industry standard.

We are the only shelter in the Sacramento greater region that is open seven days a week.

Several of them are closed two days a week.

And so I'll go over some of the efficiencies.

As we all know, we're all struggling with spain intersurgery.

Not only at our facility, but facilities across the city and the greater Sacramento area.

And so, you know, we have a very small veterinary staff of dedicated just to the shelter

is two veterinarians and five RVTs.

By closing on Wednesdays, we can then pull our animal care technician staff to help assist in the veterinary clinic,

because any staff member basically can be a vet assistant.

And we just don't have, we can't do the volume one due to space,

but two also to do to the actual staffing to assist the veterinary team.

So that's one efficiency.

Now we are, we are juggling to get behavior evaluations and behavior enrichment on specifically dogs in the shelter.

Again, because we're just, from the time we open until the time we close, it's just go, go, go.

There's no time or very little time to get those items accomplished.

If you've been to the shelter, if you've been to any shelter, new or old, things collect very quickly.

As soon as we can clean them out, you know, people are very generous with all of their donations,

some of which we can use, some of which we have no use for.

Again, lots of things are going on.

Cleaning of the outside grounds of the shelter is not really a priority, you know, caring for the animals,

adoptions, all of those other things take priority.

So again, being able to dedicate a day or two a month, or at least partial days, again, very big improvement to the shelter facility.

A lot of our staff is required to have required training for their licenses.

Again, you know, our RVTs, our veterinarians, our officers, some of our animal care staff do require some training.

Again, there's no time set aside for that.

We're lucky if our staff is getting out every day on time.

So to try to, here, let's take care of all the animals and provide all these services,

and we have no time to provide the training to our staff.

So again, another efficiency.

And then lots and lots of administrative duties.

You know, we are very busy and the volunteer coordinators will go over this tonight.

You know, we do five to six hundred vaccines in a weekend.

Then we're trying to struggle getting all those, all the paperwork entered into the system.

We are struggling just to keep up with the day-to-day tasks.

So again, this is another time for our customer service team and other sections to actually help each other out across sections.

And then one additional thing is our animal care technicians are very knowledgeable about the animals.

And our foster and rescue teams are very small.

They have a lot of animals under their care, or they're trying to place a lot of animals.

So again, being able to utilize those other staff members to support those teams.

Not only benefits the staff members, but also the animals as well.

Ineficiencies, we would not have adoptions on Wednesdays, so that would be a potential inefficiency.

Again, the data is showing that we don't have a lot of adoptions during the weekend,

generally, generally Saturdays and Sundays are larger days.

And then that it would create a potential backlog in customer service requests,

such as adoptions processing in-person pet licensing, et cetera, on Thursdays.

So those are some of the inefficiencies.

So our plan is to, effective April 1, 2024, is to close on Wednesdays.

And Wednesdays is when most of our staff is there.

So we have shifts that work Sunday through Wednesday and Wednesday through Saturdays.

So Wednesday is a common day.

So as far as training is concerned for staff members, well, note that there's a budget deficit.

So one of the things that we're trying to do is sign our staff up for training that they can take as a group.

And so having everybody there together to be able to take a training class at the same time is, again, great for staff, great for cost savings,

and just more ability to offer that training, especially when they get behind on their training.

One thing that we don't do currently, and we never have, is we've never stayed open later.

And so we are going to extend the hours on Thursdays to, again, if there is any type of backup,

again, kind of stretch the work day a little bit, but then also for the community members that are working Monday through Friday,

eight to five jobs and can't get down there during the daytime hours, the work hours that have the ability to come in after 5 p.m.

And do a return to owner, do an adoption if they need to or some other business.

We still will be open for emergency intakes. Our veterinary team will still be there.

Our officers will still be working, so we'll be responding to those calls.

And that we would still process return to owners, because that is our priority is getting those animals out to their owners as quickly as possible.

And with that, be glad to take any questions or comments.

All right. Do we have a request to speak from the public?

Yes, we do. We have two speakers. Our first speaker is Julie, followed by Estia.

Welcome.

Good evening. I'm Julie Virga.

And first of all, I'd like to say welcome to all the new members.

This is a very exciting day. We actually, for the last five years, have not participated much in these animal advisory committee meetings,

because the board has basically ignored the public comments and done very little to help animals.

And so one thing that hasn't been mentioned by director Zimmerman today is the animals.

What will benefit the animals the most? Will it benefit the animals the most for the shelter to be closed two days a week, one to two days a week?

I can tell you from experience five years ago, the reason why I'm here, as a long time volunteer foster advocate, five years ago when COVID hit, director Zimmerman just announced that he was following an exciting trends in animal sheltering in which the community was the sheltering.

He called it reduced intake, okay? And so their doors were completely closed up to animals.

And we saw the chaos and disaster that unfolded out in our neighborhoods, okay?

As a result of this, actually, I have my own nonprofit now called Fix Our Shelters, because this isn't the only shelter that's following these kind of protocols.

It will not be the best for the animals. It will not be the best for the community.

One of the things that wasn't ever talked about at these meetings, and I hope it will be going forward, is how many animals are dying since you had your last meeting, okay?

So far, this year alone, 244 animals have been killed at front street.

Yousse nice, okay, is the word. They're not suffering, okay? So I think that's a misnomer to use that.

But ask those questions in the last two weeks, 44 animals in March have been killed.

Reduced intake and closing these doors will not help animals. There are many other solutions that can be utilized to do that. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is Estella.

Estella. Sorry.

I am Estella Drake, and welcome to all the new members. And I really hope and pray that this new group here is going to be making an impact and be the voice for the voiceless animals of the city of Sacramento.

I think it's about time that we start focusing on saving lives. Span Newter, and also, you know, getting the word out to the community that there are services.

And services that are missing need to be brought in. Span Newter services. What the heck? You know, all these animals are being euthanized.

They can't find their owners. Well, we already know there's also kinds of issues with the cost of food, vaccinations, the cost of Span Newter.

Focus on, let's get it together so we can have more Span Newter services.

Not too long ago, I went ahead and teamed up with the city of Elk Grove. And we teamed up with the mayor, the chief of police, with the city manager.

And guess what? They were able to get us $125,000 grant at the Elk Grove animal shelter, which has a hospital there. We need one here.

Okay? No more excuses about Span Newter, and we don't have any place to go. Well, guess what? Nine of us on our Elk Grove cat rescue team.

How do we, how do we improve lives of animals if you guys as adults and humans can't get it together? Get the services. What happened to the funding? Support the shelter.

And if Zimmerman's still going to be around, support him so he can do his job. And we want you to do your job, Mr. Zimmerman. Okay? Not just about, you know, whatever, you know, it happens, it happens.

Thank you for your comments, your time's complete. Thank you. Chair, we have no more speakers.

Okay. Do we have members of the commissioners like to speak first recognizing Kristi Middleton?

Yeah, I just had a couple of questions. I'm regarding the ability to continue doing emergency services or return to owners. How would that work to ensure that you don't end up just with as much traffic or with, you know, I'm just curious

if you thought through that. Yeah, so most people will locate their animal online and they'll, they'll put in a request, a Salesforce request and that gets sent over to us. We do that already now just because we like to be ready for them knowing that they're coming to pick up their animal.

So we have the ability to reach out because our customer service team gets in there at nine o'clock in the morning. So that most of the time we're already communicating. We'll even do return to owners before we open it.

And because again, that's just somebody that we can, we can handle that animal before we actually open the shelters.

Commissioner Moose's.

Thank you. So my question for directors and women is why now? Why, why is there a need right now to reduce the number of days of operation?

And the reason I asked that is in preparation for this meeting, I did see a communication from you indicating that you're nearly fully staffed. I understand there was an additional staff allocated for seven days a week, but at least to the extent you have staffing your fully staffed or nearly fully staffed now.

And recognizing that there would be a reduction in adoptions, at least, you know, being closed one day and not being available for that.

And the primary goal is getting the animals either returned to owner adopted out.

With full staffing and the fact that you have sustained seven days a week up until now.

Why is there a need when we recognize it will allow for a reduction of the services we probably want most, which is getting animals back to where they need to be either an adoptive home or back in their home.

Yeah, so that's a good point. So again, being, you know, we've been working on this and talking for quite some time.

You know, previously as I mentioned, you know, we were closed on Mondays and Tuesdays and as I mentioned, how the staffing model is its Sunday through Wednesday or Wednesday through Saturday.

And I was a big proponent of being on the same schedule as the county shelter being closed on Tuesdays. I believe it's Tuesdays that they're closed.

And the staff actually came to me and they're like, hey, why don't we actually do this on Wednesdays.

So one, if there is some emergency and we could handle that for the county shelter, we would we would be open on the day that they're closed.

And then two, you know, we're looking for cost saving measures. We're looking to get more animals out to fosters and rescues.

We're looking to do more in Spain, Newter surgeries. So if we can have all hands on deck and reallocate our human sources to help out, there's more benefits besides just adopting.

Adopting is not the only thing that we're in the business of doing. And so again, as I mentioned earlier, we have larger numbers on the weekends. I mean, it gets crazy on the weekends.

And again, we're going to be open later on Thursday. So again, if there's additional. So that was the main driver of choosing the Wednesday day.

May I ask a follow-up question?

Absolutely. Go ahead.

If the goal is then to increase like Spain, Newter services, do you have some commitment that you can make of the number of additional Spain, Newter services?

So if the goal is to increase the number of additional Spain, Newter services, it could be performed where you'd be able to shut down for that day. Such that we could see a net benefit to the animals.

Yeah. So our vet team, they're planning on doing, they're already working on it.

They are going to do large, like, so as we go into kitten season right now, you know, if we have a lot of people, we can do 50, even in our current facility, we can do 50 to 60 kittens in a day.

So if we have our regular RVT staff and a couple of volunteers, we can't do that many kittens. So again, we're going to see another benefit from them being able to do this to build a pooled at support from those other sections of the shelter.

Which we occasionally do now when we have the ability when we have the staffing. And we see the benefits of it. So again, having this ongoing will allow us to do that.

Commissioner Bagley.

I just have a couple of questions and I'm going to jump around here. When you say there would be no adoptions, would that mean that there's no one at the public counter and the public would not be allowed to walk through essentially?

Yes and no. So yes, not open to the door. Now, if say any animals in foster to adopt and it's coming in for surgery that day, that would be an adoption.

But again, this plan is also to help us with that whole foster to adopt situation. So we are no longer in the business of doing foster to adopt.

That's a good idea. But my question would be then, isn't rescue release a form of adoption? And would that be something that you would be for going on Wednesdays then?

No, no, that would actually be and that's again being able to take some of those animal care tech staff to go and support those programs.

Again, because there's so much need and there's only so many people assigned to those programs being able to allocate the staff that would normally be doing the animal care cleaning in the mornings and then switching over to doing customer service, which is includes adoption counseling.

They will be able to switch over and actually assist those foster and rescue programs.

So a rescue person would be able to come in and pick up the animals that they choose under their under the statute.

Well, let me ask you this. I don't think there's a doubt that the need is very great. I'm not sure what the impetus was to open seven days a week or win that starter, what the what the moving force was behind that.

Maybe you can explain that what I'm hearing is not enough hours too much too many responsibilities too small of a setup.

Not enough people and I'm wondering if effort has been made to go to the city, the city council and say look we're open seven days. It's highly unusual.

We're very burdened and we need more money so we can have more staff or pay people to come in and assist rather than shut down a week because there must have been a reason why they opened up seven days.

So the initial reason was again, because two days to increase adoptions increase our t.

Again, didn't really see it as far as asking for additional funding for additional staff.

I don't think there's anybody up here that would not support it and anybody in the city that would want it, but we can't ignore the elephant in the room and we have a.

Just shy of $66 million budget deficit that there's there's no positions coming to the shelter at this point where we're very fortunate that there's not any cuts being suggested to the shelter.

How much later would you be open on Thursday and next or hour one hour.

And when you said you started to delineate the departments that would definitely still be there and I'm hearing basically it's just the public counter and the public's ability to browse through there and walk through there is the only thing that would be shut down because you're mentioning emergency intake would still be open.

Animal control staff are there any divisions or departments where your staff would be reduced on that day.

It's one thing to say it's open with two people when normally there's six people so I want to know is you cutting some of those positions for that day and reducing that staff for that.

The only change that there might possibly be is with our customer service team because again they were the ones that were most impacted because they were the smallest part of the team and it's not really it's not cutting anything it's reallocating and moving them to some of those busier days because we could actually we could get away with having a one or two.

I'm not going to add in type people not working on Wednesday because it's really the animal care technicians it's really the those positions that are that are assisting the other departments.

Does that make sense.

You're moving people around I just want to know if there's a reduction of people that would be there on that day.

Just the customer service team is the only one and we've not dove into the details of what that would look like but you know if we could say for example like on on Sundays we have three customer service reps.

Reallocating one from Wednesday to work on a Sunday so then because again Saturday and Sundays are busy your days for processing adoption.

And one last question do you have an opinion as to how the seven days a week were feasible under the prior manager.

I mean you have an idea of how she was able to do it have you tried to implement implement whatever she did to make that work back then.

It was it was a decision that she made.

I mean do you know how she did it or I mean it was one or more options on Mondays and Tuesdays and RTOs on Mondays and Tuesdays.

And again being closed two days consecutively is you know while it's done I don't personally agree with that I think even if you're going to if shelters are going to close two days a week it should probably be spread apart.

So again there's not that delay and getting.

Getting those things taken care of and most shelters that are actually closed like they're literally closed.

I mean yes they're the animal caretex are there to do the the bare minimums and that's not what we're suggesting or are wanting to do.

Okay that's all I have.

Thank you.

So I've got Commissioner Commissioner Morris or Commissioner Garcia or both I don't know if you're almost over there I only have one.

Yes.

So yeah there you go there you go just a quick question again Philip to elaborate on on a question that was raised about the animals the extra staff on board that would be able to engage with the animals a little bit more work on some behavioral issues.

Can you address that a little bit.

Yeah so you know we really struggle you know with again because there there's on the weekends there's so much traffic I mean behavior enrichment you know outside of our wonderful volunteers that show up to do it.

Staff can't do the formal evaluations in the dog to dog introductions so again we try to squeeze it in but just having a day where we can dedicate particular staff to work with animals.

That that's a huge benefit and one of the other benefits you know it's kind of indirect and Paul and I have spoken about this is he is an adoption counselor.

It's seven days a week is a lot of activity for those animals and people walking through that shelter constantly all day long and so having a day where there's not as many people walking through the shelters.

And again our facility is not the greatest so that is a benefit to the animals of having a day where they can decompress a little bit.

Commissioner Treet.

Yes for those who either didn't watch or didn't attend the last board meeting one of the questions that I had for for a director's amendment was who chose the Wednesday.

And I think that would be a good idea to do that with their being a catch up day to actually help out in other areas and as as he had told me to it was the staff who does work really hard that asked for it to be Wednesday instead of another day.

So I was okay with once that I heard it was Wednesday.

What I would like to see going forward in our meetings would be a report back on how the Wednesday people shut down is going for the other activities that you plan.

I would like to know how many span neuters we did or how you shifted something to the one area but some report back so we can see progress that the day makes sense.

Thank you. I just have a question to myself one being the old PR person.

What is the public plan for notification about the change in schedule? I would like to avoid having people walk up and find a locked door.

So Maine will be obviously just on our website which is where we get our most traffic.

We can also use our social media again our social media following is not necessarily local to Sacramento so there's many people that follow our Facebook page that they're not really concerned about our hours because they're not even in this state or in this area.

And then we can also use next door to put the city has the we have the ability as a city and to do push that information out to all the residents that are signed up on next door as well.

So we have multiple ways to get that information out.

Excellent. And then we touched briefly on the city's budget situation.

Based on what you know about or what's projected in terms of your department budget.

Do you anticipate having to make any further reduction to public hours in the coming budget year?

Obviously it's a little bit of looking at you know the crystal ball but to the degree you feel comfortable.

Currently at this time there's with with our budget recommendations for our department and our division.

There's not anticipating that there's going to be any cuts to staff that would would further any closure days or reduction in staffing for this upcoming fiscal year.

Are there others?

Okay. Back over to the to the duo the dynamic duo on the left.

We're playing with screens.

So just to clarify.

Talking about a single day in the week that you would be close.

Yes. There's been some back and forth is it one day or is it two it gets one day.

It's one day. It's the day that the staff chose.

It is the day that is most staffed because everyone is there.

The resources to do phone calls for rescues the resources to do deep cleaning the resources to do training the resources to do spay and neuter are all present on that day.

In terms of the there's not a cutting and staff.

Other than possibly the customer service rep being moved to a Saturday or Sunday.

Is this a pilot? Are you testing this for a few months or is this something that you don't think you need to test?

Absolutely. So I'll be very transparent.

One of the things that I told the staff when it came to me.

Nice to work in law enforcement and we work Monday through winds.

Well, basically you had my days and Tuesdays offer Thursdays and Fridays and everybody work Wednesday.

So what I recognize when I became a supervisor is that turned out to be people's vacation day and sick day.

So I made it very clear to our staff if I see that occurring.

We will be having a different conversation because that's not going to be turned into the common day for somebody to take the day off.

So that is one of the concerns that I had.

Again, we had honest conversations about that.

So yes, I will be making sure that we're watching that and that that's not what it's turning into.

But again, it's people don't sign up to work at the shelter because they they don't like their jobs.

They they want to do the things and they recognize and see the things that they're not able to get to do.

I guess my question is are you trying to pilot will you do this for a few months and kind of revisited or is this something that is on going to be ongoing?

I think it's it's ongoing again.

If it's not working, I have no I have no problem making another change as well.

Commissioner few.

Oh, I turned.

Oh, okay.

We're going to share.

Did you have something else?

Commissioner treat.

I was only going to say you might want to pick a different start date so people don't think it's a joke.

Excellent.

This is a it's this is not a voting item.

So if we're if we're completed with the speakers and comments, we can move to the next one.

And that brings us to the people of the hour.

Our volunteer services presentation.

We have some great people here in the audience today.

This is like.

And they brought their own rooting section.

Awesome.

Welcome. Welcome. Welcome.

Are these on?

Yes.

Hello.

Hi, everyone.

Thank you so much for the opportunity today to talk about our volunteer program at French Street Shelter.

The goal of the presentation today is just to share an overview about the volunteer program at French Street and the culture of the volunteer program that we hope to hold.

So my name is Abby.

I'm one of the two volunteer program coordinators.

I've been at French Street for two years.

I was an intern up until February and now I'm full time in the position, which is exciting.

I just graduated from UC Davis as well.

So I have lots of class knowledge to bring as well.

On the photos you'll see Dutch Crunch is the mom and all of her babies were named after different breads.

So they were some of my favorite animals.

I'm Shannon.

I've been at French Street since 2013.

And over that time, I've witnessed a lot of positive cultural changes within the organization.

I've witnessed a lot of new ideas that got implemented in response to the ever changing community demands and other external socioeconomic variables.

One of those positive changes has been the growth of our foster and volunteer programs.

So some photos of our volunteers doing their thing.

They're supporting our mission.

They're participating in activities that only help our team complete the daily routines to support animals, physical and mental well-being.

But also provide people care, like educating an adopter, how to keep their pet healthy, or teaching someone how to communicate with their pet to help strengthen that human animal bond.

The important thing to remember is that our goal is to be the leading example of a welcoming organization and foster an environment of diverse thought and volunteer talent.

We convert this goal to action by implementing a recruiting training supporting structure to the program which you will discuss a little bit next.

We are constantly recruiting training and then working to support our existing volunteers.

A lot of our volunteers actually assist with that.

Once they are experienced, they help to recruit new volunteers at our outreach and tabling events.

They help to train those new volunteers when they are onboarded.

So with kennel cleaning and every other activity, we have dog handler mentors.

Let's talk about that a bit later.

We are really looking forward to the support.

It's really nice when volunteers come on and meet us and get to hear about the organization but then they actually get to work with other volunteers that have been there for a while, learn what their journey was as a volunteer and where they want to go as well.

One of the things we want to continue to support is one of the improvements I've seen since my time starting there is the improvement in the previous divide between volunteers and staff.

So by harvesting that welcoming environment, our animal care technician team, we encourage the animal care technician team to work with our volunteers pretty much on day one.

So they get that crossover training, getting to know somebody, feeling welcomed.

And so it's volunteer to volunteer mentoring as well as making sure that staff are providing that welcoming environment.

So whether we're recruiting or training or supporting our volunteers, I think it's important to understand how a particular role impacts the organization and our mission.

So presently we can broadly categorize rules into cat foster, dog foster, and shelter and outreach buckets.

So if we're looking at each of those as a bucket, how does fostering impact the shelter?

So fostering, it's a reprieve from the stress inducing stimuli at the shelter, especially that can over time contributes to the animal's behavior and can permanently affect the animals' mental and physical health.

So fostering also provides potential adopters more accurate behavioral information because the animal is already in a home where that would be a more normal environment for them and to express normal behaviors outside of the shelter.

And it allows for, you know, them to get started on a home routine and some basic training which can also increase their adoptability.

For our in shelter volunteers, they're, you know, they're critically needed every day to meet animal care needs and also the public customer service needs.

And by public customer service needs, that's our adoption, our potential adopters.

So our adoption counselors are really critical to helping make sure that we are providing every opportunity to getting animals into their forever homes.

Our outreach volunteers, they help keep pets with their people, and connect with others, other community members who want to donate in some way to the shelter, whether that's their time or, you know, a monetary or physical donation to the shelter.

Our outreach volunteers connect with our diverse Sacramento community in a positive, informative, and educational way.

Abby's going to go talk about some of the in shelter opportunity impacts next.

Yeah, so we have so many different volunteer opportunities just insight based on what those volunteers want to do and what their interests are.

We start off all of our volunteers with Vondrian dishes and our dog kennel cleaning to really get them based knowledge about the shelter, work with other volunteers and understand kind of the base level of what it takes for a shelter to operate.

And to care for all the animals, you wouldn't believe how much laundry and dishes there are.

So our volunteers pretty much do all of that, which is really incredible.

And then some people move on to other opportunities that will help out with cleaning the cats, the cats kennels and all that sort of stuff based on what they like.

Another one is dog handling. So a lot of volunteers that are onboarded, they want to eventually help out with dog handling.

And those base volunteer opportunities such as kennel cleaning can assist with that.

And then we have dog handler mentors that then assist with training our dog handler.

So it's really just working to make sure that everybody's in the position that they really enjoy.

Some volunteers don't want to do quite so much physical labor. So we have office assistants such as Deborah in the picture.

She comes in about three days a week, does so much paperwork, which is incredible.

We're always backed up on paperwork, so it's super great to have volunteers come in and help to upload all the different paperwork that we have.

So there's lots of different opportunities for everyone, which is super great.

People don't always know about all those opportunities when they first start, which is another reason it's great that our experienced volunteers help them out because they can show them the different paths that they can go down.

Yeah, and just quick note on that because our shelter is probably previous conversations that you've had.

Our shelter struggles with some of the things just because of its current infrastructure.

And it's old and there's a lot of safety inherent safety risks that happen.

So it can be difficult to onboard everyone that you know, or in a particular program, maybe dog handling when we want to expand it to make it more accessible.

For different volunteers with different needs, that makes it really difficult with the current shelter layout and the inherent risks of the kennels and the sidewalks and the lighting.

It gets really dim at night, really, and really dark.

Yeah, just wanted to add that in there.

Back to fostering. There's actually a lot more to fostering.

We have a lot of people that foster just dogs and cats from whether they need it for medical reasons, such as they had surgery and they just need a soft place to land before they can formally be adopted.

They can heal in a calmer environment than the loud kennels, which is great.

And then we have a lot of our cat fosters, which I also foster kittens because they are adorable.

But almost all of them come in under age and not able to go directly into an adoption.

So it's great to have fosters that can care for them as they get bigger.

A lot of them also come in sick, so you got to give them medication, which is super great.

And a lot calmer for them to be in a home and able to heal rather than sitting in a kennel possibly catching other things.

So it's great to be able to send them into fosters where they can learn how to be a cat.

I personally have gotten quite a few feisty ones when they first come to me and by the end they're perfectly ready for adoption, which is kind of the best part of fostering.

We also have mentors in our foster world, cat foster mentors, which are super important.

They help our new fosters and even our experienced fosters when they're experiencing issues with their foster, whether that be behavioral or oftentimes medical issues.

It's just a first place to go before heading to the shelter or contacting the shelter so they can kind of triage any issues.

So we have a huge foster team which is super great and they help care for so many animals.

And a lot of our programs are volunteer run programs that would simply not be able to exist without volunteers.

So two of our big outreach community programs, the pet food pantry and our community vaccine clinics, would not be able to run at least not as efficiently or maybe not as at all without volunteers.

So our community vaccine clinics, we bring over 35 volunteers almost every clinic.

This past Sunday we had one at a new location Lafamilia Community Center, which is super great.

We had over 35 volunteers and were able to vaccinate about 150 cats and 500 plus dogs.

So that is simply not possible with the four staff members that we brought.

It would not be possible without the 35 volunteers.

A lot of them are pre-vets students so they're getting that experience as well as getting experience with like the shelter and animal welfare in general, which is super great.

Showing them that when they're still learning, a lot of them want to be veterinarians.

So when they see the vet that's on site of those clinics they be lying for.

And then with our pet food pantry that is volunteer run as well.

Throughout the week volunteers are bagging the food and then on Tuesdays currently is the day.

Those volunteers that you see up there, almost the same ones every week are the ones that are out there with the community members handing out that food.

They see some of the same community members every week. They've developed relationships with them.

It's super great. The community is very thankful but that program would not exist.

The staff does not have time to be bagging that food or handing it out.

So that's super great that volunteers are able to do that.

Our foster shot clinics, we have both Catlands and Doglands now, which is exciting.

They help to make sure that all those animals that are in foster are able to get boosted regularly.

So we, I don't know the exact number right now, but it's a lot of animals in foster and staff would not be able to take on all of those vaccine appointments.

So we have volunteers that come in every weekend to help with vaccinating those animals.

And then ringworm time, we get some real bros kitten sometimes and volunteers run that program as well.

So they help with medicating them every week, socializing them.

If you don't know what ringworm is, it's fungal infection. Very contagious for both animals and humans.

So they get extra training, but they take that on every morning, every afternoon coming in to help do that.

So that would simply not be possible without volunteer assistance as well.

And there's a lot more programs, but those before.

That was real quick. We do have youth impact volunteers at our shelters.

So we welcome volunteers. These young as 12 years old volunteers between 12 and 15 years of age.

We require that they volunteer alongside a supervising parent or guardian 16 to 17 as long as a parent or guardian provides permission, you know, be an agreement form.

Then they can volunteer independently on site. So it's kind of an exciting opportunity for them to learn and get, you know,

foot in the door about how they can help animal welfare, but also being that bigger picture to help the community.

And we do get some seniors that participate and help do their senior project at the French Street shelter as well.

So anything from social media outreach to creative ways to, you know, donation drives, they raise monetary donations.

They have a lot of fun doing it.

And also we had a couple this year that got really excited about recruiting more teen volunteers.

So it's just a way, you know, a little fashion networking style person to person.

And if, you know, it's us being out in the community, somebody sees a positive face about French Street helps recruit continuous recruitment of volunteers.

And it's a way to help them get a little more attention to our shelter.

But, you know, quick numbers we had about, we had over 100 youth last year that logged over 2700 hours, helping with laundry dishes, dog morning routine, cat morning routine, and some of those shelter ambassador opportunities where they're out in the community and talking about getting their foot, you know, in the door about talking about the needs of the shelter.

And we had just, you know, a couple more, I guess, quick facts about last year's participation.

We had over 100,000 hours volunteer logs real quick about that for somebody to be considered an active volunteer and accepted volunteer.

We asked just five hours a year be committed to our organization.

And we're going to be able to do a lot of initiative for the past couple years has been implementing ways to lower barriers while also providing that structure and support for the volunteer team.

So within that, we have some 904 volunteers logged all those hours.

You might notice, you know, there's foster providers, 968 foster providers.

So we track our foster animals through a different application.

So where we welcome our volunteers and monitor those hours log, this not the same application for fosters.

So these numbers are actually lower than if somebody were to be logging all their hours every foster was logging, you know, the time that they spent carrying for an animal outside of the shelter.

And then we had over 3,000 animals fostered between cats and dogs last year.

And then between calendar year 2024, there were, you know, 4,700 cats and dogs that got vaccinated at different locations around Sacramento.

With the help of volunteer team.

I guess the main takeaway from the overview of our program is that by supporting the environment, we're volunteers for welcomed by staff and supported by other volunteers.

And leave their shift feeling that their contribution was impactful and appreciated.

Our organization can support numbers of volunteers helping in multiple areas of the shelter and outreach.

So our recruitment is always ongoing.

So if anyone's interested, I recognize some of you up there.

You help out a lot at the shelter.

I contribute a lot of time.

I don't recognize all our faces.

So if you're interested in joining the team, you can go to our website, frontstreetshelter.org.

There's a title that says volunteer program.

You can click on that and kind of look at the overview of the program.

We included some different, we restructured that last year as well.

So you can see some of the opportunities, not every single type of, you know, role is up there, but, you know, the buckets again.

And, you know, if you want to sign up, if you have a team that's interested, there's a page about that and how they can get involved.

And if you're not able to volunteer or foster, there's some ideas and other ways that you can help out.

One more thing, so sorry.

Volunteering really is what you make it.

So we have lots of volunteers that do the on-site opportunities, the outreach opportunities.

They help sending dogs to rescue, all that sort of stuff.

But we also have a volunteer that I want to share that makes really cute portraits of the dogs and get put up on the kennels.

So it really, people get really creative and she's really good at it.

So this is Summarine, this is Wackis Bonkis, and this is Lorraine.

We try to send it home with them as well so that they can get their portrait, but sometimes it gets left behind when they're getting surgery and all that sort of stuff.

And so if you have a random idea of how you'd like to help, tell Paul, he'll give you my email or someone else.

I also brought this that you guys can look at if you'd like to.

Sorry, it's yellow, our printer is currently staining everything yellow.

I don't know why, but it is all of our, we create newsletters every month for the volunteer team to show kind of what the shelter is down, what the volunteer team has done every month, the stats for each month.

So I will leave this with you guys if anybody would like to look through it.

If I'm allowed to leave things with you.

I don't know.

But thank you, that's our presentation.

Well, thank you both very much for coming and for bringing your own cheering squad back there.

Jody and Brooke and Jacob and Ashley and Heather back there, boy.

You guys do incredible work and it really is an amazing program.

Do we have public speakers for this item?

Yes, thank you, Chair. We do.

We have three speakers.

Our first speaker will be Julie, followed by Assella and Elise.

So we'll take our public comments and then we'll probably have you come back to the podium once they're done.

You're not free yet.

I'm still holding you hostage.

So thank you so much, volunteers.

It's a life-saving effort that you make for animals and it makes all the difference in the world.

I was a foster for a front street and I fostered many cats, a few dogs.

And now primarily I foster the animals that have been turned away at front street shelter.

I don't know.

Again, this may sound negative, but it's true.

For those new members, please do your homework.

It is a policy of front street now to turn away cats at shelter doors and it had been for many years.

Also, under reduced intake protocols, I have a little tiny chihuahua, three pounds that was turned away at front street store

because they said they were over at capacity.

And that was, so I'm a foster fail that's been a year and a half ago.

But nonetheless, I want to say that fostering and volunteers make a world of difference.

One of the things that you mentioned that I agree with very much is transparency is very important.

But it's not always common at front street.

And I have a statement here that I'd like to read from a prior volunteer, Layla Adoro, who worked as a volunteer as a foster at front street for a very long time.

This is her statement as a volunteer.

Up until or 2024, I spent prior years volunteering at front street shelter working with dogs at risk of youth in Asia.

Although I work full time in management, I spent weekends and most holidays and vacation days, anytime I had around these animals, they just wanted to be loved.

I then shared videos about them on my own social media, last count by networking these dogs over 800 were saved.

I know a certainty this work saved many lives.

Yet I was told by directors and women that I could no longer volunteer if I continued to use the word at risk of youth in Asia on my own social media.

I was bullied and retaliated against for telling the truth.

I know of other staff and volunteers that were as well.

This is common. This is very much an authoritarian regime.

If you go along and you're quiet and you behave and you do not criticize the shelter or director's environment, then it's okay.

If not, watch out.

Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is Estella.

When I started volunteering at front street animal shelter was early 2008.

I actually came in front of City Council on behalf of Gina, the prior shelter manager, request so that we could ask for funding.

I know you guys have the funding. The funding is there. If you need more, give another volunteer to come up and speak up to get you funding at City Hall.

It took us two times. Our mayor finally said, you know what, you don't have to finish. The money is yours. We're going to have more staff.

If volunteers, thank you volunteers, whatever they do, we all have to team up and respect volunteers and not turn them away.

But at the end of the day, the one thing I want to say is the priority here should be space and neuter in the city of Sacramento.

Other cities are doing it. You wouldn't be so stressed out and staff wouldn't be so stressed out if we could get the intake down and not turn animals away.

Spay and neuter priority on that special day that you think you're going to have time to do more. Let's see. Do more.

Not talk about it. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Our last speaker is Elise.

Hi everybody. I actually want to read. I think you have a culture problem when it comes to the volunteer situation.

This is from two different volunteers. I'm not friends with these people. They just simply reached out to me on social media.

The first one was sent to me on January 23rd and it was in regards to Mr. Zimmerman retiring.

She says, I heard today is he will retire effective May 28th. So many people are rejoicing.

A few days later, she follows up with, he rescinded his retirement today, no other details. Many people were brought to tears. That was volunteer number one.

Volunteer number two says, I'm several years into volunteering and I have horror the way Philip runs a shelter as most do.

With Liz now gone, I fear it will be even worse. There are days I truly feel he hates animals and hate sheltering.

In addition to that, you have a situation where we run a couple of different groups, Fixed Front Street and Fixed Our Shelters.

One of the groups associated with Fixed Front Street is a networking group for the at-risk of euthanasia rescue listed dogs.

Several volunteers will go on there and make comments in relation to helping to get these animals out to rescue and or foster and or adoption.

Those volunteers are consistently called back in and said, hey, we saw your comment on Fixed Front Street.

We'd appreciate if you don't comment on Fixed Front Street and if you continue to comment on Fixed Front Street, we're going to ask you to be removed as a volunteer.

Volunteers, a lot of times are introverts. Animal people are oftentimes introverts. I've also seen public records where there's been criticism as to volunteers not community.

They're communicating with other volunteers. They pay attention to the dogs are great with the dogs.

Thank you for your comments. Your time is now complete. Chair, we have no more speakers.

Questions from commission members? Commissioner Treet?

Yeah, it's not so much of a question, but for the many volunteers, some that are here tonight, would you pass along how grateful we are and it's a grateful city for all the work that you do to volunteer for these wonderful animals who are just looking for a forever home is a big deal and it's very much appreciated.

I don't know if you can tell.

Commissioner Morris or Commissioner Garcia, whichever one of you was wrestled to the whoever gets there first.

Thank you very much for your presentation. They do so much out there. I've done a vaccine clinic with them and it is so streamlined and so well organized.

It's it's stunning how many they do in a weekend and not only that, think of the people that they meet that they're able to speak to.

A lot of the folks in the line working the lines talk to them. Have you thought about getting your animals fair neutered?

So it's more than just a vaccine clinic. It's reaching out to public, giving them some information. It's it's a great event not only for the vaccinations that they get but for the information they get and you guys do an awesome job. Thank you.

Commissioner Morris.

Commissioner Morris.

Commissioner Morris.

Commissioner Morris.

Commissioner Morris.

Commissioner Morris.

Commissioner Morris.

Commissioner Morris.

Commissioner Morris.

Commissioner Morris.

Commissioner Morris.

Commissioner Morris.

Commissioner Morris.

Yes, and these are staff of the shelter not volunteers their staff who came to support their colleagues and so thank you all for coming in and listening to our commission and understanding what we're working on here as a person who took up volunteering after joining the commission.

working at the shelter and some of the day-to-day challenges of moving animals

about in the shelter trying to do high-volume span neuter. I can explain some

of the challenges with that. There's nothing like having your feet on the ground

to understand some of the challenges that the space creates. So I look forward to

talking about our budget discussion item soon but in the meantime I just really

want to thank Shannon and Abby for always making me in particular feel welcome

to and appreciate the team for being here to help you out.

Just one quick question for me ask whether there's a list of volunteer

opportunities that we could share around to the members of the commission. Is that

something that exists somewhere? We did not bring a physical list I'm sorry but

on our website under the volunteer tile we do have quite a few of

like whether it's customer service related office administrative related more

animal-focused related just to Lisa's point that you know we do have we try to

accommodate for different you know introverts versus extroverts so if somebody

doesn't feel comfortable talking to the public for adoption counseling which

helps get the animals out somebody can help us you know record some data or help

with you know providing enrichment to the dogs or cats and taking care of like

direct animal care related items so yeah we do have a variety of of opportunities

available and growing you know based on feedback and based on if there is

somebody that's willing to take the lead on a particular new program and we

have the resources for it and all the different types of resources go into

resources then yes we're always open to discussing new ideas as well and I

can email you the fly-up to if you'd like it I do think that there's a adoption

counseling class that might be happening oh yeah once that happening we want

to sign 20 something right 29th 20th thank you again both for you for for coming

and for for bringing your sharing section you're the the heart and soul of the

place for sure thank you okay this also is not a voting item so let's move to

our next item which I believe is going to be the adoption rate discussion

that you're that accurate I get that right item four yeah item four here we are on

the floor okay who's got the clicker I'm gonna steal that from you awesome

see that this way so this is my item I think it is yet so and thank you for all

of you for indulging me this is my pet project I'm pretty included I guess of

looking at adoption data trends at the shelter and doing that for really

since I got here on the commission middle of last year and it it stemmed from a

webinar I saw it was called the competitive pet placement project and it looked

at had five different shelters from across the country were all involved in it

and looking at how their foot traffic related to the number of adoptions they

were doing and created a metric that they called the conversion rate for those

who are baseball fans it's essentially like your batting average for every

per-feet that comes through the door how many of them actually leave with an

animal and found some some some common practices that shelters could adopt to

increase their conversion rate and therefore increase adoptions so we've been

looking at that really now for believe this data is seven months yeah seven

months where we look at and for us we don't have a real at at at French

Street we don't have a tracking system for for foot traffic per se we don't

punch a clicker or something where everybody walks in the door but we do have an

electronic waiting list so when people come and or indicate an interest in

adopting an animal they sign up for that wait list and then of course we do

have some data about the actual adoptions and then finally we can merge those

together with my little spreadsheets and come up with a conversion rate so if you

take a look at at this these bar charts and you know somebody should hit me

when they get I get to you get to try to listening to talk about this on the

left on the on the blue column you have those wait lists sign ups by month and

then the next column is the actual adoptions that match up with that month and

then the yellow is the is the conversion rate so just eyeballing this you can

see that the the biggest variance is in the number of folks that we come in

that come in and sign up for our wait list you can see in September and

December some spikes there big surprise those were the months when we had

free adoptions going on so we bring in a lot more people when we were when we're

doing free adoptions the interesting thing I think though is is if you look at

the at the red bar there's not really as much movement when it comes to to to

to that metric as as there is to the the number of people coming in on the

wait list and suggest that just because you brought more people into the

shelter doesn't mean you're actually moving more animals and getting more

animals into homes and that's certainly this next and I apologize for all the

numbers this next slide is is that data in numeric form as opposed to the to the

bar charts and what you can see is we do have our highest number of wait list

sign ups in those months where we have free adoptions but the and we do

actually have the highest numbers of adoptions at that same time however the

the rate the conversion rate is actually lower so what happens is we drive a lot

more people into the shelter during free adoptions but but the percentage of

those people who leave with an animal is is somewhat slower so if you compare

for example November to December November was actually our lowest month in

terms of the number of people who signed up to meet a dog but I'm sorry these

are all dogs and apologies to commissioner Bell and commissioner Garcia because

I am a dog person I do know where the cats are and thanks to both thanks to

both of you I now have a basic understanding of how ringworm town works but

this is still dog data I apologize but so you can see that that in November we

had really almost November to December we had really almost twice as many

folks show up and sign up from the wait list to meet a dog but we really only

adopted out about another hundred so and the corresponding conversion factor

you can see has how much higher it is in November 63% of the folks who came in

and signed up actually left with an animal as opposed to December when only

about 46% of the folks who came in and signed up actually left with an animal

so and we've talked about this before some folks who have had to sit through

me and about this before we have this sort of conundrum where on the weekdays

our visits are significantly lower right fewer people walk through the door and

sign up to meet an animal but those people who come through the door on the

weekdays are actually much more likely to leave with an animal than those

folks who show up on the weekends so it's this I call it the weekday week and

conundrum we do get significantly more people on the weekends but the adoption

is don't always keep pace and so and I've come to call this the the crowded

restaurant effect so many of the issues that we face at the shelter when we're

another if you kind of peel back a layer you you come up against the limitations

of the facility right so we only have two meet and greet areas that are

immediately adjacent to the kennels so we are for I mean it's not the greatest

analogy but we were essentially a restaurant with two tables right and so it

doesn't take very long to fill up a restaurant with only has two tables it gets

crowded pretty quick right and so when that happens the wait times to meet a dog

increase and you can imagine folks come in they don't necessarily want to wait

two hours to meet an animal right so we can lose some folks that way so what

do we do about it well and and and what is causing the variation in terms of

conversion rate well one of the one of the things that the folks did the

competitive placement placement project thought about was ways to one

collect some data find out well what's in the heads of the folks who leave without

an animal and then to just to start to treat those folks who leave without an

animal as your future customers because what they found is that unfortunately a

great percentage upwards of 20% or so folks actually visit an animal shelter

and consider adopting an animal if they leave without an animal in tow they

never come back right and part of the impetus for this project was the fact

that most people who add an animal to their household are not coming to animal

shelters to to find that pet we live in a world with a great deal of everybody

can buy everything online these days and some of these pet portals that you see in

those kinds of things will even use the term adoptions and in fact they

really are just the latest incarnation of pet mills so one of the things that

they suggest to folks is well makes draw some relationship and make a

relationship with those folks who come in so I'm pleased that Phil and his team

we work together on this to put together just a very simple three or four

questions survey so that folks who come in and who leave without an animal they

get a little link saying would you please answer a question to from us and

it's now it's live and it's online and we we ask people okay well if you if you

left with an animal can you can you tell us why and there's a little drop down

menu menu well that somebody took the dog I was interested in or the dog I met

wasn't wasn't a good match or you didn't have a dog I was interested in or you

made me wait too long things like that and then an open-ended question about do

you have any suggestions how we how we might improve our services and then

finally we have add a little if you drop drop us your email we can keep you

informed about things that are happening at the shelter new arrivals things

like that so I'm happy to say that survey is online and perhaps the next time

I come in Yammer about this there'll be some data to share but it's it's a way

that we can sort of begin to build a relationship and perhaps bring those

folks back in for for an animal the next time around the other thing that

we've made some progress on and Commissioner Bell and I have been working on

this for those of you have been involved in the needs assessment one of the

shortcomings that the folks we had involved in that pointed out was the

difficulty when it comes to wayfinding and signage at the shelter we all

are for those of us who are familiar with the place know it's a little bit like

a rabbit Warren in terms of getting from one place to another it is not a very

intuitive place to move from one place to another to find all the available

animals that sort of thing and and so it was one of the things that was called

out in the needs assessment as a something that we could perhaps work on and

with Phil's help and with the help of the 501c3 folks friends of front

street they came forward once we've were identified sort of a local vendor

with a cost effective proposal as opposed to some of the others that we

received they've started to work on and I think we're in we've been through two

iterations now of a of a signage and wayfinding plan that it's it's not going to

be the end all be all but at least it may get folks to move through the shelter a

little more intuitively hopefully take some of the burden off the folks at

customer service which is you know where where the cats you know that kind of

thing which takes up a lot of folks time and hopefully we'll give people a

little little more ease moving around the shelter so it's another little little

little step we're taking forward on that so this is my little crazy idea that

came from because I know everybody like me reads applied animal behavior

science it's a most popular magazine that there is I found a study that talked

about preference assessments and structure potential adoptor dog interactions

and increasing adoptions I'm sure everybody's familiar with that and has read

that study what basically said was there are a couple behaviors that you can

perhaps work on with your shelter animals that can increase their chances for

adoption one of them is getting a dog to lie at your feet who knew right and the

other one is toy preference right so you give a dog that and this is obviously

something that perhaps our dog handlers could learn to do is introduce a

tug toy a ball and a squeaky toy something like that to to animals see if they

have a preference teach them to trade for a treat that sort of thing once you

know that animals toy preference you bring it into the play yard for the

meet and greet and you know before you know it the the potential adopter is

playing that game with the dog and guess what you can perhaps increase that

animals chances of adoption so that's something that we're going to talk about

we talked about it in our last meeting with the dog handler folks and the other

thing I I gotta tell you that's going on that is thrilling is the resumption of

doggy day out which I see Brooke back there has been the driving force in that

and I'm gonna try to figure out how to build doggy day out into the data because I

think it's gonna show us that dogs that go on doggy day out and particularly

those that go on overnight which the shelter has now started you know have a

much better chance of being adopted so that's kind of where we are on that I

appreciate British time if folks have questions or comments happy to hear

them do we have any public comments on that thank you chair yes we have three

speakers for item four our first speaker is Julie followed by Estella and Elise

Julie I should tell you that I too am a foster fail

but I ended up keeping mine my foster you just need to add more

fosters yeah but then I need a divorce lawyer so that would not be good oh no

no thank you just sorry I don't mean to so thank you very much Paul for spending

the time and energy working on how to increase adoptions I think that's really

good information that you provided and so thank you so I'd like to ask you

know to get down to basics a couple questions that I have you know about

things that I we've seen over the you know the years that have really helped

increase adoptions so for instance the pet co adoption center pretty much now

as closed okay and in past years now this was a really big deal when this was

announced that that pet co adoption center was going to be a dedicated space for

French street pets okay this was back in like 2014 2015 I think and it was a

very big deal and they had the highest adoption rate of any pet co in the

United States okay and yet when we tried to bring put a volunteer team together

to bring get that going again we were told that it was too much work by

management okay and it's pretty much closed now you need to think out of the

box you know front street is an older shelter it does need you know to be

revamped it's it's got it's it's problems there but doing they used to do

car dealerships pet co adoption centers there used to be a lot more done to

to make sure that animals were getting adopted okay why did doggy day out just

start again now concurrent with election that's a problem okay I think new

leadership is maybe shown a different light on here here's the other problem

unaltred animals can't go on doggy day out so if you're not prioritizing

spay neuter okay we just had recently you know snip spay neuter rejected for

dubious reasons you know when you're not prioritizing spay neuter when you have

a thousand animals in your foster to adopt program that's a problem so

again there's a lot more that could be done to make sure that more animals are

being adopted please thank you for your comments our next speaker is Estella

so getting the word out to the community is so important when I first started

well moved into the city of Sacramento I would ask pay you know is anybody

know where shelter is oh you're talking about the pound oh we have a shelter

what what where where so my goal over all the years was to get the word out and

part of getting animals adopted is so people know that there's an animal

shelter where it's located which is what front street is the third oldest

animal shelter in United States and how old is the city of Sacramento and people

don't know about it so it's about getting the word out I made sure that as a

community leader in district eight meadow view that none of my city my city

council member could never have a park event without having front street there

even as a real estate agent when we would have second Saturday in Midtown they

couldn't have second Saturday at our office without front street being there

with adoptable kittens we need to be more proactive in the community to continue

that any city council member have an event at a park that we have information

and most of all please microchip your pets because that's the one thing that's my

goal I have my own microchip machine somebody needs my help I am there because I

learned that when I would go and have a park event and volunteer that we would

priority was to inform people it's not just the microchip but it's also to

make sure that you update it so animals come to the shelter and guess what that

out the microchip is blank it's the phone numbers have never been updated so

that is a goal that you guys need to focus on get it out get the information out

that yes front street is our animal shelter and it's on front street thank you

for your comments our last speaker is Elise

so your presentation was pretty awesome I actually appreciated it a lot one of

the things I wanted to talk about actually is the at risk for euthanasia dogs

what has a tendency to happen is on their last day prior to euthanasia they

get put in one of the quarantine kennels and so they're not viewable to the

public so people coming to the shelter like in our group that promotes these

animals will go to the shelter looking for that specific dog and they can't find

them if somebody doesn't know the shelter really well they're not going to know

to ask hey are they in a quarantine kennels someplace they're just going to

assume that dog is gone so that is one thing I would I would suggest you know

adding to your list of adoption scenarios also Julian mentioned what Gina

nep used to do and she did she petco was one of them but she also did a lot of

community events at the both at the shelter and in the downtown area that

brought people and animals together and those were also very successful I think

it's interesting about the free adoptions not equating to adoptions as much I

would say that actually does a disservice because a lot of people wait until a

dog dog or cat is free before they come in so maybe you know stop with the

free adoptions low-cost yes completely free I would reconsider that that's all

I have thank you thank you for your comments chair we have no more speakers

comments from commission members member Bagley I just had a couple questions

fall I appreciate that presentation as well I had just a question about it we

see the adoption bar and then the wait list and you said there's no real way to

quantify the walkthroughs the people that are just browsing and roaming around

without waiting is so the adoption would stay the same it's just that the

entrance would be increased you'd have even more people if you could include

all those people browsing right that walk through correct yeah if you had an

actual and and the shelters that did that competitive placement project they

literally had somebody with a clicker every pair of feet that walked through the

door so it's not an apples to apples comparison but so at that number would

the blue line would be much higher exactly where it is yes that's a pity I

had a question do you know what a daily list is because we have them in the

county I get them about 5 30 in the morning every single day once you sign up I

just had Jen sign up and if anyone wants to see what it looks like very

interesting I personally don't try to condone impulsive adoptions but the last two

dogs were simply on the daily list from the county at Bradshaw and I went oh

my god oh my god I got to get out there oh my god I got to go school you know it's

one of those impulsive things but I know that once we take it into our home it

can take a year to stabilize but we're dedicated to do it but it's something

that would keep the browsers out that are stressing the dogs because you know

it's like when you walk in the kennels and 30 dogs are incessantly barking and

you feel I just feel like I got to get out here because I'm just stressing these

dogs out and it's just not right it's just so wrong but this daily list I

mean it it really really helps and it tells you where they were found it tells you

if they're on their stray hold no wonder if any of you had seen that or a

Philip if you had tried something like that I think it would increase the

adoptions and I'll send it to you if you want to see it yeah it really does work

I mean I'm proof of it I certainly wasn't on the market for another dog you

know but ended up with two of them fact the last one that we picked up at at

front street that was transferred over it was on the daily that the morning

before at Bradshaw before they transferred it to you and I went once again it

was just like oh my god you know it's just one of those things so it would be

worth looking into doggy date out I had a question because it was mentioned are

those dogs all altered before you take them out for doggy day good okay great

thank you and this is a great comment so we do actually have a list so we used to

have it when you came to our website and you looked at a adopted dog you would

have a ability to sign up to be on our promotional list but unfortunately the

city meets and changes to their website now people they don't allow us to

allow the pop-up and kind of force them or not sign up but that's a good idea

like with people we could actually create a report that would automatically be

sent out you know it's just like it's just the right amount of information

they're coming directly from chameleon do you know I'll just I'll just send it

to someone okay okay I'll follow up

Amber tree yes and I wanted to bring this up for a couple of meetings but I

think tonight's the perfect time getting more adoptions out would be

wonderful I would like this body to go to city council and remove the three

dog maximum it's crazy you know as I had talked to Chase when he was in charge

of collection of dogs and and bringing them into the shelter is that some people

shouldn't have one dog they they're terrible right some people could have four or

five dogs depending on the size or whatever if they're used to it it would be

fine but there is a limit on three dogs in the city of Sacramento which is

crazy I think it's what seven cats yeah so I mean I don't problem with people

having seven cats I don't have to go and have ten cats if you can take care of

them it's just nuts and if you truly want to have more adoptions you would

remove that and let animal control pick up when there's a bad person taking

care of pets and leave the people alone and it also should bring some money

into the city it's just make sure that they are licensed so adding the

license to it but making it it's crazy that it's just three I don't know who

picked three I'd mention talk to Chase one time maybe if you do poundage and you

said no you should just take off that limit and let animal control do what they

what they do best which is in a situation where it's either a hoarder or

someone who can't take care of how many animals they have you go in if it's

someone who has a great job with three dogs or four dogs you know I had four

dogs so I lived in the county all jacks all great dogs right and one passed away

so when we came to the city we were within the limit or I would have been breaking

the law thank you and that is on our phylogue so that's how things end up on

future agendas correct that's what I understand

yes okay let's move on to our next item which should be oh I'm sorry oh great

sorry I just have a question about how does our baby is being sent out or how

it's accessed yes so and Phil help me if I get this wrong so when folks come

in to the shelter and sign up on their on the wait list to meet an animal they

do that over their phone they sign there's a QR code that gets you to the

wait list and so once the meet and greet is concluded and a staffer or a

volunteer marks that person as completed on on wait while then they receive a

text that says you know thank you for your visit please you know would you take a

moment to answer a quick question or two about your experience and that's that

gives them a link to the survey thank you thank you thank you

and also I got a question did you have a question or comment okay so I want to

thank Paul that he's been doing this work for about six months maybe a little

longer than six months taking this data and analyzing it which is one of the

things that's wonderful about this commission is that people bring different

skill sets and he dived into this about six or eight months ago and we've been

looking at the discussion about conversion rate is a kind of segue to the

idea of a motion that we have on this topic is the idea that we wanted to get a

few other brains involved including some of the staff to start to look a little

deeper at what is what is our conversion rate what are the barriers what are the

ways that we could try to tackle some of those barriers and recently one of

the identified things was the idea of surveying people and learning that

wait while wait lists allow to survey to be done and so I just wanted to kind of

segue to the idea of a motion that we're wanting this kind of analysis and

wanting this kind of talent brought forward to dive into these things and so

if we can think about other ways that we could be doing something with the

wait list data set or other ways to use other software that could do better

collection of data etc that's a little bit of why we're talking about a motion

to have some people involved it's referred to as ad hoc committee I'm not sure

that's the right term it may be better is that the right term okay so again

looking for brains to help us think through and and learn about the way that

we could use our data to kind of move forward on adoptions seems that the

staff we know has been doing a lot to try to understand but again other brains

kind of coming in and helping out with some of this data said so just kind of

wanted to segue us to the potential for a motion here I think it's a great idea

and if you want to put that in a motion at some point let's we'll take it

any are there any other comments or questions like and I'm not quite sure how

to word the motion so I'm going to look at the clerk and have have her guide

but the idea of us we can create an ad hoc committee is that the circumstance

now okay so we're we would like to create an ad hoc committee of some members of

this commission to collaborate with some of the shelter staff to address

increasing adoptions using some of the data that all has been able to analyze

for us and using the best thinking in the world of adoption increasing and then

we'll be asking for some volunteers and now's the time I believe we can get

volunteers and it's less than a quorum so no more than six in your case

those guys so the floor is open for volunteers I volunteer

all right member member snout is volunteering

I beg Lee and remember Garcia

I believe that's I believe you have a motion on the floor at this point is there

a second you're a second you're a second you're in a second fine commissioner

tree so Paul would you automatically be on this I suppose so one two three four

five that's not a quorum so we're good and Philip in terms of staff who might

work with us Daisy who is the coordinator possibly Shannon and maybe Ryan

yeah probably someone Ryan's team players to be named later yeah say what someone

on Ryan's team can somebody on Ryan's team maybe Andrew or anyway somebody on

Ryan's team but I don't know is isn't Daisy foster coordinator maybe she would

be helpful with that I believe we have a motion and a second if the clerk will

call the roll to confirm the ad hoc we have created our commissioner Morris

Commissioner Snell Commissioner Bagley Commissioner Garcia and Chair

Hethner is that still room for one more of somebody wants to join and again we

have a motion by commissioner Morris or vice chair Morris followed by Commissioner

treat commissioners if you can please unmute commissioner treat I Commissioner

Snell Commissioner Aboucher I Commissioner Middleton I Commissioner Bell I

Commissioner Mouses I Commissioner Bagley I Commissioner Fue I vice chair Morris

yes Commissioner Garcia I and Chair Hethner I thank you the motion passes

thank you very much moving on to our shelter needs budget discussion I believe

vice chair Morris will be presenting on this so thank you for the opportunity to

bring this to this commission folks had a minute to look at the agenda the second

page of this item at the bottom has a has a paragraph regarding the background on this

activity and I thought it was a nicely structured description sort of a remind folks and

maybe introduce this to some other folks in September 23 this committee worked with the

city to to draft a request for proposal for a shelter needs assessment study the shelter

needs assessment request for proposal was approved and posted by the city of Sacramento that

city that RFP received four responses I actually thought it was more than that but that's

what it says right here received responses to the proposal those responses were reviewed

and scored and analyzed against a scoring tool provided by the city of Sacramento to ensure

that we scored apples to apples against a tool that the city provided and after reviewing

and scoring the vendors but Indigo Hammond and Plale architects was awarded the contract to

do this work Indigo Hammond also sub contracts with the corret shelter medicine program at UC

Davis to do some additional work in terms of some veterinary support that study was study was

essentially commenced in February of March of 24 and completed on May 24th of 2024 the document was

developed and refined drafted et cetera and then it was released in approximately September of

2024 I believe the document was included as an attachment to this agenda item it's like 179

pages the good news is 29 pages is actual content the rest are attachments one of the attachments

that might be interesting for folks to look at is attachment a that folks on this commission

think I'm crazy because I walk around with this needs assessment and I have mine tabbed and

and collated et cetera and I will point out that appendix a is a capacity analysis and that's

been discussed here the issue around capacity at this shelter if you have a chance to read this

capacity analysis which was conducted by the corret program shelter medicine program in essence

we only have about half of the kennel and cat enclosure spaces that we need for the volume of

animals that come through this shelter this gave us the documentation to support that the capacity

is insufficient for the volume of intake that we have and for projected future volume some of the

volume issues relate to cases like natural disasters assistance with hoarding cases

challenges with families who may need to have support for an animal that needs to be monitored

I think cared for for a short period of time so capacity was an important part for this

analysis to be to conduct in the process of doing this needs assessment we held to what they

call charettes which if you know what a focus group is that's kind of like a focus group it was

two groups of staff volunteers city council office staff a city council member attended and some

of us commissioners and in the course of those charettes there was a fair amount of discussion

about the challenges at the shelter Shannon was there jody was there and we had a fair amount

of dialogue about what it is like to be in the shelter to try to work with the configuration I

call it a Frankenstein things were added over the course of time but the challenges an additional

thing that the consultants walked us through was a discussion about interim improvements what could

we do to improve this shelter for safety and for other concerns in short hand I would say this

needs assessment was conducted to decide renovate or relocate do we renovate this site and try

to make it what we want it to be build a big hospital etc or do we relocate to another location

that makes sense in essence the consultant analysis and recommendation is relocate this shelter

sits on approximately one point acres and according to the analysis with capacity etc we need

approximately eight acres even if we did double decker buildings we couldn't really get to the

kind of capacity that we need we wouldn't have dog walking areas we wouldn't have kennels that

have shade because they were built to adjust for where the sunshine comes from rising sun etc so

relocate is really the the strong recommendation of these consultants in round numbers that's about a

$50 million lift the list on page 29 of your needs assessment shows all of the interim improvements

that were suggested by the volunteers and the staff of the shelter things from fixing the

guillotine doors that can fall and injure animals and people fixing the latches on the kennels that

have lacerated fingers caused dogs to lose toenails caused animals to escape because you can't get

the latch to shut so a variety of things that were interim improvements that were suggested

the interim improvement list itself comes up to over seven million dollars the dollar

amounts were given to us by the architects who gave us a low point and a high point in terms of

what those interim improvements might cost we could debate whether those are the right numbers or

not but those came from that architect so the we did an effort with the staff at the shelter to

try to prioritize the interim improvement lists and we came up with basically four top vote

getters which is what you see then in the next page I believe of the budget item where the

stuff at the top of the page says the Sacramento Animal Health Information recommends the city

council include the following urgently needed provision at 2025 2026 annual budget. I'm going to

point out the four different items that we have and we've brought this forward already to the

personnel and public employee committee in our annual report in January so the first thing is

to endorse the idea that a new shelter is required because this commission is not going to go off

all by ourselves and tell people that we need a new shelter and look for some property we need

to make sure that the city council is behind this and supports this so to initiate a site selection

there is a site selection criteria in the report to initiate a site selection to endorse that a

new shelter is needed and to initiate a site selection. As a side note I'll say a few of us have

wondered about the zoo that was a side note so to initiate and endorse that a site selection for a

new shelter. The second is for the city council to allow the community development department

department of finance this commission members of city council staff to figure out a funding plan

to come up with 50 to 60 million dollars. We know the budget is 60 70 million in short we're not

asking the city to fund this we're asking them to endorse that we work with their staff that we

work with the city staff to create a funding plan that may be public private partnerships that

may be working with friends and friends street that may be looking at public funding some sort of

public financing a bond or something but we don't want to go out just as a commission and do this

we want this city council to say yes we endorse you putting work in to do a funding plan

and then we get into the interim improvements medical clinic expansion was a very high

vote from the staff in terms of trying to expand what's there so that we could improve and do the

expand neuter that is so needed. Kennel safety improvement to replace the broken latches

replace fix the guillotine doors if when you when you some of you tour you will see there are these

concrete curves that impede the Kennel door from opening and so that is the hazard that is very

difficult the actual concrete itself is a challenge because it's porous and so it's hard to keep

clean and then the idea of relocating the parking of the actual shelter fleet vehicles if we could

move those under the freeway then we could use that space where the fleet vehicles currently park

for some other structures to do something for for for interim improvement to create some additional

structure I will share that in the meeting when we ask the staff to do to to help us to for them

to set the priorities it was shared that there is no private place for a staff member to go

if they have witnessed horrible thing such as commissioner Bagley has talked to us about

if they have had a moment of their own sadness related to some interaction related to a family

or an animal there is no quiet place for a shelter staff person to go as having had the opportunity

to be a volunteer there you basically would have to go into a very not welcoming restroom

to have a moment of privacy for yourself that was really telling when one one team member asked if

they could add to our list of interim improvements so each of these items again there are some

dollar is affiliated to them the parking doesn't have dollars affiliated but it would probably need

some paving or something so so in terms of actual dollars that we would be asking the city council to

look at the three items met clinic kennel safety and relocate parking our dollar items but

we're also asking them to endorse the idea site selection and funding plan development

I'll share that members of this commission have had appointments with all of the members of

budget and audit committee we've had positive interactions with chair Dickinson member maple member

garetta member telemante I think that's it so not on budget and audit but we've had other positive

interactions so we are you know we are working to try to address some of the challenges that have

been talked about today during that and vice chair I'm sorry man vice chair I need to interrupt you

for a moment we are we're going to turn into pumpkins here in a moment so we need it we're going to

need a a motion and a vote to extend our meeting past our two hours to chair I moved that we

extend the meeting to continue the meeting there a second second and the second member treat and

member bell perfect thank you commissioners if you can please unmute commissioner treat yes commissioner

snail yes commissioner abyssaid yes commissioner middleton yes commissioner bell yes commissioner

mouses yes commissioner bagley yes commissioner few yes vice chair Morris yes commissioner Garcia

and chair havener yes thank you the motion passes again my my apologies for the eruption thank you

that's okay I think I want to reiterate to the commission that the request to so to speak endorse

a site selection new shelter and a funding plan development was in our annual report and was

presented to PNPE and was pushed forward by them for some budget discussions so today's motion I

think is much more specific to the interim improvements I'm looking at Paul because I believe

that's how the motion is formatted is that we want to make sure we move the interim improvement

requests forward if again page 29 of your needs assessment document if you want to see the full

list of interim improvements if you want to see the post it notes where we put up on the wall and

let people vote I have them at my house so the the document you see on the page that starts

Sacramento and animal well being I should recommend that's summary of what we've been doing

thank you and of course I've just sent the clerk off to ask a question so

I'll just say on the interim improvements we can't we find ourselves juggling are we

are we taking dollars that might be used to relocate to do renovation on a Frankenstein

structure and so we're just trying to figure out what's what's the best thing to ask for in terms

of some interim improvements the other thing some people mentioned stuff about the volunteers and

well while they're asking laundry and dish washing is a big job that volunteers do both of those

areas are outside there's no air conditioning there's no real shelter for rain it's it's not what

would be state of the art in terms of today and that's those are critical resources that shelter

needs in terms of making sure that you're taking care of the animals and so that's just one area

where there's just not really a way to address some of the challenges that this campus currently shows

thank you do we have speakers on this item thank you chair yes we have one speaker Elise

so I also read the shelter needs assessment surprise surprise I wanted to point out one thing on

that shelter needs assessment in one area I can't give you the page number I'd indicated that

with the population increase the population the people population increase the population the

shelter did not increase I would say that that is inaccurate because you had some falsification

so to speak of the increase of the shelter population over the last several years and in part

a big portion of that was based upon courts recommendation to turn away healthy cats and kittens for

example which San Diego Humane Society was just sued for that and lost it was a violation of Haydons

in addition to that court in conjunction with Maddie's fund is doing the million pet challenge

and part of their community approach that I've taken a screenshot of states keeping non-aggressive

non-enforcement slash healthy dogs at large in their neighborhoods I would say that court has an

agenda of keeping animals on the street and out of the shelter so some of what they proposed

in the needs assessment I would question highly that's all thank you for your comments chair we

have no more speakers okay and questions and comments from other commission members

Mr. Snowell you know I'm a little hesitant on the idea that we don't ask for the larger project I

would say be bold with it and then back down if necessary folks can't say yes if you don't if we

don't ask and you know can't say yes or no if we don't ask so I think there is a risk if you

only if you ask for the smaller amount the two million dollars or whatever the smaller amount is the

interim project that you delay significantly you know it could be many years before you get a

chance to ask again so ask and then if you you know aim higher I would say aim higher and then if we

need to accept the lower but we could also be extremely creative I've worked in some extremely

challenging environments doing some pretty extraordinary things with no resources whatsoever

with with leaders that told us you have no money you have no resources you're going to figure it out

and we did I think we can probably be extremely creative by by being bold you know and stepping out

in a large way and ask ask for the large piece knowing odds are we're probably not going to get

there is a huge budget shortfall but we've also you know like I I can personally vouch that

we there are some pretty extraordinary things that can be done with no resources so just my thought

thank you mr. Middleton yes well first things to the commissioners who preceded me who got

this work started I was one of the people who did meet with my city council member Katie May

Paul and she's receptive but of course there are a lot of competing requests for budgets so I

would just encourage everyone to do the same and just start socializing the need for shelter

improvements or new shelter because it's going to take a while for us to get this funding

may not get it this year but in the very least I think everyone in this room can likely agree that

our current situation is not ideal and that we need to all band together to get the budget passed

whether it's for the interim improvements or for a brand new shelter for the city so we can

talk a later about how we can get these appointments with our council reps and certainly happy

to go along with anybody if you're uncomfortable going alone thank you thank you anybody else

yes

absolutely so I appreciate your observations council member commissioners now I will note that the

the dollars affiliated here are the high end dollars which we put into this request here and

Commissioner Garcia and I met with the chair council member Dickinson and we said these are

the higher dollars and his reply was that was smart to do so I appreciate we're definitely asking

for the high dollars and see what we can get excellent I think we need a we need a motion

is there a make-or-of-a-motion

a motion recommending from this commission that city council

identifying commit funding to complete the list of interim shelter improvements as identified

in the needs assessment and prioritized by the shelter staff I'll second that

the motion by member Morris and a second by member Middleton was that a motion by you by

chair or motion by you it was just clarifying thank you all right thank you so much and commissioners

if you can please unmute commissioner tree hi commissioner snail commissioner abyssaic

commissioner Middleton commissioner Bell commissioner Mouses

hi commissioner Bagley hi commissioner few I vice chair Morris I commissioner Garcia

and chair have no I thank you the motion passes you

okay moving on we now come to the follow-up log I believe is that correct item two

just as a point of information for those who are new to join us the follow-up log is a as I

understand it and as I read a an ongoing list of items that commission members voice interest

and having agendized for a future meeting so that comes before us each time and then if you've

got new items you'd like to have added to future follow-up logs the time to make those additions

is during the commission comments and questions and if I got that wrong the city clerk will please

beat me about the head and neck thank you is there a motion to approve the follow-up log

motion by commissioner Bell is there a second ask a question you may ask a question

guess questions after we've adopted it or before we have after the after if we have a second

then we can have a discussion correct is there a second I'll second second and you have a question

we have a follow-up log item regarding the the idea about increasing

the number of animals that a home can adopt and so my my question is is we probably also want

to put that on our work plan which is the next discussion and so I'm just looking at member

tree to say we we probably need to catch that into our work plan and talk about how to proceed

with proposed legislation and looking at the city attorney to make sure we don't cross any

or we cross the tees and got the eyes well it wouldn't be legislation it would be I believe it's

just on the city council's ordinance ordinance on the the the limit of three dogs

per family I think it's an ordinance okay so we want to possibly work on an ordinance to amend

the number of animals that can be in the household okay and then my other thought on in terms of

our presentations we now have published the list of presentations which was requested at our

last meeting there was two that I would like to throw on there and obviously we we have sort

of this year scheduled but if something falls through the hope program we've had the hope program

presented before but I think there's new commissioners here so that could be a good one and then

commissioner bagley suggested she could give us some background on some of the things that she's

worked on so maybe we could add something in there and depending on how the year works out

the presentation on the background that commissioner bagley was offering

yes thank you I know if those are amendments or just ads so those would be as I understand it those

would be things that commissioners during the comments and questions period could ask be added

to the future follow-up log we take items from the follow-up log and then agenda is perfect

okay and the clerk is free to beat me about the head and neck if I got that

that being said is we have a motion and second correct commissioner backley did you have a question

I just had a question I'm not sure this is appropriate but it had to do with this commissioner

treats comment about three to four dogs and I'm like I'm very curious as to whether the animal

control crew actually enforces that unless it is a less than par owner because my experience is

it's not something that's enforced if they're good owners but I would hate to prohibit or tie the

hands of an animal control officer who comes in and sees for dogs not great ownership and really

needs to pull do something and pulls one and so I'm just wondering if they really enforce the three

in the county they rarely enforce the four we have four in the county unless it's you know

Mr. Chair through you to you to commissioner bagley I had asked Jayce who was the who was the

head enforcement at the time to say we could we just take it to four and he said it's better to just

remove the number so that they can go in if there's a problem with one pet right that it's a bad

owner or it's a fact is if they have five and it's a bad owner that the numbers shouldn't matter

with enforcement that they should be able to go and remove a pet be it one be it four be it six

if it's shown that they're not taking care of the pet so that was that was the law enforcement

so the enforcement I think what he was also saying is that when they had been called out someone

would stand on saying well we're allowed to have three and we have three so prove I'm a bad owner

kind of thing so I think it told he told me it gave him more leverage for an enforcement officer

if there would be no limit that he could say one is too many for this household

so that was his justification because I had asked should we do poundage should we do four

he as an expert had given me that number that we probably should just remove the numbers and let

them have the discretion if it was a problematic home to take care of pets regardless of how many

so that's what I want to be required in any way yeah I'm just wondering if you know people

are sideable for the small things and it allows animal control to go back and to maybe be to enter

there are so many different legal ramifications of it and I just would hate to tie their hands although

you know three to four is not to me you're I agree that there are those of us who could do it yeah

and I think part of the problem there was is that in considering that you're trying to push more

doptions let's say someone is a great owner and has four dogs but they can't they volunteered and

they can't take that fifth dog legally because you couldn't license it so if you really cared about

being within the rules for licensing you would be prohibited doesn't mean they wouldn't have five

dogs and just take their chances but I'm trying to think of the best way you know with chips and

everything else to I don't even know if our system shows if we have four chip dog three chip dogs

in a home that you wouldn't give a chip to the fourth dog I mean I don't know I'm just saying

it's much leeway to to our law enforcement officers is possible and that's the question that I had

is why the number three so thank you which will be a fascinating discussion when we agendize

this item right yeah in the meantime perhaps we could move to approve the follow-up lock thank you chair

and for the record we do not have any public speakers thank you commissioners if you can please

unmute commissioner treat hi commissioner snail yes commissioner abyssaid yeah commissioner

middleton yes commissioner bell yes commissioner mouses yes commissioner bagley yes thank you

commissioner few vice chair Morris commissioner Garcia and chair havener yes thank you the motion

process okay moving on to the animal being well being commission work plan I don't

so my yeah as you say in the interest of time my preference would be that if if individual members have

notes they want to make in terms of their specific projects on the work plan we can maybe

do that but not go through each item on the work plan because that might take quite a while

yeah just get a little overview for some of the members is back to the actuary briefly yes

the way of getting some organization in terms of activities and projects what you see on the

far left column is our duties per the ordinance and then activities in the second column that are

things that we are a projects that we're engaging in to try to support or work on that duty per the

ordinance so assisting keeping people and pets together the idea around working on the 311

project which has kind of been quiet we're talking about working on an owner surrender policy

and some of the rules around resources there's some work going on around working with the city

food banks and and merging together food distribution from the pet pantry along with human food pet

distribution so you see there's some listing of commissioners who are kind of involved in working

on those projects invite you to take a look at this work plan and see if they're for example

commissioner bell and I and we're going to recruit commissioner pew to work with us looking at

some clinics trying to reach out to some of the vet clinics in sack to help with band neuter

along with all the other activities so if you see something in here that makes sense to you is a

project you would like to be involved in or would like to add a project I realize that the idea

of that we are empowered in per our ordinance to do some work on some legislation slash ordinance

so I can add the idea about looking into an ordinance to change the number of animals I'm kind of

hearing that maybe member treat and baggy might want to work on that one together maybe not just

throwing that idea out because it seems to be a thing so I would add that and add those folks names

if that's a project that some folks want to work on other projects can be added this is sort of a

way to keep to keep some momentum and some organization around these things do we have comments

from the public on this item thank you chair we have no speakers for this item other commission

members want to be recognized a member backly happy with my list no what did I do press

around council request to speak request to speak yeah was council if you're trying to find it

it's a chart it's a table it's a table that was included in your agenda it's an attachment

so when you see I can show you in your agenda how to open attachments but it's an attachment in the

agenda okay others with work plan comments and I don't believe we need a motion on this item

no it's not a motion okay not hearing any additional comments

comments and motion on does shelter managers report we all look forward to this so much

the shelter manager is recognized

that's it looks like it all right well this is probably one of the

lowest vacancy rates we have had since 2019 so we are down to a 13% vacancy rate so we currently

only have two vacancies in our homeless outreach assistance program for two animal service officers

in our veterinary services section have one RV T vacancy we'll be setting up interviews here

in the next couple of weeks in our shelter operations and volunteer services side we have one

shelter operations manager vacancy the recruitment opened on the 11 then it'll be open for two

weeks and we have four animal care technician vacancies we have one that will be starting here shortly

we just push through to start the background process and then we'll be

doing interviews here in the next month or so for the one last vacancy so we have never

had this least amount of vacancies so we are very happy to be almost fully staffed so

super excited about that and all the staff that has worked so hard for the last three to four

years when we've had these short shortages all right some stats on our current population again

this was as of yesterday in the shelter we had 201 dogs 40 cats and one other in our regular foster

care we had 114 dogs 22 cats and three others and then our foster two adopt we have 310 dogs 79 cats

just to kind of highlight the great work that the staff is doing and the volunteers are doing

in September of 2024 we had a total of 874 animals and foster two adopt so we are now under

400 animals some general updates we have received a draft copy of our audit that we requested back

in 2023 and it was started in early mid-summer early spring of 2024 so we will have that back to

the auditor by the end of the month and then we'll have hopefully the final audit by the end of

next month sometime our budget is for the CDD community development department and our division we

are being tasked as the other departments as well to reduce or increase their revenues to decrease

our reliance on the general fund budget by 15% there are no reductions to animal care we are

increasing our licensing revenue by $100,000 and we are already seeing that with our new

docupet vendor being able to increase our licensing revenue there will be a community development

department budget presentation to the full city council on March 25th at 2 p.m. and then again

on April 21st at 530 to the measure you commission I previously mentioned we are trying and continuing

to try to transfer animals to other rescues and shelters to again help alleviate that backlog

of spay and neuter when we're able to transfer animals to other shelters and rescues that alleviates

us having to provide that spay and neuter and putting us into a position where we have to send

animals out to foster to adopt I think it's important to note that these these are animals that are

highly adoptable these are puppies these are cute and fluffies these are you know ones that we would

like to make make available for adoption because we know that we could get them adopted but that

is more work on the staff and since we're already backlogged we felt it was a priority to actually

sit those out to rescues and shelters in the interim until we get to we get caught up as

mentioned previously we partnered with animal balance spay and neuter we had our first clinic

two weekends ago we completed 203 spay and neuter surgeries that day for foster to adopt and spay

I'm sorry and shelter animals we and then we have our next two dates March 21st and 23rd coming up

and then again on May 30th and June 1st and they have also promised us a couple more weekends

throughout the rest of the year however that's also dependent upon budget and then we have our

free San Diego Humane Society surgery days they're going to be here next month April 8th and 10th

September 9th and then all 11th and then again in October and then again early December and again

those are all free of charge to us some general updates councilmember Kaplan held a pet adoption

and foster event that she holds every year our staff and volunteers many of the commissioners I

know we're out there so she was very excited about that March is pet vaccine month and as our

volunteer coordinators mentioned we held our March 9th clinic at Lafamilia Community Center

and we vaccinated a total of 561 animals 232 were city animals and we had 173

residents from outside of the city of Sacramento so it's very unique for our shelter that we

serve not only city residents but we actually serve residents outside of the city of Sacramento

again heat shout out to our staff and our volunteers for starting our doggy day out program in

January we've had a total of 140 doggy day outs and we have now began overnight appointment

and just a little bit of it we've only been doing the overnight for the last week or so

and we've already had our first adoption from an overnight and as you can see here from the

picture we after lots and lots of delays due to short supply of fleet our new homeless outreach

assistance veterinary and vehicle is at the shelter and is just just about ready to hit the

streets it's it's going to be a fully functional vehicle obviously it's it's small so we can't do

high volume but we will be able to perform surgeries and a spay in newter on their in the field

it will mostly be used for just basic medical exams and such right now when our team goes out in

the field they're literally out in the field they're they don't have a vehicle to do these exams

so this is super exciting for them

I think that was it no that was it I have three but I put them down to two

questions from the comments from the public on this item

no public speakers do you think it's right to be a public speaker but that's correct

it's yeah is it I don't believe it's a open

yeah it would be nice if it could be printed out from the agenda it's never available

just commission members thank you you can also make your comments during matters not on the agenda as well

thank you comments or questions from members of the commission member bagley

yes thank you managers Zimmerman I just had a couple questions I know that the the foster to adopt

the outstanding foster to adopts were very high not that long ago can you give us the time frame

that those accumulated was it years several years a long time and I'm assuming that they're very

difficult to find whether it's intentional a lack of cooperation on the part of the foster

guardian or whether it's that they moved and you lose contact what do you do to make sure or

try to retrieve those animals because you know they are they are city property they're they're not

adopted there's no final adoption on yeah so the highest number was in in 2024 you know because

we saw that the giant increase in intake and out the shelter and then just with the you know

why we do did have contract veterinarians we were so short on the RVT site as well and then again

our Sacramento SPCA partner also was dealing with the same shortages we were so they were canceling

our days that we were sending animals over there our partner community spain neuter they also

canceled appointments on us because of their staffing issues so there's just been a lot of things and

so that's that's what gradually increased to that larger and larger backlog of spain neuter and why

we had to switch over to foster to adopt so luckily all of our organizations are seeing the same

thing we're seeing our staffing start to get up whatever whatever that changes that's going on out

in in our field we're getting staff members now and yet another question oh over what

they're unaltered animals in the community yeah so we actually have you know for the the

thousands that we've sent out we actually have a very small number our city attorney here who has

been very gracious to spend a lot of time drafting documentation to send out to the people that

don't comply we recently just had really good success just this week we had some cat foster

to adopt that were non-compliant and so I instructed staff why don't we just send a very assertive

email that if you don't comply our city attorney will be contacting you and we had seven of

those foster to adopt immediately contact us three of them actually went and got the animal

spain in neutered at their own clinic so again we're just being a little bit more assertive and

again our goal is to be totally finished with foster to adopt except for the occasional

no medical case or something like that by the end of the year that that is our that is our our goal

is to we will be out of the foster to adopt business have have you ever had to network with law

enforcement to try to find the latest or the most recent whereabouts of some of those foster guardians

and then does your animal control crew have like a search warrant and I know this sounds like a big

deal for a small thing but when you have a hundred dogs that are missing and you know where those

people are and if they know it's kind of like vicious dogs when people hide their vicious dogs

you need a way to get into the house you know that the dogs in there before they start hiding it

further you have to have a search warrant and a template for that search warrant to be able to do

it so fast to be able to get that animal and as much as we think that's a big deal for one animal

when you've got a hundred it's nice to have that template and the crew trained ready to go

and get those animals back rather than to see them breeding and bringing six six more dogs into the

world so I'm just wondering if your crew is trained on that to be able to do that because I do know

I had that question for stocked and not too long ago and they said hey if they're uncooperative

and when we try to call them or we lose contact with them we send officers out well the officers

can only do so much given the Fourth Amendment so I'm just wondering if you if you have experienced

that and and use those legal means yes so we don't we don't have hundreds that are that are

non-compliant so that is good second we have sent officers out on occasion again when we got

down to four officers it was just it was impossible so now that we are fully staffed that is one

other route that we will take is again if we can't get them through being more assertive in our

communication with them sending an officer out to the residents and then again asking the city

attorney to then send documentation to them as well outlining the responsibility of what they

signed up for and what they agreed to do okay one other question about the animal balance

events I was wondering if you have had occasion to speak to various council people who might be

interested in sponsoring it's my understanding that each event is about $37,000 that doesn't seem

exorbitant to me given the fact that they do 200 I think that averages out to about $165 an

animal and in the county the supervisors I mean they step right up it's like oh I want that

that's great PR for them and and their community is asking for that and so they actually pony up

the money some in part but the next one's going to be in total one of the supervisors is targeting

her area and it might be something that you could look into where you need more animal balance high

volume span uter if you're staff and you don't have the vets or the time or the space to do

high volume and get animals fixed animal balance is the answer or whatever high volume that

that is acceptable that's the way to do it and that way it doesn't come out of your budget or

friends you know I know that friends the team board is not sitting on money nearly as high as

your friends board but we are asked and we fund span uter where 40 animals go off to

a vendor yes so does friends they spend over a hundred thousand dollars a year

span uter and community cats for the community again countywide not not just the city

and you know they spend well over two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year providing

own veterinary assistance and they spend almost a hundred thousand providing veterinary assistance

to shelter animals for specialized surgeries so while they may be sitting on a couple million

dollars they also spend a lot of money so having a couple million dollars for a non-profit

is is not really actually a lot of money well it makes money you know yeah but we're we're

continuing to spend that money as fast as we're making it I know they spend they have it more

and they spend more than county yeah but that's that's a good idea about the council members and

and that's the great thing about this commission is you all have connections with the council members so

we can all we can all have those conversations

Commissioner Middleton yes I was just curious if you can share to what you attribute that

dramatic reduction in numbers of foster two adopts is that because of the new veterinarians?

yes slowly but surely but the animal balance was a huge huge and then the next one will be a major

major success getting getting that number down we we have actually we're trying to to not send

dogs out if we can get away with it we're not sending cats out foster two adopt anymore

and so if we can get any animal altered within a five day period the following week if it's adopted

on the weekend we're not sending the amount to foster adopt we're not sending out highly adoptables

we're not sending out of the area animals and so we're really trying to just cut down on that

number we're seeing it go down every single day so we're already making success without even

totally stopping cutting it off because again you know if you you see the shelter numbers

the animals are coming in faster than we can find outcomes for them so you know we could say we're

just going to cut off foster two adopt for dogs but they have to go somewhere and you know the

numbers just don't align quite yet but where that is our veterinarian's goal is by the end of the year

there will be no longer a foster two adopt other comments from other members I feel I feel

forced to confess that I'm sure that among the folks sitting at this table I have signed off on

more foster two adopts than anybody else yeah I the only thing I would say is and I I I agree with

everything everybody said about spay and neuter that that is long term the only answer to the

animal problem that we have here in Sacramento I will also say as your friendly neighborhood

use dog salesman you know it's it's a better outcome than some of the other outcomes that are

possible and that I very closely question every potential adopter about the fact that if they're

taking an animal that is not yet altered that by law we will not and cannot finalize an adoption

until that animal it has been spayed or neutered and if I get if if somebody blinks twice about

spay or neuter I go to my friends on the staff and I've not had a single one of them ever say

if you're hinky about any kind of foster top would not we're just not doing it and so you know I think

my encounters with the general public and with the certainly with the team at foster at front

street is a hundred percent on board but trying to get as many spay and neuter done and I have noticed

just as I come in and and volunteer at the shelter many more of our available animals have already

been spayed and neutered then were a few a few months ago and I mean there's no secret here that the

the length of time that folks have been having to wait for spay and neuter is I mean it's it's a

long long time and and you know it's not certainly not the best outcome but there are there are

worse outcomes right and so just being in that role I take that very seriously to question folks about

their willingness and they're and let them know that they are signing their promise to a contract

that says that they must bring the animal back to us and I know that the customer service folks

re-emphasize that along with the you know sort of appropriate ways to to handle that dog while you

well is not fixed right that we're not going to let you you're going to promise not to take that

dog to a dog park we're going to have you promise to not have that dog off leash does everybody

abide by all their promises unfortunately probably not but so just thought I should confess that sorry

commissioner snow you had to come in that's just a hypothetical question here if if I was adopting

at front street would it be possible for me to make an appointment at my own vet for spay and neuter

pick up the animal take it to absolutely and if you if you come see me on Saturday I can get you

I can I can you can meet an animal and if if it's an acceptable foster to adopt situation

I will let you know that if you bring us the paperwork to proofs that you've had that dog altered

we're going to we'll finalize the adoption without you bringing the dog back to us and we will

wave all of your adoption fees so yes and we and we encourage that but we also recognize that

it's not an inexpensive thing for people to do that is that's part of the issue so

other comments I believe we are moving on to public comments is that correct oh commissioner comments

I'm sorry our next item is commissioner commissioner comments are there commissioners who have other

comments to make ideas and questions if you had an item that you wanted to be included on a

future agenda or a follow-up blog this would be the time to make that sort of comment oh oh

so this is the time when we ask that we add a presentation from hope program and we ask for a

presentation on some of the yet yes madam vice chair and two year former chair yes this would

be the time for that okay so that's my request to add those couple of presentations to our list of

potential presentations and then maybe I don't know if it goes on the log but to say they

there'll be some investigation and the idea of a new ordinance related to the number of animals

that a household can have other commissioners with comments or questions

yes Mr. Tree Mr. Chair in the light of transparency I would like included in the director's report

figures on usanation I just need to know how many and why as much as we can because that question

gets asked of me every week so I know that no there is no no kill shelter I worked at the biggest

one in Utah and even then a very sick or injured dog that cannot recover needs to be put down

a dog that's 19 and can't eat or hold their bodily functions it's time but I would like to have

more transparency on how many are put down and why thank you others their questions comments

to two other things not related may 10th proofest we I had a chance to talk to the friends of

front street there's a fundraising event on may 10th put it on your calendar it's the proofest

and then one other thing that we as you saw the volunteer presentation tracking hours is a big deal

in terms of who does what and there is an app that is available to track hours and we have asked

and they have implemented for your work for this commission that you could track the hours and so

I don't know if Shannon or Philip would be the person to send out some instructions on that but

there's an app that's called my impact and there's now a source on that to enter the hours for

the work you do for this commission meetings here meetings outside etc which would be great

for us when we do our annual report to be able to say how many hours commissioners have put forward

yeah I'll have the team put the email together for me thank you and then I'll send it out to you

yes some of the commissioners can see it but not get into it and I can get into it and put

hours but so we can't. Shannon and Abby who we've now held hostage for several hours they are both

quite adept at my impact and how to log and get into it all that sort of thing

uh their commissioner comments I just have one I'd like to add to the follow-up log which would be

to have this commission consider recommending support of the package of bills that have

recently introduced regarding the puppy mill pipeline in California I believe senator Umberg

and others have put forward three measures SB 312 AB 506 and AB 515 these are all in response to

investigation at the Los Angeles times did the last summer for some of these online pet portals

that we've seen pop up and are now responsible for you know tens of thousands of animals being

transported into California with no documentation and guess what they're they're the old puppy

mills just in a new online form and it's something that I think we ought to take a look at ourselves and

perhaps urge our friends on the council to to support the only other thing I would suggest and

I'm not sure exactly how we might go about it but I don't think I can leave this meeting without

thinking that we need to figure out what more we can do to increase the awareness acceptance and

use of spay and neuter for all animal owners and and would be animal owners and I know that's

generally on our work plan I don't know that we've got a real initiative going on that so

not that's that's well outside my used dog salesman comfort zone but I think it's definitely

something that we need to spend some time on with that I think we can move to public comment on

matters not on the agenda thank you chair yes we do have three speakers our first speaker is

Julie followed by Estella and Elise thank you all so much for your time today I just wanted to ask

answer a couple questions that were brought up because Ms. Bagley was wondering how or why it

was increased to seven days and I just did a little online search and Gina and Ep said that she

said in the long run it would decrease length of stay and that it would save the city money and she

said the lines were always long after they'd been closed and she felt that it would be cost-effective

and beneficial and save lives to do so and we agree and I wanted to bring up another issue regarding

that an inconsistent statement I guess you'd call it when we sponsored that's Fixer Sheldor

sponsored AB 2265 last year that was a legislative bill that our mayor Kevin McCarty carried when he

was an assembly member and it required shelters to give a 24 hour notice before they used an

iced an animal we know that that saves lives rescues do it every day a director Zimmerman was

opposed to that legislation and he claimed that it would also have additional costs in other words

one more day to let an animal live so that it could be saved and he said it would cost the shelter

and we know this through appropriations an extra $350,000 in a year so I don't understand how

now closing the day went cause that same problem you know that that would be extra money that would

be lost there you had asked why has this pay neuter suddenly gone so quickly I will tell you a new

mayor okay new leadership solutions for spay neuter can always be found what we need here at

front street is oversight accountability and transparency I urge you all to do your homework

and look into what laws are being violated here by turning away cats and dogs and just make sure

that you put an animal thank you for your comments thank you for your comments our next speaker is

Estella okay no problem at least she's already spoke okay

again okay so first I wanted to speak to what commissioner ragley had asked about the missing

stolen animals there would be in the hundreds in the past five years because in the last three

years and two and a half months you have almost 90 missing her stolen maybe the city attorney could

speak about selective enforcement as well because I also have pulled public records in regards to that

and animal control or police have not gone out to any of them however directors and women

himself personally called such as heights police when he thought nor calvoli rescue who has had

some criticism against him had one of those dogs they did not have that dog they never had

possession of that dog but out of all the 90 plus he called the police on that one so additionally

you mentioned the puppy mill bills puppy mills are bad we all agree on that we do have concerns

about San Diego humane being the sponsor of that those bills as they have been in violation of law

by turning away cats and kittens the same way that director Zimmerman has been doing for the last

almost five years to the four dog limit I would say you need a limit four dogs is almost exclusive

throughout county both Folsom or Anticredova city of such as heights all of them follow county four

dogs I think it's great or even if you have something that is based upon the size of a lot the

same way that they do chickens for example in the city of Sacramento but having an open blanket no

limit will cause hoarding and the city of Sacramento currently as of last check had 1600 calls that

they were behind so they're not going to do any enforcement on hoarding situations if they can

help it so that's all I have I hope you guys have a great night thank you for your comments chair

we have no more speakers

so moved that good