Okay, good evening, and welcome to the Wednesday October, August, sorry, October, August 13th meeting of the Animal Wellbeing Commission.

Commission meeting is now called to order.

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

Here.

Commissioner.

Here.

Commissioner Bellman.

Here.

Here.

Commissioner.

Here.

Here.

Here.

Here.

Here.

I think we're happy.

Excellent.

So all members of the public are welcome to address the commission as we're here to provide a forum for public discussion.

I do want to remind folks and ask for your help in providing our making our meeting orderly.

This commission does not, as we've discussed in the past, have the authority to hire, fire, or manage any city personnel.

Employment decisions are not made by this commission.

And while we welcome input on matters within our scope, calls for the dismissal of specific individuals are not appropriate for this forum and are therefore out of order.

So please keep your comments relevant to the agenda and the powers and duties of this body.

After this first speaker, we will no longer accept speaker slips for that item.

We'll now proceed to with today's agenda, starting with the land acknowledgement and pledge led by Commissioner Abuchai.

So please rise.

And now for the pledge.

Okay, thank you.

Do we have any members who want to speak on consent calendar items?

I have nobody in my queue.

Going once, going twice, going three times on consent calendar items.

I myself have two minor modifications to propose.

Um first with regard to the minutes under item four.

Um with regard to the act action taken, it uh the the motion that was passed was to recommend that the council support the findings of the audit, including the proposed MOU, and that the commission reserve the ability to provide further comments and recommendations pertaining to animal management.

If we could make that adjustment, I would appreciate it.

And then with regard to the follow-up log, there was a request at the last meeting by Commissioner Bagley that we agendize uh cat population management for a future meeting, and I'd request that we add that to the follow-up log as well.

So um is there a motion and a second uh uh for the consent calendar as proposed to be amended.

Um I see a motion from motion to accept the consent calendar with the amendments.

I'll second.

We have a motion from the vice chair and is there a second?

Second, second from Commissioner Garcia.

Uh all those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

All those opposed, and the ayes have it.

Okay, so now we will present, move on to the discussion calendar.

Item three is the presentation from our city veterinarians.

I'm looking into the have we got two out of three?

So we will uh we will do whatever is your preference.

Would you like to go ahead?

Would you like to wait?

And um I think we'd like to wait for we will hold off on item number three for the moment and um return to if you can just throw up a flair when you folks are all gathered and ready and we'll try to move forward.

I do appreciate you folks for being here.

And I know that at least one of you was supposed to be on vacation today, last I heard.

So I we appreciate you folks being here.

So okay, we'll go straight then to item number four, which are big dog adoptions, which I think I have.

Do we have the PowerPoint available on the screen?

It was you've got it on your screen.

There we go.

Big dog adoptions.

Okay.

I'm gonna try to keep this brief, but I wanted to keep the commission apprised of the things that we've been doing on the ad hoc committee on adoptions, which we started earlier this year.

Um you folks may recall that we've had several discussions looking at our our conversion rate, the proportion of shelter visitors who follow through with an adoption.

Um, and from that allowed us to make some changes to the way um we work with adoptable animals at the shelter, and we also started to gather some feedback from shelter visitors.

Um part of what we learned from that work was that for many people the adoption experience is actually beginning before folks come to the shelter.

Um, like so many things these days, it apparently all starts online.

And so from that, we decided uh to take a look at this topic from a marketing perspective, um, with a focus particularly on the dogs that we've have the most difficulty typically adopting, those would be your larger adult dogs.

Um with some help with Ryan Hinderman who's joined us today, not coincidentally, um we took a look at some of the types of animals being adopted, the age of our most frequent adopters, and where those adopters are tending to live.

Uh so here is really a um uh a year's worth of uh of uh large dog adoptions from the shelter boiled down to a single slide.

If we I don't have a change or clicker thing.

Oh, it's in your drawer.

It's in my drawer, of course it is.

There's only four thank you.

Okay, if I do that.

Do I have to point it at something?

Operator error.

Excellent.

Oh, they're turning it on, great.

Uh so uh here's a look at a year's worth of adoptions.

They go back to I believe the first of June from 2024 through the the end of the the fiscal year uh and uh that we've just completed.

As you can see, the average age of these, and if I remember correctly, it's something about this data set is about 875 or so animals.

The average age is uh on the young side to a degree, uh, two years, right about two years old.

Uh those are estimates when we get dogs in, we look at their teeth, that's gives us our best guess about how old dogs are.

Average weight, a little bit over 53 pounds.

And you'll see um you know the three biggest uh uh uh samples in terms of of uh the the kinds of dogs, the breeds of dogs that are being adopted.

I was actually kind of surprised that um pit bulls are still the predominant um uh dogs, large dogs that are being adopted, uh, followed up by uh shepherds and huskies.

As I tell lots of folks who visit the shelter, when I started as a volunteer back in 2017, it was all about pit bulls and chihuahuas, and over these last few years it's become pit bulls, chihuahuas, um, huskies, and shepherds.

So uh, and it's reflected in uh in the data that you see here.

So uh uh that's those are the dogs that are moving.

So, in terms of who's adopting them, we started to look at this again from a marketing perspective.

So uh it's all about the different um generational mixes.

Uh those of us in the baby boomer camp, you can see how small we uh we have of a of a percentage we now currently are.

It's really all about the millennials and um folks from uh uh to a lesser degree from Gen X.

Uh your millennials and it uh the the average age among this whole group is about uh 42 years old, as I recall.

So that's the that's the group who are most likely to be uh adopting large dogs from the animal shelter.

Things to keep in mind when we're um you know trying to uh to market to that particular segment.

I don't belong to that segment, so I had to do some, we all done some digging about what it is that motivates millennials and Gen X folks.

Uh we still do obviously have some gen uh some boomers and some even some uh some Gen Z adopters, although I would say that obviously they're the older part of the Gen Z.

We're not adopting dogs out to 12 year olds.

So we also started to look at where do these adopters live.

And um, you can see pretty it's it's really kind of a fascinating geographic distribution.

We do have dogs that um are bound for places like Shasta Lake, California, Tahoe, places like that.

But for the most part, you can see that um that these adopters are really coming from the city of Sacramento with little slices of folks from Davis, West Sack, Rockland, Roseville, some of those things, and of course um there are other shelters in those areas that perhaps are drawing more of their own population.

Oh I'm missing a piece.

Hmm, oh, we're missing a slide.

The slide we're missing, which is in the um is in the packet, is um looks at among those Sacramento adopters, where do those folks, where in where from the city of Sacramento are those folks coming from?

Um what we did there was basically combine the you know adjacent zip codes into neighborhoods, and um don't know why that didn't make it on there, but that's okay.

They spelled my name wrong too, so that's okay.

Uh but uh so the biggest the biggest chunk are um the pocket land park folks, 27% of uh of the big dog adoptions from that year um came from from that neck of the woods, uh followed by uh Del Paso Heights and surrounding areas, about 20%, followed by Notomas, um 15.6%, and uh Tahoe Park, Oak Park, about um 13 and a half percent.

So those oh there they are.

Sorry, I'm sorry about that.

I can't seem to I don't know, I need extra training on this.

I need to go to a remedial school.

So there's the slide.

Um so you'll see that within those four kind of geographic areas are about really about three quarters of our large dog adoptions, and so um things to just keep in mind as we try to reach out to those particular audiences.

Obviously, uh some of those neighborhoods might be places where we want to do um events and those kinds of things where we've got adoptable dogs where that people can meet.

Um we did take a other one?

Is it the other one?

Oh, there we go.

Oh, I see, it was attacked at the end, got it.

Okay.

This is probably too small for folks to read, but we took a little look at, and obviously I think there are people here right here on this commission, I'm sure people in the audience who are more um uh educated and sophisticated about marketing to millennials.

Fortunately, as a retiree, I don't have to really think about that stuff.

But uh there are you know some lifestyle and things like that issues to think about when we're trying to market to those folks, and um also obviously they have some certain proclivity, you know, uh tendencies in terms of the social media platforms that they find most useful, typically Instagram, TikTok, those kinds of things, as opposed to some of us old folks who are still on things like Facebook and that sort of thing.

So um there is also a uh uh for many folks in this group, there's uh there's a uh a strong interest in uh social impact, so which obviously you know uh is is something that is useful for us uh as an animal shelter that is um uh you know serving the lighter larger community, uh also a strong health and wellness component.

Uh when folks come in and they're interested in a husky, I say this is great.

You know, we have a fantastic marathon here in Sacramento, and this dog wants to train for it with you.

Um and so uh all kinds of things that folks can keep in mind when they're uh in the business of uh trying to reach out to folks who are potential adopters.

So that was um kind of our the committee's uh uh look at at uh uh marketing.

Uh we've been doing some work on the kind of the months mult nuts and bolts side of adoptions, and I think uh I would anticipate that we would uh spend a little bit of time talking about uh post-adoption support and uh then probably bringing the combined uh uh findings of that committee back to the full commission, hopefully in the in relatively short order, because uh we've we've been at it for a while now.

I think we've kind of mined the best of what we might be able to do in the short term.

So with that, uh if we have public speakers on this item, let's do that, and then happy to answer questions from the commission as well.

Come on down.

Good evening for work, really great information provided here, and I'm glad to see it.

Thank you so much.

Um just wanted to add to that because we've had great success saving a lot of the dogs that are on the euthanasia list on next door and on TikTok also.

They're really good platforms that um you know reach a lot of people, and um, so I would suggest that you you know you think about a way for Front Street to post those animals, and and again, as you were saying, it's all about marketing.

And I see Ryan here, and I know Ryan used to do some really great videos of the the doggies and the kitty cats, and I think when you have a little bit more of a story, that makes a big difference too.

Um and I would love it too, because I love cats and dogs equally, if you'd think about doing the same kind of study for for cats, and if you could make sure that they get on um social media and that they get shared on a regular basis too, because you don't see them being shared too often.

And I know with the spike in euthanasia rates for cats and kittens, that's been really high and awful lately.

Um, it would be great.

In particular, we just saved you know four healthy kittens from Front Street that were on the youth list.

So if you could get them on next door and TikTok, that'd be great.

Thank you.

Hi.

Uh I just want to echo Julie that the great job on the report.

Uh one thing with uh I do a lot of volunteer time with various shelters, honestly, throughout all of California on trying to market animals.

Front street needs to really step up its game on marketing.

I mean, honestly, uh it's good to start seeing more on our Facebook, Instagram, those things.

But if you I mean, frankly, if you just looked at Bradshaw next door, uh they really do a good job of writing stories to highlight uh different animals and their different personalities and try to make a story so that it can connect with people, and it would be great if we could do something similar out at Front Street.

Um really the the presence on Instagram on next door on TikTok needs to be increased uh much more so than trying to focus on Facebook as our numbers show, it's the millennials that are adopting, and I can guarantee you having three of them in my house, they do not go on Facebook.

Uh as our numbers show, it's the millennials that are adopting, and I can guarantee you having three of them in my house, they do not go on Facebook.

Thanks.

Excellent questions comes from members of the commission.

Commissioner Few.

Oh, is that oh, you sharing, we're sharing.

Okay.

Um Vice Chair Morris.

Thank you to uh Ryan for supporting the activities, the effort to get this data together.

Um but thank you for helping pull that data forward.

Thank you to Ryan for helping for pulling that data forward and to the um the committee, the ad hoc committee members, Paul and Doug, who really dived into it and pulled it forward after we had some committee meetings about looking at data.

So that was so wonderful.

One of the things that I recall um, Paul, that you had found some research on was um engaging with the real estate community, and that in fact people who are new home purchasers, and correct me if I'm wrong, but there was something about people who are new home purchasers, are are often people who might be interested in a dog having a son and a daughter-in-law who are in exactly that spot.

Um it makes me wonder about people who are in the real estate business who may help uh guide us to connect with real estate agents who are selling homes and might help us do some marketing in that area because you had found I thought you found some research on that.

So that's an o that was a curiosity I had.

Yeah, I I don't know that we found research on it.

I think it's sort of our speculation that uh folks in the sort of I guess they call it household formation time of life are you know, sort of the prime candidates for that, and which sort of led us to the to the thought that perhaps uh uh engaging with home builders and the real estate community might be uh legitimate avenue to pursue.

So and I know that that there's at least one realtor who every time he sells a house he sponsors a sponsors the the adoption of a dog, which is good on him for that, or whatever that is.

Yeah, so a couple of us maybe from the ad hoc committee might gather and think about at least looking at that idea and partnering, seeing if there are some agents we might partner with.

Um I just remembered that being part of the discussion.

Thanks.

Commissioner Hayes.

Yeah, thank you for this great report and um a cat report.

I'm sure the community would also appreciate that as well.

So maybe that's something we can look at.

Um my current dog we got um from TikTok.

Uh he was a lovely volunteer, posted a TikTok of um his name's now Boston.

Um, and we got him from Front Street, and so that was like a great.

I'm a member of Gen Z, so um I spend most of my time on TikTok.

So I know um the new marketing person over at Front Street, I'm blinking on her name, but she's lovely, and she's done an amazing job with your social media.

So um thank you all for that.

Um, but increasing the presence on TikTok would be like huge because I know I see all of the dogs on TikTok, and that's where all of Gen Z are looking.

While they might not be the prime adoption community, um, it's a great way to um you know bring these dog stories to to life.

So yeah.

Uh Commissioner Christie.

Thanks.

Um this obviously a lot of marketing opportunities to be had, but I was curious what Front Streets uh if they have marketing staff, or is this like volunteer run?

Who leads that strategy for Front Street and is that area fully staffed right now?

I'm gonna give that one to our our guest uh administrator for the night, Mr.

Hinderman Ryan.

Uh yeah, the department's fully staffed, so I'm the communications manager in addition to uh customer service manager, and then we have Andrea Coverland in the crowd here is our public information coordinator who's responsible for uh you know the day-to-day content creation, fundraising, promotions, things like that.

Great, thank you.

And um, so I imagine that like having a social media calendar is part of that, and having like like a planned posts or um like is there a pet of the week thing, and then like on Mondays we post this and on Tuesdays we post this, or is it more free form than that?

Usually it's more free form.

I mean, our needs are always changing, so there's you know, regular content that we're creating, so there is you know some structure there as far as adoptable animals or um you know general stories that we can't always predict that are you know maybe inspiring stories or um you know really cute animals or whatever it is that we're we're featuring.

Um and then in terms of our needs, like our shelter gets really full if we need more kitten foster parents, um things like that, um, those are much more dynamic.

Um so we kind of respond to those as uh the situations arise.

Thank you.

And so um there are opportunities then for volunteers to participate in social media help or not so much right now.

Uh yeah, we've had volunteers um assist with like our photography, for example.

We actually um Andrew just said a post recognizing um volunteers for that.

Um so yeah, and if people are interested, we could certainly you know talk about um ways people can help.

A big one is our foster parents.

We get a lot of content from our foster homes.

Um and so that's uh that's a group that we're engaging with quite a bit as well.

Yeah, and then what about like networking for people to be able to share posts and share animals that are like you know, transfer partner required animals and things like that?

Is there any program or like way for volunteers to formally help with networking animals?

Uh we don't have a a formal um a formal program for something like that.

So it just kind of depends on the volunteer.

We do have several volunteers who do that though.

Okay, and so I'm just curious because I see the list of dogs that do need transfer assistance.

Is it appropriate to share that list or is that specific for rescues?

Um how does that work?

Like what is it appropriate to share animals from that list on social media?

Transport assistance?

You mean they have a place to go and we're looking for someone to uh transfer.

Transfer.

Um yeah, I mean, it's uh if an animal is you know on that list, then you know it's it's possible if there's a volunteer that's that's posting, they have to you know agree, you know, abide within certain um certain communication protocols that are in line with the shelter's you know mission.

Okay.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Thank you for your assistance on that.

Um Commissioner Middleton.

Yes, um, I just wanted to suggest that perhaps Ryan could give a presentation since we do have a lot of new commissioners here.

I know he presented to the commission before I was part of it, and there are probably a lot of channels where the front street is communicating that we don't know about because we're just not on those, or some PR efforts that you all are doing.

Not to put you on the spot, but um would love to suggest that we might see that in the future.

Yeah, I'd be happy to.

Yeah, when did when did we last uh I think it was about about a year.

About a year.

So you're you're about two.

Yeah, that's great.

Awesome.

Uh okay, that was just a discussion item.

There's no need for a vote.

And I've gotten the signal that perhaps we can uh return back to item number three, our city veterinarians are all here.

Excellent.

So to say that we're um you know, lucky to have you all is uh a pretty much an enormous understatement.

Um the last uh survey that I saw, and it was I think it was the end of 23, uh, said that more than half of the veterinary positions at municipal shelters were vacant.

Um and some had uh like a quarter had no veterinarians at all.

So um we are so grateful to have you, and uh uh I'm almost reluctant to that take any of your time away.

So please all join us.

Um uh Dr.

Smalley, Dr.

Hanson, and Dr.

Judge.

Yay, yay.

Thank you.

Um so we're super excited to be here.

Um we were here about a year ago, just shy of that to introduce ourselves when Dr.

Hansen and I started, but hello again or hello.

I'm Dr.

Abby Judge.

Um, and we've got Dr.

Smalley here, Dr.

Vicky Smalley, Dr.

Christina Hansen.

We're the three staff veterinarians at Front Street.

Um we wanted to take this opportunity to go through a few points.

Do you move the slides or do I this thing?

All right, give it a go.

Okay.

So we're gonna kind of take turns here.

Um, and we have four main points we're gonna go through.

If we're dragging on too long, please just let us know.

Uh so I'm gonna start with who are we, and I'm gonna stay on the slide actually, because I don't really have a who are we slide, so I'll just riff.

Um so we, as you know, are the three veterinarians, and we're considered shelter veterinarians, which I'll talk a little bit about what that means, but we do have a team of contract veterinarians who also are very experienced, have been there for a while, and are a fantastic contribution to the team.

But we don't make up the whole medical team.

Um we also have eight seven, but then Brittany.

Oh yes.

I was gonna include her.

Eight RVTs, which is a registered veterinary technician, similar to a nurse.

Um, and five of them are focused on shelter exclusively.

Two of them spend a large portion of their time focused on hope patients, which we'll talk about more, and then one of them, she is in an administrative role.

Um, and then we have our volunteers who I'll go into more as well.

So that makes up our medical team.

Um what we do, so well, here wait, let me talk a little bit more.

Sorry, I forgot one thing.

Okay, so I wanted to clarify what I mean when I say that we're shelter vets.

Um we are veterinarians.

Many of you probably have a veterinarian you work with for your pets.

Many of us, all of us used to work out in general practice.

So we went to vet school, we passed the boards, we got licensed, and we have to keep that license.

Um we're required to do a continuing education for that license.

We're also required to practice according to the veterinary medical practice act and are beholden to the medical board in how we set policies, procedures, and how we practice medicine.

Um, those are all things that are not unique to shelter vets.

What makes us a little bit different and unique is that we have a particular interest in skills and training in working in a shelter.

And that means that we are particularly focused in community medicine, the health of the population of animals as a whole.

We think about issues such as disease transmission, infectious disease, we think about behavior, um, we think about general animal welfare, and we do have specialized training in surgery for what's considered high quality, high volume spay neuter.

Um these are skills we've achieved through our careers.

We've been at it for a while now, um, but also through special skills and training.

Um we have different backgrounds, uh, internships, master's degrees, fellowships, um, you know, special coursework, all these things help us to train and become shelter vets.

Um I think uh we asked back in June when we first thought we were gonna be presenting, um, we asked to see some numbers for what we've accomplished in the past um year prior to that.

So that's what this is demonstrating.

Um you can see on my left, your left, um, it's broken down by month, and that's how many spay neuter surgeries we're doing per month.

Um, and it's broken into dogs and cats with the colors.

Um if you look at the total number there, it's just close to 4,000 spay neuters in the past year with a daily average of 14.5.

And then below that, not broken down, but it's a total number of medical exams of over 6,000 with a daily average of close to 19 exams a day.

And then on the far side, you can see kind of a list of all the different types of surgeries we're doing in addition to spay neuter surgeries, and they're not included on this graph.

So amputations, cherry eyes, colopexies, cohat, which is a dental, dew claw removal, and on and on and on.

Lots and lots of wounds.

Um, that's a big part of what we do.

Um we take out um foreign bodies that get stuck in dog's intestines, um, hernia repairs are common, fractures.

We often pull in specialists to assist with those.

And then um, I do have some data from the past two months.

And I don't have it up there, I'm afraid, but the um the daily average for surgeries in the past two months was actually 20.

So you can see it's 14.5 to 20.7.

And the reason there's a big surge is because we have been working very hard the past few months to meet the surge in the number of animals that are coming into the shelter, both just overall dog and cat population, but particularly kittens.

Um, and then the average vet exams was 22, which is also higher.

So we're doing more surgery and more exams because it's summertime and we're trying to keep up.

So I'll pass it on to Dr.

Hansen.

You got that?

I don't know which button is it.

This is the forward button.

Okay.

All right.

Hi, I'm Dr.

Hanson.

I am going to basically just talk about a day in the life of a shelter veterinarian.

Um, and you can see these are photos of our space, uh, which is small, uh, but we we use every centimeter of it.

Alright, just to get started, as shelter veterinarians, we wear many hats in a single day.

We might be a surgeon, a primary care doctor, an emergency responder, a dentist, a manager, a team captain.

But we never work alone.

We're lucky to have an experienced team of registered veterinary technicians working right alongside us.

We also partner closely with the other departments at the shelter, the animal care division, animal control, volunteer, our foster coordinators, and customer service.

We're all very integral.

Medical decisions aren't just about what's possible, they're also about what's realistic.

We have to consider how many animals we can house safely, what resources we have for diagnostics and treatment, whether we have foster or rescue options, and how much staff is available.

Together, these factors make up what we call our capacity for care.

So what does a typical day look like for us?

We start early.

Some of us have to drive in from a little ways away.

But it, you know, our general routine, it kind of varies, but in the morning, uh we tend to be surgery focused.

We may have one or two doctors or three in surgery, and generally one who sort of takes care of medicine.

Uh we average, just like Dr.

Judge said, about 20 surgeries a day, um, which are spays, neuter, wound care, mass removals, etc., even more complex procedures like amputations or eye removals.

Um while surgery is going on, we usually have a tech and a doctor trying to work on medical things.

Um that doctor may be doing exams, uh triaging animals arriving from our partner uh Mueller VCA, uh, which is the hospital that sees our emergencies overnight and on weekends.

Uh that doctor is also reviewing records, creating treatment plans, and also um taking care of animals that we might have in the hospital.

Um sometimes we do keep patients overnight in our little our little hospital area in the afternoon once surgery is finished.

Uh we kind of pivot and we triage and treat animals needing medical attention, starting with the most urgent.

Our vet techs help assess patients and assist with exams and diagnostics.

We also see foster animals for checkups and urgent issues.

Uh the rest of the day includes record writing uh collaboration meetings or the inevitable five o'clock emergency, like tonight.

Um that's sort of our daily routine.

Um, beyond the daily care, shelter vets also support the broader operation.

Uh we do this by writing protocols and providing training to staff on those protocols.

Um we do some veterinary forensics.

Uh, this is including cruelty case evaluations, documentation, necropsies, and court testimony.

We manage disease outbreaks.

Uh we help at vaccine clinics and come in on our days off sometimes for special surgery days or other things as needed.

So shelter vets do far more than just treat animals.

We help guide the entire shelter within the limits of our resources.

Our goal is to give every animal the best care possible safely and responsibly.

And I'll turn it over to Dr.

Smalley.

Sarah's slide from me.

Um, Dr.

Smalley, I am the Hope Veterinarian.

So homeless outreach and assistance program.

We just finished our third year of the program.

The first couple years I was here at the shelter.

I was mainly in the shelter until we hired our two great vets.

And in the last year, I've been transitioning into hope.

So we're gonna talk a little bit about what I do as a hope vet.

Um so I'm just gonna give you kind of a rundown of my week.

Everything is the same yet different.

So I work Tuesday through Fridays, Tuesdays.

I see um unhoused hope patients in the shelter.

They come in for procedures, sedations, um, vet exams, drop-off appointments for things I've been following in the field.

We do bandage changes.

Um, so we see about my and my team, my two RBTs.

We see about 11 to 15 of those every Tuesday.

And then uh when I have some downtime, I help our shelter veterinarians with shelter medicine on Tuesdays.

Wednesday is our surgery day.

We have um our hope patients and housed um dogs and cats come to the shelter for spay neuter surgery or any other surgeries they might need, which would be like the nucleations and stuff like that.

Um, and then in the afternoon, I like to um sorry, I'm a little nervous.

Um we are yeah, we so we do the homeless outreach, but then we also have realized there's a large portion of animals that come into the shelter that are from our unhoused population, and so we have started identifying those animals that are in the shelter so that I can get their treatment going, get them spayed or neutered, you know, reach out to their owners to get them back to their pet parents.

Um, and so I spent a lot of time Wednesday doing that, and sometimes it's just that they came in as a stray and we identified them, or they came in because they were injured.

So we take care of them in the shelter till they're ready to go home.

Um, and then Thursdays right now is our field day.

So we go out into the field providing vet exams, prevention, um, such as vaccines, fleet and tick present prevention, deworming, stuff like that.

So we are actually going to campsites.

Um that takes all day.

Um, Fridays are more of an admin day.

I'm also the DEA holder and the premise license holder for the shelter.

So Fridays is a lot of admin stuff related to that.

That includes um making sure we're board inspection ready in compliance with the laws, um, and I also work on protocol.

We have city trainings that we do, continuing education, um, working on trainings for the staff.

Um so and I also liaison with um our hope team, specifically Jenna Topper with our liaison partners, which would be PAS program, which is Bradshaw Animal Shelter, uh, Mercer Clinics, they work out of loaves and fishes, and um street the street beds that come out about every three months.

We did how exciting just get a new van.

It's a medical treatment van.

We've uh taken it out a couple of times with the plan on taking it out more full-time in the next couple of weeks, and that we'll be able to do a lot of these see that sedations, bandage changes, taking the van to some of the housing areas like first step communities, so that we can offer um pretty much basic medical care to those animals.

We see a lot of ear, skin, foxtails, stuff like that.

So that's really exciting because now we'll have a little clinic with us so we can do more in-depth stuff in the field.

So that's exciting.

And so probably September will be in the field a couple times during the week.

Um so that's exciting.

Um, I have a little bit of numbers for you, they are outdated.

Jenna worked really hard on getting them to me, but I've been on vacation, so they're they're a little outnumbered.

So far this year, we're about 250 spay and neuter.

Unlike the shelter, this is not required for our unhoused um pet owners.

So we do a lot of education in the field to get them to agree to spay neuter their pets.

And so we feel really proud of that because there's a lot of hesitance for a variety of reasons, but we're hoping to double that number by the end of this year.

So we have provided over close to 1,300 vaccines.

Um I've done nine 1,985 treatments.

We have served about 1,200 pets and 650 owners in the field.

So that's it.

If you have any questions, happy to answer it.

Oh, sorry, there was one more.

Or do we do questions first?

No, I don't know.

We'll do we'll do public uh comment, then we'll do questions from the membership.

I did have one more uh page of yeah, should I finish it?

Yes.

Okay, good.

Um in the flustered state, I forgot to say something I wanted to say, which is our RVTs, veterinary technicians.

Uh we they range from five years experience to 15 plus uh years experience, which is if anybody works in the veterinary medical field, that is very unique and special.

Um, so I just want to make sure I said that.

I also want to say we have a team of volunteers, some of whom have been there longer than any of us who contribute enormously uh to keeping the machine running.

So I just want to make sure I said that.

And then I just wanted to highlight this.

We could spend three hours plus talking about.

And if people want to focus on them, we're happy to.

But we just wanted to mention a few items that we have on our minds of goals we've set for ourselves.

You're all familiar with the foster to adopt program.

That's been a big goal we've had is to try and work towards having zero animals or close to that.

And I think we've pretty much gotten there in that program.

And we're really proud of that.

It's a lot of factors, but a big one is how many spay neuters we've been able to do, both in-house and elsewhere, though.

We've had a lot of help making that happen.

Dr.

Smalley mentioned working hard to make sure we're in compliance with the board, because that is our job.

We have to do that to remain licensed.

Um, so that's super important.

Um, focusing on the spay neuter capacity expansion.

Just mentioning that we are doing crazy kitten days, where we're doing 60 plus kittens in one day, where we have a really big team come together, and we're doing these every other week this summer.

So that's been a big um success for us.

We spend a lot of our time working on um procedures and protocols, and I think we need to just make sure we mention that that that is an additional thing we do when we're not doing direct patient care.

Um, that's how we manage a population overall.

Um the things that we struggle with are probably staffing and space.

We are so proud to have a full staff, but um the reality is we see 10,000 animals a year in the shelter, and that doesn't include all the animals that Dr.

Smalley is seeing who aren't in the shelter, many of them aren't.

And that's a huge number of animals for our team to be taken care of and to manage at the level we we wish we could and want to and need to.

So I I can't, I would be remiss to not say we wish there were more.

Um all different kinds of staff.

And then space.

You saw the pictures.

Um, it's very small, and um we are rubbing elbows and rubbing and running into each other all day.

So that is a challenge we face.

So I think that's yes, okay.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Do we do we have uh public speakers on this item?

Yes.

We're a friend of mine and I are out every for the last probably six, seven years with the homeless people.

We feed them, we help them.

We used to go every day.

I can't do it anymore.

I don't go every day, we go twice a week.

I know Jenna.

Um I've seen her out in the field one time, given shots and stuff like that.

But why isn't anybody ever look at the dogs themselves for what's going on?

I mean, I've got right now we've got we've tried and tried with everybody to get dogs set up to be spayed.

Now we've gone through two three sets of puppies and still can't get situations for these people to get spayed.

I think that's wrong.

I think there's something going on here that's not going right for spray.

They say you're doing a lot of space.

I went in and helped with do 22 chihuahuas one day when they asked with Jenna and you know, asked us to go in and do that.

I just don't see that it's getting done as far as this goes.

We've got a dog out there right now that's got puppies that is skin and bones because she's being sucked to death and people don't take care of her.

We're the only ones that feed them.

Um I just want to know why nobody's checking on these animals or really looking at that.

They go out and give them vaccines, but they don't do anything as far as this dog, you know, should be taken away from the owners.

You know, they're being they're just a puppy mills out there.

It's awful.

You know, and I just feel that they should be spayed.

You know, somebody needs to do more about Spain.

We need to get more dog spayed.

You guys want to come out some time and I'll give you my number, we come out and see what goes on down there.

You know, because we've seen it, we know we work with like 50 dogs that we see all the time.

Yeah.

And it's just I don't think people really see what's going on.

They go out, maybe give them a shot or something.

Give them a vaccine, but nobody pays any attention to what's going on with the dogs, the dogs that are chained up that can't hardly sit down at any time.

You know, dogs that get we've got two dogs that got killed because they tangled themselves up and choked to death.

You know, these are things we brought up to people, but nobody comes out and takes a look, really takes a look at them.

And that's what really upsets me.

Thank you.

Hello, on the other half.

I just came up here.

Um we work with the pets of the homeless.

We've done it for many years.

Most of the time, for several years, we did it every day.

Sometimes we'd go out at night, kind of a risk, but we did it because we wanted to help these dogs.

We saw hope come along, and we went, wow, okay, that's gonna be something special.

But we haven't seen any of it.

I really like Jenna.

I've worked with her many times.

As a matter of fact, um, she's asked me to help, and I go out and pick up pets of the homeless and bring them in to get spayed.

But then I have people telling me down at the camps, my dog's still supposed to be getting spayed, and now she's getting ready to have babies.

So it kind of drops off the sheet, you know.

And we see that we've seen the camper or the van one time out there, and and I understand you're trying to get this thing started, and there's a lot to do, and she's the only one that's really leading the charge besides the veterinarian.

But for us, it's very difficult because we deal with it on a daily basis, and we see dogs that literally would stun you at how poorly they're treated, and how two of them burnt to death here, what about two weeks ago?

Campfire started.

And two dogs that we knew from when they were puppies died.

When I called 311, they say we'll get it out to the right people.

We never hear anything about it.

I try to call animal control five times, left messages, got no return calls.

It's very frustrating for us because we're we're volunteer, we just do it because we love dogs.

We don't have we don't have people donating a bunch of money to us.

We just go out there and do the best we can, and so any support you guys can give Hope and us would be greatly appreciated.

Okay, uh questions from uh members of the commission.

Commissioner Hayes.

Um thank you all for speaking, and thank you for the veterinarians for doing thankless work.

You guys are amazing.

Um the Hope program is probably one of my favorite things to see come out of Front Street.

Um I've uh I do kind of the same thing when I can as help with the unhouse, but I'm a young woman, so it's kind of hard sometimes when you um don't want to put yourself in unsafe situations.

But nevertheless, um questions surrounding animal control officers.

I know when Hope was originally um funded, they were funded for two ACOs, or um, yeah.

So I I would I would want to know more about you know the funding.

I know there's been questions brought up about how Hope was originally funded.

It was you know, right when COVID happened, um, and some of the money got misplaced then.

Um I think that's questions for the city council, not misplaced, but used, or um, you know, and we didn't see the fully um funding staff for the hopes.

Uh so that's questions for the city council.

That's um, you know, we need to find out more about that.

But I was wondering for you, and specifically um for working with hope.

Like, where do you see the need for ACOs to come with you out in the field?

And is that kind of a hindrance for your operations?

Thanks for coming on.

I appreciate it.

Um, so I think that's twofold.

Um, so we need ACOs for a couple of reasons.

Right now, you know, hopefully with the van that will change, but sometimes we come across animals that are really sick, and we're unable to transport them to the shelters so that I can treat so that I can treat them appropriately.

Um so having an ACO being able to transport is really great.

Um, I will say that you know, through Jenna and all that, we've been able to get to know our unhoused community pretty well.

I mean, there's of course we don't know everybody, but the ones we do know, we have built relationships with, and Jenna is really the one to thank for that.

So we're rarely um in areas where we feel unsafe, and um Jenna is really good with dealing with them to to see if they're in the right frame of mind, if you will, um, to have visitors, and so um, but every now and then having the ACO to enforce some of the rules because we do see a we do see things out there that we don't like.

I won't go into details here, um, and so having sort of the the law enforcement side could be um helpful, and so right now we do not have ACOs um directed towards the Hope program, but we have we can call on them, but sometimes they're away from us, so it takes a while, and we have to leave or move on or something.

So that's a little bit of a hindrance, but um, hopefully getting those ACOs um on board would be wonderful to help.

But as far as feeling unsafe or anything like that, we're pretty good.

So Commissioner Christie.

Well, first I want to say thank you so much for all of your very hard work and also congratulations on getting the foster to adopt numbers so much more within a manageable manageable limit.

Um that's a huge, huge deal, and I think it's something everybody here was looking forward to for a really long time.

So big congratulations on that.

I was wondering if you could venture a guess, an estimate on the percentage of shelter pets that are being spayed or neutered in-house versus sent to external um clinics like SPCA and community spay neuter with the just with your current resources and just an estimate would be helpful.

It's a guess.

Uh our uh I mentioned one of our RVTs is on the administrative side.

I don't think she's here today.

Uh she manages a lot of that, and and so she would probably have a much more accurate guess.

Um, but um we're thinking maybe 80% are done in-house.

But we we've been working with Animal Bounce and other teams, and sometimes there's a big surge, right?

They do a whole bunch and make a big jump for us to help move the dial.

Um, but obviously the goal is for us to get to a place where we can maintain, whether that's with others helping or not, maintaining is the goal.

Thank you so much.

Is it Commissioner Christie or Commissioner Morris?

Okay, okay.

Morse or few.

It's Morris.

Okay.

Commissioner Morris.

Um, maybe a clarifying question to what Commissioner Christie asked.

Uh, which is on the um slide that you you showed the volume numbers.

Was that inclusive of what's done in-house and what may be done by our partners?

Just come on.

We asked um one of our staff who's amazing.

He so chameleon is the software that we use, and it's horrible to some people, but actually I'm growing to have some love for it.

But uh, it does require someone who knows how to use it to do statistics on.

So we had some help.

I believe he did just in-house for those numbers.

I think we asked him to that's that's good.

I mean, that's interesting.

It's helpful to understand this slide because it could be that there's more volume going on in our at our partners, and this is what you all have done in-house with I believe that yes, I believe that is the case.

I mean, again, 10,000 animals a year coming into the shelter.

Obviously, not all of those need to be altered or will be altered for various reasons, um, but a very large percentage of them do.

So, yeah.

I just want to add again to the to the commissioners who have spoken, thank all three of you for coming tonight and giving us a sense of the activities and the day-to-day work that you do and the numbers and the volume.

Um I know that recruiting additional vets to support Dr.

Smalley was a challenge and a big um a big happy moment when the two you two, Dr.

Um Hanson and Dr.

Judge, when you join the team.

So we are all very thankful that you are here, and if there is anything that you want us to do in terms of work to support you, please continue to share with us.

We now have your list of goals, so we want to continue to kind of think about how we can support those efforts and concerns and activities.

Um, and uh I for myself, I know I've probably spent a little bit more time engaging with Dr.

Smalley and learned things, for example, and some folks may not understand the terms, which he noted DEA.

That's drug enforcement administration as a nurse practitioner.

I have a DEA license.

That is a license that has great deal of oversight and responsibility for prescribing controlled substances, and I have come to learn that the shelter is fully reliant on Dr.

Smalley's compliance and uh could comporting with the requirements of the drug enforcement administration, and so that is wonderful and amazing responsibility that Dr.

Smalley carries.

I'm also I believe understanding that Dr.

Smalley's license is additionally reported for overall activities with the veterinary board.

And so if folks wonder what Dr.

Smalley is doing on an administrative day, I believe you all just recently were audited by the veterinary board and uh basically came through with a great deal of accolades to the work that you've done.

And again, that's my understanding is that that's affiliated to Dr.

Smalley's license.

So as a shelter organization, we owe you all a great deal of thanks.

But in particular, I want to know Dr.

Smalley's putting her license and her DEA in place for the shelter.

To continue to perform the services that you perform.

We would love to see you have more staff.

We would love to see more space.

Um, I think we're gonna maybe chat a little bit about some ideas in our interim improvements uh about building looking to see what we can do to help create some space, but ultimately uh recognize the amount of effort that you all do do in coming in on your days off, etc.

So thank you for that.

Commissioner Bagley.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Ladies, uh you're so fully appreciated, and the volume of animals you see, thank you very much.

I had a couple quick questions for Dr.

Smalley and your hope efforts.

Um I was wondering now you mentioned you had 250 animals.

Is it this last year that you were able to alter?

Uh January 1st to now.

Okay, great.

And do they come to the shelter?

Yes, they come to the shelter.

And the van is not operable for that at this point.

Uh we can do spay neuter in it, but not to the high volume that we want to do.

Um so, but we can do spay neuter in it.

Yes.

Can you explain to me the the areas you service, the camp areas you service, and or do you make an announcement?

How do you get the word out as to where you're going to be?

And then I have a follow-up after that.

So I might get some of this wrong because Jenna is the one who coordinates our days.

Uh so we receive activities through 311.

Um, that's how we meet new people in the in-house, they'll call looking for um assistance with their pets.

Um, so we get activities that we go through and we reach out to them to see what they need, where they're located.

Um, then so now we're like we're building a network, so we have we call like hope clients because these are regular people that we know of, they know us really well, we know their pets well, and then and they get moved a lot.

So every time they move, we usually pick up a couple or they'll call 311.

So basically it's these activities.

So we have activities for new services, whether that's vaccines, treatments, exams, and then we also have a sort of a running list for pets that need booster shots or follow-up treatments.

Um Jennifer Jenna will coordinate our day.

So we usually hit um we don't hit all of the areas of Sacramento every Thursday, but we spend a lot of time in District One and Two, some in three and four.

Okay.

How about um I was curious about the very small city area that is the most congested area of American River Parkway.

Some people think the parkway is entirely county, but unfortunately the most congested area is city.

Uh do you folks ever reach out to that area?

Because um, I don't really know all of the areas of Sacramento very well.

But um there we have a new place that we have um come to know off of um Indiana and Natoma, I think, somewhere over there, it's off the levee.

Um that have quite a bit of puppies and um adult dogs that we've been working with getting the the adults spayed and neutrals and the puppies spayed and neutered and helping them find homes.

Um see the the area of Jaboom is a big one.

Yeah.

Jab.

And there's more, I just I'm not sure where they are.

I'm sorry.

All right.

Okay, thank you.

You're welcome.

I have a couple real quick ones.

Uh Dr.

Smalley, if you if you want to, whoever wants to take this.

No, we've we've messed up your vacation.

So how much worse can it get, right?

So um from your list, I was very intrigued by your list, and thank you for that, and thank you again for their time.

The discussion about expanding our spay and uter capacity.

So I'll give you the Dr.

Seuss.

If you ran the zoo, right?

We've got because as I understand it, there are different iterations of this, right?

We had the uh in the needs assessment, the the architect suggested that it was possible perhaps to expand the current medical building.

The audit, if you might recall, talked about uh a clinic in a can.

Uh I know there's been discussion about would it be possible for the animal care services division to uh lease or acquire some existing property and perhaps build that out as uh as a high volume spay neuter uh facility.

And I perhaps in the uh you know, in the far-off imaginations of people in this room, there's the notion that well, if we were gonna build something, maybe if we could build something where we might be building a future shelter, that might be uh interesting way to approach it.

If you ran the zoo, Dr.

Smalley, any suggestion about how you would order those possibilities, first, fourth, second, third, um what you see as advantages used to be.

One obviously fiscally is not gonna work out for a while, at least in my career, and that's building a brand new shelter.

Um but my current thought process and what we've we're starting to begin to do is to look for a site off site, uh, an existing city building that we can use for um spay neuter so that we can actually truly do a lot of high volume um spay and neuter, and that would be a location solely for those types of those needs.

Okay.

And as opposed to the clinic in a can concept, is it just too small?

So yeah, okay excellent.

You know, in my mind, in my future mind, I really like to see it be more of a community spay neuter, not just shelter animals but are in housed and maybe um like a sliding scale or something for low income to be able to get their pet spa-neuter.

Got it.

Thank you.

Thank you, and thank you all, and thank you again for for taking the time.

We appreciate it.

Okay.

Oh here.

This is the wrong one.

What number are we at?

Ah interim improvements.

Moving on to item number five.

Interim improvements.

I don't think that we have a I don't think that we have a uh staff presentation on interim provements.

So I think I'm winging it on interim improvements.

So I've got to find my part with talks about interim improvements.

But we actually do, I believe, have some good news on the front of interim improvements.

There we go.

Um, and so that would be for for folks who are relatively new to the commission, uh, a little bit of background.

We did in a principal amount of our work last year was devoted to the creation of the needs assessment, which I think we finally think was finalized in September of 24, I believe.

And um, of course, uh anybody who spent some time with that document, um, the principal finding was wow, we need a new animal shelter.

The place that we're in is uh way too small and the buildings are way too old and then and inadequate for the job that we're asking the folks uh from the animal care services division to do, uh, which didn't come as a huge surprise to anybody who'd spent some time around the shelter.

Uh and so to get some additional value out of the work that the uh the folks who were involved with the needs assessment did, we did also ask that they provide us with a list of of potential interim improvements because you know, quite frankly, they let us know that even if we had the the dollars and the property ready to go for a new animal shelter, it was still gonna be a five to seven year process for that to actually um you know come to fruition.

And of course, we at the time we didn't have either one.

So uh a list of interim improvements was prepared as part of the needs assessment.

I believe the total amount of uh estimated cost of those was about seven and a half million dollars.

Uh there was some additional work that took place after that.

Uh uh Director Zimmerman invited uh uh Vice Chair Morris and myself to uh an all-staff meeting.

I think I see some people in our audience who were there at the meeting, and we spent some time uh let encouraging folks to express their own views from among the the listed items about what what should be prioritized.

Uh among them, um then we then brought that back to this commission and and submitted to the city council a prioritized list of uh the suggested uh budget augmentations that they would do to uh uh at least meet some of the needs that are outlined in the interim assessment uh in the needs assessment, and uh lo and behold, uh what was it?

I believe on July 29th, the city council approved a total of 405, 822 dollars for some of the kennel safety improvements that the commission um uh uh identified uh last spring.

Uh those will be things like the latches that folks, if you've spent any time in our shelter, you've come to dread the latches when I do uh uh training for new volunteer dog handlers.

The first thing I tell them is the biggest problem you're gonna have your first day is gonna be the biggest problem on your last days getting in and out of kennels.

Uh the the latches are like designed to make it easy for animals to escape.

I don't know.

Anyway, but uh difficult to work with.

We're gonna replace those, place the guillotine doors, and also rip out the as I understand it, the uh uh the concrete uh curbs that are um that uh people in this very room have assisted me after I've tripped over them and let a bunch of dogs out because of them.

So uh those uh I I believe that the and Brian, you may have some more detail on this in your manager's report, but uh those are the the items, and there was I think some additional shading uh for what we used to call S building, but now we're calling D buildings uh correct, yeah.

So obviously there was a much longer list of interim improvements that were requested uh both from the what the commission put forward because what the commission put forward was the safety improvements that we talked about and expansion of the medical buildings, and also we asked that the um that the city council consider uh approaching Caltrans about the property that's immediately to the east of the shelter that is between us and the freeway.

There's not a lot of room there, but there's a little bit of room, and the architect identified that as one place where we could perhaps gather some property, and then um uh the the one other item that we asked them to to take a look at was how would we go about uh funding a new shelter?

So uh obviously there's some unfinished business on that list.

Uh if folks are not familiar with the entire uh uh needs assessment or those interim improvements, we can talk about some of those.

Uh I think sort of just piggybacking on the presentation, seems to me like one of the things we might want to try talking about putting at the top of the vote our list if we were going to make additional recommendations to the city council in this new fiscal year.

Perhaps we might put uh uh expanding the the the shelter spay and needer capacity, whatever's ahead of the top of the list, and then um if folks have other ideas, I think we ought to spend a little bit of time thinking about that and to the degree we come up with some priorities, perhaps then reflect that on the work plan thoughts?

Do we have um we have members of the public who might want to be heard?

Let's do that first.

Oh, you're gonna pass.

Okay.

We'll save your two minutes for another issue.

I real quick.

May I real quick?

I don't know your procedures.

I'm new to Sacramento.

Just a bond, float a bond if we can to fund a new new building.

Flo the bond.

Did you want to come up and speak?

Feel free.

That's required.

Um, new to Sacramento, retired business owner, uh, know about the bond.

So if you're permitted to float a bond, that's I don't know your regulations.

Just wanted to put that one out.

To for a new building.

That's uh that would be one of the funding options, I believe.

You're right.

Yeah, thank you.

Okay.

Members of the commission, Commissioner Hayes.

Yeah, I think looking at um, there's no current funding mechanism.

Um, so to push city council to look at either a bond or a parcel tax, um, something to go towards a new a new shelter um or a new spay and neuter building.

So looking at avenues um through gaining revenue through those two things.

Um, but that's definitely something we're all talking about and keeping in mind, um, and something we're not gonna let up on.

So very good.

Commissioner Middleton.

Wrong thing.

Um, yeah, I just wanted to see if you want to provide an update on wayfinding because I think that project had been nearly completed.

Uh yes.

Uh let's see.

Are you talking about wayfinding later?

I was just gonna touch one of the more.

Do you have pictures?

No.

Don't have pictures.

Wayfinding, yes.

Um, that's well a point we'll take in.

Uh so um uh one of the things that was on that list of of uh interim improvements was uh wayfinding, which uh for those of us who have not had an education in that issue until the needs assessment came out.

Lo and behold, there are people who are in the business of figuring out where to put signs, what the signs should look like, how big they should be, that sort of thing.

And they the needs assessment noted that wayfinding was poor, which came as no surprise to a lot of folks who spend time in the shelter because I I believe we've all been asked the question where is the catering about uh 10,000 times.

So uh that was uh something that we actually took on uh really right after the after the needs assessment was finalized.

Uh folks, uh we spent some time first finding wayfinding people, uh, and they're they're somewhat few and far between, but uh and the and the cost of uh of providing a wayfinding plan varied by a magnitude of 10.

I believe 10 100, yeah.

So we had somebody um the the folks that were selected to do the work uh were on the they were on the city's uh list of vendors, and uh they were prepared to provide us a plan for 500.

Uh we had at least one agency that was prepared to produce a plan for us for the cost of 50,000.

So you can guess which one that we went with.

And um uh folks at Friends of Front Street agreed to uh put forward the the uh dollars to get that going.

And if you've been to the shelter lately, you've probably seen that we now have some new signage.

Uh that uh uh uh there are maps where people can we still get people ask us where the cats are, but I think it's I think it's an improvement, and let's I see any shaking of heads that it's improvement.

I see some shaking of heads that it's an improvement.

So, yes, that work is I'm gonna say 90% done.

Little teeny bits and dribs and drabs.

I know that we still have the the S building still has what's now D building, still has the S on it.

And I and I'm intrigued about how we're gonna go about at some point changing chameleon because the visual canal is different, but that's so way above my pay grade.

I don't know.

So yes, but wayfinding is another success story on the interim improvements, and and so hopefully we can find a few more to work on.

Ohmissioner Morris, did you have to uh just a bit to add in terms of the and I was gonna do the reminder on the wayfinding as well.

Thank you, Christy.

Uh, because that was a concern and a challenge for people to do adoptions, and we were trying to figure out how to help improve the adoption rate, and found or in discussions that if people knew how to get around and actually look at the available dogs, that would be helpful to them.

Um I I really wanted to just thank the staff of the shelter because we have through this wayfinding effort renumbered buildings or renamed buildings, and I know I understand that there's been some challenge of getting used to the new names of the buildings or numbers or A, B, and C and D.

Uh, and I just want to thank the shelter staff for working to help support that effort so that so that we can support the community and knowing where to go to find a dog or a cat that's for their adoption.

And I think there's a little bit more intuitive, like I think C is cats and D is dogs.

I'm not a hundred percent sure of that, but I think they're okay.

I'm getting some head nods.

So a little more intuitive than might have been the case with the prior uh lettering and numbering system.

So I really want to thank the staff for supporting this effort to re um label the buildings and help people uh find their way around the building.

So thank you for working on that with us.

Excellent, thank you.

Uh so now we'll return to item number seven.

The Mr.

Van der Linden, you're going to be heard on item number seven regarding uh policy review role of the commission.

Yes, awesome.

Thank you.

So this is gonna be a pretty truncated uh item over here.

So um just over the past uh couple of meetings, there has been some continuing discussion on uh you know, regarding where and how the commission can uh appropriately be involved in policy when it's acting in its capacity as an advisory body to our city council.

Um so this is just gonna be a very brief uh blurb slash presentation of mine, um, and it's just gonna serve as one, a recap of the relevant sections of the city code addressing this question jurisdictionally, and uh two, it's just to extend an invitation to members of the commission to use me as a resource when these particular kinds of jurisdictional questions pop up.

Um so if you want to, for whatever reason, follow along with uh me, the proper section of the city code is going to be in chapter 2.86, um, the American legal publishing, um, if you're looking it up online is the correct one.

So per Sacramento City Code Section 2.86.020, the Animal Wellbeing Commission is vested with the power to provide uh advice and recommendations to the City Council on the strategies, policies, and programs of the city's animal care services division.

More specifically, the city code states that recommendations of the commission should focus on strategies, policies, and programs designed to do the following.

Number one, assist keeping people and their pets together through such things as reuniting lost pets with their owners, return to home and return to owner programs, and owner surrender prevention programs.

Number two, provide quality care for the animals housed in the city's animal care services center.

Number three, encourage low-cost spay and neuter services and identify methods for funding those services.

And number four, ensure the city's animal care services center meets or exceeds standards recommended in the Association of Shelter Veterinarians Guidelines for Care.

Um that's those kind of points are going to be contained primarily in 2.86.020 and 2.86.030.

Additionally, the commission is tasked with serving as a liaison with the community and providing a forum for a public discussion of the kinds of policies that I've just stated.

So this particular these particular sections sort of draw a circle around what kinds of practices and policies are proper subjects for commission advice and recommendations to council, and it sort of is meant to separate it also from other policies and practices.

Um the code is a good place to start.

Um, to be sure, drawing a line sort of between these sort of topic related areas of interest that are contained within the city code and sort of policies that might be considered more internal operational or staff related.

Um that can be challenging.

Um, it's not exactly a perfect uh distinction.

Um this agenda item really is just to kind of serve as a quick reminder and an open invitation to members of the commission.

If there are any questions regarding where the commission can and can't or where it's appropriate or not appropriate to have a policy input role, again in their advisory role to council, please feel free to reach out to me uh at my email uh or my phone, uh and I can take that specific policy or policy area under consideration, and then I can provide you with formal legal advice uh about whether the commission is legally permitted to advise the council in that particular area.

So just uh extending an invitation to you guys to use me as a resource uh when you run into that particular question.

Thank you.

That's very helpful.

Do we have members of the public who wish to speak on this item?

Yes.

Good evening.

I wanted to add some context to this discussion.

About a year and a half ago, the city through the clerk decided to change the composition of advisory committees in the city and add sunset clauses.

The citizens advisory committee, now the well-being commission, was first in line for redo.

Chair Morris graciously asked me to help come up with new language, new enabling language.

And that was because I was a person that proposed the creation of this committee 25 years ago.

And so it's been my baby.

Um we were sort of flying blind with no input from the clerk's office for months.

Neither of us are attorneys.

I personally never imagined that the language we drafted would be used to constrain this body in addressing shelter or community pet issues.

One of the primary purposes of the committee was to provide the public with a platform to participate in issues affecting the animals housed in the shelter and in the community, to bring fresh ideas for positive changes.

So if this commission is prohibited from looking at certain things that the shelter does, which impacts the entire community, then that's a big problem.

So I would advise I'm a retired legislative consultant.

I would advise that you seriously look at the existing language in the next several months to see if it does constrain your ability to make positive changes.

And if so, I would suggest that you amend the ordinance.

So those are my comments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Members of the commission who want to be heard on this.

Commissioner Hayes.

When we saw the audit, we saw that there, um one of the findings was that there was a lack of policies and procedures in place at the shelter, um, like standardized policies and procedures.

Um I guess it would just be helpful for our um when we you want to jump in and make um comments and um you know, put forward things, it would be helpful to um see those and have those come to fruition just so that can help guide our role in jurisdiction.

Um so I know that's something that the audit found, but um if we don't have those, you know, your guys' internal policies and guidelines, then um it there's kind of a gray area in which we can step in, um, or at least which we shouldn't step in.

So um that would be helpful.

I know that's something the audit put forward so look on looking at um bringing that forward.

Thank you.

Other members of the commission who want to be heard on this item.

I will just um add that uh I think your your point is well taken that it might be difficult for us to make recommendations regarding policies when we don't know what those policies are, and the degree to which we can be provided with some sort of update about the status of um policies as they are produced, uh, and perhaps then have some discussion about whether it's it's something that we feel like the commission can or wants to weigh in on that information like that would be helpful to have.

Commissioner Bagley.

Thank you.

Um I also felt that the language was restrictive.

Um there's part of the ordinance that it pears that the commission would primarily concern itself with issues that are in the shelter and usually conducted by shelter staff, um, although I'm sure that the commissioners don't mind working on those things.

Uh my question, I believe, although Carson, you haven't answered it or discussed it tonight.

I think it's contained in your memo.

I wasn't sure if you were aware that that was published.

Uh yes, I was aware of that.

Okay.

I was aware that there was an inadvertent publishing of the memo, yeah.

Okay.

Um the clarification I wanted, I fully understood that the hiring decisions, uh, staff personnel, uh, human resources types of issues would certainly not be within the purview of the commission.

However, there are certain aspects of operating policies that I agreed with the parts that you interpreted from the law and from the ordinance that we would be responsible for, or that we could be making recommendations to the city, and to do that requires a foundation of understanding the pros and cons of whatever policy we would be debating, discussing, making recommendations on.

And I want to clarify that you also see it that way.

Could you restate that?

I I apologize.

I don't think I understood exactly what your question was.

In other words, it was clear from your memo that the hiring personnel types of decisions would not be within our purview.

However, operating procedures may be certain models being followed, things that are sometimes controversial, certainly have a pro and con aspect to them, would be something that we would be able to be giving input on to the city.

Yeah, okay, so I understand what you're saying.

Yeah, um, I definitely don't want to like speculate without knowing more about like what the exact policy area or policy suggestion would be, um, which is kind of why I want to make sure people know that if they have those specifics and they want to bring them to me, then I can do that analysis and we can talk it through together for sure.

Um, but yes, certainly there's going to be if it's a Venn diagram, there's gonna there might certainly be areas where there's some overlap where you know the difference between internal policies versus uh you know the subject area, you know, uh areas of interest might, you know, the line might get fuzzy.

So that's why I think you know, keeping open communication between the commission and staff and the city attorney's office would be a great way to kind of resolve those issues.

So uh I guess to answer your question um shortly, uh yes, I think that there those types of policy areas might exist for sure, and we can kind of uh absorb those as they come.

Thank you very much.

Um again listed as Commissioner Fu on my little machine here, but so we're gonna we're gonna make Commissioner Few talk a few times too.

Uh thank you.

Uh I want to point out and thank uh Ms.

Good for her counsel and con and participation in redrafting the ordinance, which was sort of uh our commission committee at the time was charged with, was asked to do, and uh we we undertook that effort with the good faith of having been asked to do that.

In essence, most of what the ordinance now reads, and I I'm sure I could be wrong, but is is adopted from the prior ordinance.

One of the things that we added, which uh Commissioner uh treat was very helpful in in that she has a legislative background and and I do also have a legislative background, was asking that we would be able to make um recommendations on um city ordinances and state legislation that might affect uh the operations or the the services of a shelter.

Think that was mostly the main thing that we added in term of in terms of language for this commission.

We did change the name to a commission, and and also many um new members now sit on the commission.

Previously, it was four individuals with a variety of different types of qualifications that included having work in human uh humane society or working in a shelter, like working in those fields, and there were three of us who were at large, and now it's almost reversed.

Most of us are at large appointed by council members, and two people are in seats that are stipulated to have experience and knowledge in shelter work.

So I think we're in the midst of a dot adapting to that shift uh versus the majority of people being uh knowledgeable and experienced in day-to-day shelter and policies around shelters.

Uh now again, most of us are uh at large, if you will, with appointments by city council members.

So I want to appreciate that Chair Hefner has long-standing role as a volunteer in the world of uh animal sheltering, which was a seat that we require requested of the clerk and the city council, and um Commissioner Christie comes to us being employed.

Excuse me, I'm dry, um, being employed by the University of California Davis veterinary school, though her background is in wildlife, as I recall, she also understands a great deal about, for example, disaster preparedness and policies on uh population management for animals in in shelter or in in group settings.

So uh I think we're in the phase of adjustment uh from what it was when it was a committee to now what we are doing with many more people seated here with variety of uh backgrounds.

Um we also are mostly appointed by city council members, and so that is one of the areas that many of us are trying to engage with in terms of representing our sh um commission work to that city council person uh about what we would like to bring forward and what we're focused on, and that may be a bit of the work plan, maybe a bit of our annual report, but I do also realize that we're trying to collaborate with our city council members in a more personal way.

Um council member plucky bomb is is not my council member, but he uh is has been in interested in the activities of the commission, and I believe he did a ride-along with the Hope program recently, or he's scheduled to do.

He's scheduled to.

Um so trying to help some of the city council members understand the programs, understand the challenges, uh, understand why 400,000 is a thing we were happy for them to support because I I want to just reiterate that that 400,000 came in big part from the work of this commission and documentation of what was needed and working with the city council members.

So I think we're in a different phase than we were as a committee, and we're in a learning process about policies and policy.

Uh, and so I think we're all gonna try to understand, but definitely in a learning phase.

Thank you.

All right.

Moving on.

So now we'll proceed finally to the work plan.

Uh there were a number of attachments.

Folks uh were invited to provide some uh thoughts of their own.

I know several members did.

Uh I know member Hayes brought hers uh along with her today.

They were not included in the packet, but she's got adequate copies.

Uh I just wanted to open this by kind of trying to look at that document, not just from the perspective of what all are we trying to do, but perhaps um because as a as it works out, we will we will shortly move into the phase where we're preparing our annual report and beginning to talk about what we will plan to do for the coming year.

And uh it seems to me that um one of the things now that we are a much larger body, uh, one of the things that we could benefit from is a a degree of of sort of uh uh consensus building on what our own internal priorities are.

So broadly we as a commission have two roles, as the um our our friend from the city attorney's office just reminded us.

The first being to provide some recommendations to the city council on various issues, and then secondarily to provide some uh uh uh our role as uh as community liaison liaisons and and sort of uh uh providing information to the general public and and folks interested parties about specific shelter programs and that sort of thing.

So, with that, what I would hope to do perhaps is uh have folks if we were only going to do two or three things in the in the area of making recommendations to the councils about uh policies and the and procedures and and and strategies, what would those topics be that folks feel most energized and feel like that's the the greatest work that the that we could be doing going forward, and then secondarily, kind of similarly when it comes to the promotional aspect of an information providing aspect, what would those priorities look like?

So I know we've got quite a few folks had provided their own uh thoughts, and others who were not able to do that, that's that's great.

We're happy to hear what folks have uh in mind.

But I I thought if we could sort of start with what's at the top of everybody's list and kind of figure out if there are places where we all agree uh that ought to be a high priority for the commission, and perhaps we that would help guide us in figuring out what our agendas look like at future meetings, what specific policy issues we might want to examine or potentially produce recommendations for.

So Commissioner Bell, who thankfully um yeah, I I will say uh she and and Commissioner Garcia have have kindly begun to educate me in the world of cats, and I will fully acknowledge my profound ignorance, and I will try not to do anything that uh upsets the cat balance world, which I'm just really beginning to understand.

So, one of the things that um I've so councilwoman Garcia and myself, or commissioner, we have been going to the city mixers and to some of the outlying um homeowner association meetings where we've been able to mix and um network with some of the other city staff, and with that, I thought, well, why don't I start in my own district and start going to some of the neighborhood association meetings?

So that's what I started doing because as we know Spay and Neuter is top of the list, but a lot of people, especially in my district, either don't know where to go, don't know who to call, maybe don't even have a computer to schedule the appointments.

One lady I was trying to help, she didn't even have five dollars on her card to where she could reserve an appointment for a spay or neuter spot.

Then comes the part of transportation.

And I know back when Gina had been at the shelter, she had tried having a volunteer group that would go out and help people transport their animals to their spay and neuter appointments.

And for whatever reasons, it did not work out.

So when I was finding out that some of the some of the pet owners didn't have transportation, I asked if it would be okay if there was any kind of like risk or liability or anything like that for me to go out and pick up these people's animals and bring them to their appointments.

And I was told no, that you know, I could surely go do that.

It would be like helping my neighbor take his pet to the vet.

So that's what I started doing in some of the requests that I had for it's mainly cats.

Everybody knows I'm a cat person.

So uh getting the cats fixed.

So now what I have done is I've gone to some of the homeowner association meetings.

I've given them the brochures on Front Street so that they can see the programs that are offered at Front Street.

We've also spoke about I say we because Kathy went with one to me, and and Paul went with one for with me.

Um started talking about the different programs at Front Street so that they could, you know, hey, if they're not sure they want to adopt a dog, well, rent a dog for a day, do a doggy day out, do a pause and pajamas, you know, different different things that um people can do to help out and to see if that's something that they want to do.

I was also able to educate on Spay and Neuter, you know, people don't realize cats can start reproducing at four months old.

They were shocked.

Some people didn't know that brother and sister will mate because they're thinking people, not animals.

And animals, they don't care if it's their sister, their cousin, their mother, they don't care.

Um so giving that education to the public was was I felt very good about what I had been doing as far as interacting with them.

I've also gone to a few mobile home parks and have networked with the managers there, the maintenance people, the security people, so that if they are evicting somebody or somebody moves out and they leave their pets behind, that they will reach out to either 311 and report them.

Um lots of them will contact me and say, hey, you know, we found this litter of kittens in this apartment that the people vacated, so you know, go grab the kittens.

So that's been very helpful also to network with the um apartment managers and um you know the security people and the maintenance people.

So for me, that's kind of my priority is the education about spay and neuter and you know how to how to keep your pets healthy and safe.

Excellent, thank you.

Uh let's see.

I'm gonna guess it's Commissioner Morris again.

Or is it Commissioner Pew Pew?

Ron.

Oh, sorry it was on, but it didn't take any confidence.

It's me.

Uh go ahead.

Yeah, you're sharing now.

You're sharing your list.

Let's let's let's take Commissioner Garcia because you're on the same list as the other one.

So there you go.

So just to piggyback on to um Denise, um we have gone out to a lot of these homeowner association meetings together.

They have more in her district than mine, so I go to hers, um, and the city mixers as well, where we've met with a lot of the staff from the city, and we've actually done a tour of the shelter with some with one of the departments that I believe it's the department that is doing translating the brochures for us.

So um also being involved with the districts and the council members trying to keep them engaged.

Um we do um tabling events, we were invited to um uh council member Kaplan's National Night Out, which was absolutely huge.

We had a big turnout, a lot of people came through our booth, you know, to get the information on Spain neuter again, the education, um, the programs that the shelter has.

Um we did a district seven uh food truck night, set up a uh table there as well, or those folks came over.

Um, one of the gals brought a dog, I believe we had a dog that night at National Night out as well.

Um keeping the council members engaged and having them invite us to activities are is really nice now.

They know they know us, they know what we're looking for.

Um Councilmember Talamante sent uh some of her new staff as well as some of her old staff to retour the shelter again a few weeks ago and help out in some of the volunteer activities.

So keeping them engaged, uh showing them we've taken some through not just our shelter but other shelters so they can compare apples to oranges, what we have and what they have, uh a shelter on 1.7 acres and another shelter on 10 acres.

Big difference.

Um, and they don't necessarily serve the same number of animals that we do.

So education has been a huge part getting that started and getting that ball rolling as well as getting the uh new brochures out.

We're currently getting those translated into another five languages, those should that should be done fairly soon.

The problem came with once it was translated, how do you squish it back into that brochure so it looks good?

So Jinman's been working on that for us.

So again, that's one of our big um uh issues we want to work with and deal with.

So I think that's what Nisa and I have put down on a lot of our um uh information here.

Thank you.

Member Christie, and thank you for your richly detailed uh uh submission.

It was very thorough.

Thank you very much.

Very good.

Well, that as you could see, I had a hard time finding things I didn't want to do.

Um, but you know, as Commissioner Morris said, I'm I'm one of those PPE seats, and so I want to you know be responsible and and and advocate for those things, um, the background that that that seat required, which was experience and sheltering and animal welfare.

And so I'd like to try and align my priorities in those areas and and looking at um things like you know, protocols and policies would be part of that, and and looking at national standards and side of kind of doing like a gap analysis and comparison and listening in these public settings to hear what the community really cares about and what protocols they want more transparency on, or they want to learn more about or what programs they're wanting to learn about.

Um personally, I'm super interested in things like the awareness and education on Spain neuter.

That's huge.

Um I would love for Sacramento to have a community cat program.

Uh, and I would love for our community sheltering plan to be more successful by giving our community more access to the resources they would need in order to shelter animals successfully.

But all of those things would be unsuccessful if we started them tomorrow because we're lacking in capacity for Spain neuter in our area, not just in Sacramento, but everywhere.

Um so I really like to prioritize seeking those opportunities, kind of doing a review of the capacity of our region's high volume spay and neuter resources.

We have more in our city than other places, and yet we still are overwhelmed with our capacity.

So I'd love to look at those things and see how we can, you know, if I can play some small part in helping the city keep caught up so that we are able to provide more of those surgeries to the community.

I think that would be really great.

Thanks.

Excellent, thank you.

Vice Chair Morris, you got your own name here on the name up there apparently.

I don't know who you had to, you know, elbow up together, but you're you're finally in your own spot.

Thank you.

Uh I want to just talk a little bit about the process here so that folks understand.

Um, what you have in your doc in your documents is my best effort to take input from commissioners and parse it into what the ordinance says is our responsibility.

If I've misunderstood anything that a commissioner submitted, please, it's my fault.

Nothing is written in stone.

This is an effort to try to frankly focus us on what the ordinances or responsibilities are and get us sort of clustering around those responsibilities and authorities.

So again, if I made a mistake or didn't state something, that's my fault, and I apologize.

Um, you do have copies of what was submitted at the at the time that uh I was compiling this, so in addition to my effort to compile, you also have the actual document that was shared with me by the individual who submitted something.

So, in addition to my effort to compile, you also have the actual document that was shared with me by the individual who submitted something.

I want to point out and and say that there are copies available, I think, for the public that Commissioner Hayes was I didn't, I didn't get Commissioner Hayes' information on time for me to do the steps of in including it.

So I apologize for that.

And I also she brought copies so this can be seen and people can look at it and see her suggestions.

None of this is set in cement.

This is a host of ways of us figuring out where do we want to focus this commission work and what are our char what is our charge and our authority.

Um I I would say for me, uh Paul, right now, I I couldn't give you a list of, for example, priorities for me, because for one thing, I haven't had a chance to look at Julia's submissions.

There are a couple folks who may still want to submit, so I'm not sure how good it would be for me to tell you what sort of my priorities would be, other than for me, the the needs assessment is everything, and so looking at the interim improvements, looking at how we might find a way to create a bond to get a new shelter, looking at how we can support uh the other improvements, a clinic, etc.

Um, so just wanted to be sure that people understood that this was an effort to try to get us sort of focused on the responsibilities of the commission and thoughts about how activities could be done, and uh and so I appreciate the idea of prioritizing.

I I don't know tonight that I could do that.

I I'm just putting that out there on the table.

In addition, I I want to um I want to thank Kathy for, for example, the work that she's done on a new brochure and now working on getting that brochure translated.

It's not to say that the staff at the shelter couldn't have done that, however, they're busy doing other things and promoting animals online and trying to improve adoption rates and trying to keep the staff uh engaged, and so Kathy and I think Denise took on um creating a new brochure a year ago, and now she's been working with the powers that be to get it translated into high volume languages in the city of Sacramento, so that would be Spanish, that would be Hmong, that would be Vietnamese, that would be Russian.

Uh so we do sometimes do sort of in the weeds stuff and invite folks to think about what in the weeds stuff would be helpful.

I don't know if anybody on this commission has marketing expertise to like engage with Ryan on big dogs or big cats and adoption marketing, but um, but I just wanted to say that other people can submit ideas, and I I need a little more time maybe to um to absorb some of these thoughts and ideas.

And again, if I misinterpreted something that somebody said, Thank you for your indulgence with the sub the process of submitting this and letting me know.

Um happy to receive additional work plan idea thoughts submissions, if that's still something uh any other people want to send forward.

Uh yeah, that's it.

Thank you.

Commissioner Bagley.

Well, I I guess this is a time that we talk about what we're interested in.

Is that it?

That would be great.

Okay.

Well, my passion is the crisis.

This this surplus, this overpopulation crisis that I don't feel is being addressed, probably as strongly as it could be.

Um education, I think we have to start where every single event, every single thing that Front Street does and county for that matter.

Uh a brochure is wonderful, but I think an ever-changing series of flyers, and I mean a stack of flyers that someone keeps.

I don't know if they're kept at the shelter or kept with one of us, where a stack is always available at every vaccine clinic, every hope uh outreach where the public or people are educated on spay and neuter.

And when I say spay and neuter, I mean the breeding capacity of both dogs and cats.

I think Denise touched on cats, and they're so easy to make, and they're so easy to tweak and make quite beautiful and very informative.

Um I would like to see that.

My name's on a couple things that I'm not really interested in, so Leah, I can I can talk to you about that.

If you were using me to the best of your ability, it would be to be looking at policies to determine if they're lawful, unethical, if they if they cause and facilitate more breeding in our community.

And I have dug deep on these things for so many years you have no idea.

I mean, probably before some of these youngsters were ever born, because I'm very old.

I got you mid-80s.

Yeah, you got me beat, maybe, maybe.

Oh, maybe over 30 plus years started in the 80s, and it's not gotten better, and I always thought it would get better, and we were making some progress, and now I feel like we're backing up.

And so digging deep like that, and knowing the law, and knowing what they should be doing and can't be doing, but they're still doing some of those things, even though they shouldn't be, and there's no oversight to stop it, and it's causing more of this crisis.

We've got to bring it to the public, and we've got to tell people what's happening.

Now that means that this whole commission should understand that if you really talk to people about how bad the crisis is, and how many animals are coming in and how many litters you see increasing season after season that the public will tell you that they are agreeable to a breeding, anti-breeding, mandatory spay and neuter organs.

They will tell you that they want it.

And if you have to water it down, because you know it goes through many different phases.

If you have to water it down where it's breeding permits, and you have to get the money to have the enforcement so you can go out and find these people, and there are ways to do it, and it's easy to learn about.

I had a subcommittee in the county that helped with it.

They are slowly working on it, it will happen, but there's absolutely no reason why the city can't be the trailblazer, that the city of Sacramento, the county of Sacramento can't be the trailblazer on this.

Something that is as fundamental as this.

Everything falls from that.

Everything we complain about comes from that.

It's at the top of the apex.

It causes all the issues, it causes all the animosity, all the opposition.

And pet breeding.

That's it.

That's it.

That's it.

There's ways to do it, and there's always exemptions for the folks who are gonna oppose it.

And those statutes, though they're not statutes, they're ordinances work.

I pulled this sign down from your polls around Sacramento, over 40 of them.

I had a volume, nobody took them down.

Animal control, nobody.

I do it.

Pet for pet breeding.

Excuse me, excuse me.

Um if you have a speaker slip for this item, do we have any speakers for this item?

Is there a motion to continue the meeting past our two hours?

No is no cans.

So seconded.

Moved and seconded that we continue past two hours, all those in favor.

Aye.

All those opposed.

I believe the eyes have it.

All right.

So let's do, I know we have a couple other members who uh wanted to speak, but let's make sure we do the public comment on this item as well.

Sorry, the more times I come up, the slower I get.

Um I just wanted to uh actually uh Commissioner Bagley uh very eloquently spoke to exactly what I wanted to say in that it's fantastic to see this commission really focusing on spay and neuter as one of your uh topics, but the fact is that this should have been a focus a long time ago, that the population crisis that is in not only this city and county, but frankly in the state of California and a few other states, all comes from the lack of spay and neuter that has been ongoing for so long.

The number of animals that we euthanize continuously is just devastating.

And um, yeah, I just thank you for saying it.

Thank you.

Okay, Commissioner Middleton.

Um yeah, I I guess I missed the project to get you all my um my preferences or what uh projects I would like to work on, but I would agree with um our vice chair Morris that needs assessment and just seeing through what we know we need to do.

Um I also am very interested in working on helping out with PR or other things surrounding um Spain Uter raising awareness and helping out as well as ladies on with city council um trying to build bridges with my city council rapper, any others because I think it's going to be integral to have their support for a new facility.

Absolutely.

All right, thank you very much.

Uh moving on our next call I have oh okay.

Awkward, I'm not sure how we actually continue to have discussion, so I'm jumping jumping in here.

Um I I'm pretty sure two meetings ago we um approved a motion for an ordinance to uh increase the number of animals per household and to um and to require certain anti-breeding reg, you know, licensing, etc.

etc.

And I think that's uh one of the things, in a sense, that our work plan is maybe helpful for because the next meeting I'm curious about seeing a draft of an ordinance.

And I I love to hear that Hillary has had a draft of an ordinance for the county, and so would love to see a draft of an ordinance again.

When Paula and I worked on the new commission structure, we drafted an ordinance and we brought it to this commission to review.

We work with the clerk's office on their structure and timeline of how ordinance are submitted, etc.

So I hope that we could remind ourselves that we did support that a couple of meetings ago, and we need to we need to hopefully soon see a draft of something that would could be then submitted to whomever, and then we could all work with our city council members to ask for their support of that.

So that's a reminder of what's next with that thing that we approved two meetings ago or so.

Bagley, did you have something to do?

The last meeting, as I recall, it was chair.

No, it was manager Zimmerman who said he was already working on it with some city staff, and that was something I was gonna ask tonight.

And and Mr.

Hinderman, I was gonna ask you also if you were aware if there had been any progress on that, because he he mentioned he was working on it and was going to take that over.

But you're not at your point to give your report.

So, but that was what I was gonna ask you.

So that's all to remind you that remember last time he said he was already working on it.

Okay, thank you.

Excellent.

Okay.

Now I've concluded the work plan.

Now we'll move on to the shelter manager's report.

Standing in for Mr.

Zimmerman this evening, yeah.

Mr.

Hinderman, thank you for joining us.

I know this is been looking forward to this for minutes now.

Yeah, couldn't sleep all night.

I was so excited.

Um great.

Do I oh you I can you can change the slide for me there?

I don't have the clicker.

Okay, cool.

Um we'll enter the clicker.

Perfect.

Somebody else has to train you.

There's only that at the click.

There's only two slides.

I should hopefully can hear that.

I only had four, and I had trouble.

So hi everyone.

Um, if we haven't met yet, my name's Ryan Hinderman.

I'm the communications and customer service manager at the shelter.

Um stepping in for uh Philip Zimmerman.

Um thank you all for uh for being here.

This is my first time sitting through a full one of these meetings, so I appreciate the dedication of everyone who who uh came um the commission and uh some of our staff.

I was kind of glad to see our entire kitten foster team leave to go get some sleep or catch up on their favorite shows or or whatever that they can do to unwind from the madness of kitten season.

Um and our community members as well for taking the time to come out and sit through the meeting and prepare and offer ideas.

Um, I think that uh all of our groups, you know, uh have the goal of um improving animal welfare.

You know, we all have that same underlying mission, although we may have different um you know uh methods that we feel will be the most effective for doing that and different perspectives based on you know experience and what we think might be feasible and the pros and cons of different actions, but hopefully together um through these conversations we can move the ball forward and continue making this a better city for um our animals and our people.

So just a few updates.

Um these are statistics from August 4th.

Um shelter, we had 165 dogs, 95 cats and one other animal.

Animals and foster, we had 92 uh dogs, 398 cats and five other animals, and then animals and foster to adopt.

This is probably even lower now, but dogs 20, cats seven, and no other types of animals, and uh the highest number of animals that we ever had was 874.

So as our vet team mentioned, super super hard work that I've gotten to witness over the last year.

Um they've been super determined to get that number down, so fantastic.

Um fantastic job to them.

Um general updates.

Um we have our uh animal balance um spay neuter days coming up on August 22nd and 23rd.

Uh the goal is 200 community-owned animals, and I want to give a special uh thank you to council members Maple, Plucky Baum, Kaplan, and Telemontes, along with uh Mayor McCarty, Paul Hefner, and Jim Helped for their generous contributions that are helping to make that event possible.

Uh in addition, September 9th through 11th, we have San Diego Humane Society uh coming to um do a bunch of surgeries for shelter and foster animals, which will be fantastic, especially as we kind of near the end of kitten season, although in the last few years it's uh extended quite quite a bit past September.

Um as far as you know, a previous discussions about changing our open uh days and hours, um we've decided that for the foreseeable future we are not gonna make those changes, so we will continue to be open seven days a week, 12 to 5 for our public counters.

Um interim improvements.

Uh Paul, I think you nailed it, but uh yeah, nearly all the wayfinding signage is completed.

Um, and then thanks to council approval, um, we have uh we're working with facilities on the latches, the curbs, the guillotine doors, uh, and the shade structure.

Uh and lastly, I want to make a correction um to something I said earlier.

We do now have a formal volunteer position for um networking and social media of uh of dogs.

So um my uh my team uh corrected me on that.

So that is a position that you can sign up for through our better impact system, and we currently have about eight volunteers that are very active there.

That's all I got.

I believe we now have now what are we next to we do?

Oh, are there questions?

I did this wrong before, and we'll probably do it wrong again.

Are there questions from the commission regarding the manager's report?

I don't have anybody signed up.

Don't feel obligated to if you don't have a question, but asking that first.

Oh, yeah, commissioner bargly.

My question uh Ryan, have you heard whether or not there's been any progress on that?

I I haven't heard any updates.

Okay.

And we have two speakers on the manager's report.

Yes.

Okay.

Got it.

I usually am.

But in any case, I just had um, you know, policies.

Um I have concerns over the interim improvements, not that they're being made, but why do they have to be made?

Um it seems to me like the latches, etc.

should be replaced as they go bad versus it's kind of like if you own a house, you don't wait for all of the toilets in your house to get plugged up before you call the plumber.

You you you fix them as they come.

So I had some questions around why that's that's not a policy.

Um I also had a question um about I know Commissioner Treat has mentioned before the euthanasia numbers, like when are they gonna start being included in the manager's report?

Um also just a general comment about numbers.

I recently discovered intake numbers for some of the cats were kind of being doubled, and the way that they were being doubled is it would show as an intake to the shelter, and then it would show as a transfer out to um, I don't know if this is still being happening, but it was happening for several years.

It was a transfer out to a rescue, a kitten central Placer County, and then once they were ready for adoption, they were being transferred back to Front Street.

So it's it's doubling intake numbers.

So instead of it being a hundred cats, it would be 200 cats, for example.

I don't know the exact number of that, but I just had some questions around those metrics, but you don't have to answer the questions when you're at the dais, but I just wanted to throw that out to everyone.

Thank you.

I have a couple of questions.

Um, the shelter advertised on its Facebook page that Spain neuter event in August was for district two residents, and so I'm confused by your um general updates.

It's for the community.

So are all those slots for the community, or are you just whatever's um not being used by the shelter for their own animals or for their foster animals?

Those slots will be made available to the community.

So I think that's a people need to know, you know, if you're advertising an event for district two, how many slots are available for district two?

And that leads me to ask has the shelter done an assessment for what it costs to maintain hundreds of foster kittens?

It has to be a lot of money.

There's a cost of vet care, food, vaccines, spaying and neutering, plus the staff costs of having a foster kitten coordinator, and of off-site adoptions manager.

So it seems as though it would make more sense and be more humane for the shelter to have low-cost spay neuter clinics in the early part of next year to avoid pumping out hundreds of kittens into our community.

I would hope this commission opens the discussion with the shelter and the public to address this very basic issue.

And I think the idea of an assessment of Spain capacity for the region is excellent.

Um it's a great starting point for the shelter for the sheltering commission to prepare for next year.

I just don't see dumping hundreds of kittens when the SPCA has hundreds of kittens they're adopting, and the county is sending out hundreds of kittens.

What we're doing, whether it's productive.

Thank you.

Okay.

Let's just clarify.

Are we on Commissioner Comments ideas and questions?

We're still on officially we're still on questions regarding the manager's report.

Thank you.

Is there anybody waiting to be heard on that front?

I'm gonna say no.

We're now going to move then to comments and questions from members of the commission.

I'm sorry, so we have no procedure.

Why do you think the managers reporting to all the euthanasia?

It's not a question we're not.

Point of order.

Point of order.

Commissioner Vice Chair, your your point of order.

Uh I think we're on um Commissioner Comments ideas and questions, and we are, I believe, according to the attorney to follow protocol in terms of public speaker slips, etc.

We are your point is well taken.

Um it commissioner Hayes.

Um, I know we have some questions about hope, so um, I want to agendize putting um seeing if Jenna's available to come speak to us so we can have more information, more comments and um questions that she'll be able to answer.

Um, I believe it's October where we don't have a speaker scheduled, so I don't know where her schedule allows, but um having her come speak to the commission.

Excellent.

Oh, one more go ahead.

Um I also think it would be an interesting idea to start a social media page for the commission to where it's public to all of you all.

So if there's questions, comments about like how we operate, um, it can also be another channel where um I know Jack's was just recently promoted and floated around, so where we can also help promote dogs and programs at the shelter too.

Interesting point.

Uh Commissioner Morris.

Thank you.

Uh just a few things I wanted to share.

Sacramento SPCA uh team.

A few of us recently had a tour over there.

Uh, Commissioner Middleton helped facilitate that and gave us an opportunity to kind of understand their capacity, their uh their activities in terms of how they uh their operations, the size of their facility, and some of the challenges that they face and some of the challenges we face.

It was really helpful and enlightening, and I know they're a different model, they're completely um donor supported, so that's a different model.

But it was interesting to hear that they have a hundred staff and they take in about 5,000 animals.

I think, and they have no animal control responsibilities, and we have about 60 staff, including 15 to 20 animal control, and and we take in about 10,000 animals.

So the idea, you know, learning that that's a quite a big difference, and they do an amazing job, and we really appreciate their partnering with us to help with some of the span neuter services and some of the um issues that we have with animal care.

And it was also really interesting to just see learn some of the differences in that site, and I appreciated them, and I wanted to thank them publicly for meeting with us.

Um it's my understanding that our uh animal balance event on the 22nd and 23rd is for all animals in the community that are signed up, it is not limited to any district.

So if that is an error that is out there, I hope we can correct that soon.

And to that point, I'd like to let people know that we welcome donations for this event.

Uh we've as was shared, we've gotten some support from our city council members and the mayor's office, but it is not even a fourth of the cost of this event.

So if folks are interested in and uh can help with helping defray an animal balance event, an animal balance event costs about four forty thousand dollars.

Um if you would like to help support this, the link is friends of front street, all one word, friends of front street dot for good, all one word, dot com.

So friends of front street dot networkforgood dot com, and you have to scroll down quite a bit to find the spay it forward event.

Uh, but we would highly appreciate other community members' donations towards this effort.

Uh and animal balance increase the cost, which is part of how their costs are going.

Um, and so any anything that people might be able to help with would be including commissioners.

I know that Commissioner Hefner has done a big donation.

I am myself going to do a donation and would um just put it out there for commissioners to give any donation that you can.

Um I wanted to to comment on the interim improvements because I've had some other questions about the idea of well, why don't you just fix the latch?

I want to clarify that this is not maintenance, this is redesign.

The latches are not just oh, it's broken, fix the latch.

This is redesign of the kennel entry, and so um jackhammering the the curb out, changing the gutter where feces are hosed into, potentially changing the chain link fence that is now the gate that opens to have animals in and out of kennels, potentially changing them to sliding versus swinging doors, re-looking at the um the guillotine doors, and because we've been to Bradshaw and we've been to SPCA, we've seen different models of guillotine doors that are not requiring a person to be able to lift 50 pounds, but actually have some weights and pulleys in them.

So just to clarify, this isn't about maintenance, this is really a redesign, hence the 400,000 dollar price tag to bring in work with the architect department of the city of Sacramento and redesign and make it a safer and easier kennel to get in and out of.

So I hope that is a bit of information to clarify that.

Um I think I hit my points and just want to again thank folks for their participation.

Thank you.

Commissioner Bagley.

Yeah, just very just very briefly.

We've had at least two commissioners ask uh in the past why euthanasia numbers are not on the managers report.

And I know you're stumping in tonight, uh, Mr.

Hinderman.

But uh could you break down why we don't see that on the report every time?

If you know, if you don't know the um follow-up log that it would be reported quarterly quarterly, follow-up blog.

That's what we all adopted to so you would give the the board the total for a quarter, yeah.

It's it's what we have on our follow-up log.

Why is it we don't do it for the monthly, like we do everything else?

We had a discussion, and that's what it what we settled on.

Is there any other reason that you can think of, Mr.

Hinderman?

I mean, is it difficult to pull up?

We're told it's on the portal, and then I talked to so many people who have a very hard time getting in or reading the the portal properly.

Uh I'm not aware of you know there's a lot of different stats we can share, so I'm not I'm not aware of the conversation that was had about why to or why not to include those those particular statistics, but it is available on our website, front streetshelter.org in the about section, and you can check out our shelter statistics, which are always kept updated.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Other commissioners with questions or comments.

Seeing and hearing none, we will move on then to items not on the public comment from for items not on the agenda.

Thank you.

Um so the first thing I want to bring up is a 50,000 over a $50,000 grant that seemingly expired with the city in Front Street, um, that was provided, I believe, in 2022 from court, and it's it's concerning to me that it expired, and my understanding is it was supposed to go towards span neuter, and given our problematic issues with span neuter, the fact that we've had it since 2022 and haven't spent it is also extremely concerning to me.

Um the other thing, the vet, she's no longer here, but she mentioned chameleon.

I'm a big proponent of leveraging city and county together in any way possible.

Um County just hired their assistant director who actually was an executive with chameleon and was a former trainer of chameleon.

So if chameleon is an issue, maybe leverage that relationship.

And the last point I wanted to bring up was the city is arguing with county right now over a massive development happening in Atomas, and part of the problem is infrastructure.

So I would encourage the commission that if this development is to go through, that part of that infrastructure includes animal services because they're going to talk about parks, they're gonna talk about schools, they're gonna talk about transportation, but the animals always get left out of that conversation, and since it is so close to city, that is going to have a huge impact on city services.

There um it's like 9400, I think, new residents with or homes with about 25,000 new residents with that brings animals.

That's all I have for you this evening.

Have a great night.

Hello again.

Um, so thank you, commissioners, for this is so awesome.

Oh, I can see the new energy here, and so I really appreciate it.

Um, and I want to thank Debbie and Linda who are here today.

And can you stand up just for a second?

Because what they do, the work that they do out in the river camps, everybody on this board needs to know about.

I want to give them a hand.

They are out there taking care of the animals of the unhoused, and that leads me to hope back in 20 at the end of 2021.

Um, there were COVID federal COVID relief funds that went to animal care services.

We objected to them going to animal care services because we were afraid they were going to be mismanaged, and they have been.

Okay, that was almost five million dollars that was to be divided over five years to go to the animals of the in-house to help that population.

There's supposed to be two ACOs, a veterinarian, Jenna's role, and a vet tech.

That has not happened.

So I think Dr.

Smalley would want to know too.

Where's that money?

And I'm not saying I don't know what happened to it.

Nobody seems to know what happened to it.

We've asked for public records requests, but this commission should know and should be able to find that out because that money was supposed to go towards animals, uh, helping animals, and it hasn't.

So I I would I would say that's something you may want to look into.

Um Commissioner Christie, thank you for bringing up I'm sorry, it's been a long day.

Um, the animals that have been euthanized and the euthanasia list, and why isn't that public?

You were asking there, why is that a secret?

I will give you an example of why it's a secret.

We know of volunteers that have been fired because I've said euthanasia, quit hiding the animals that are dying, start sharing them so you can save their lives.

And last but not least, this is per the attorney.

Thank you for pointing this out.

An independent everyone.

My heart's really warm.

Last time I came here, I was a little bit on the stressed out, but now I'm seeing that there are people who really love animals and want to make a change.

I started volunteering at Front Street when it was called the pound in 2007.

That's a long time, you guys.

And when Gina came on board, what a difference.

Instead of being the pound, we started calling it Front Street and started getting the word out.

The word out that the city of Sacramento loves animals and saving lives.

Ryan knows we used to work together a lot, and he knows, and I was always really happy working with him and appreciated him.

And I appreciate that he's seeing that change needs to be made, and I appreciate that you guys are all seeing that change needs to be made.

But we need to bring Front Street back to the shining light that it used to be, not the dark and sad.

I mean, the tears that people have had seeing all these animals suffer.

Please bring back spay and neuter.

Please bring back all the volunteers that used to make Front Street Animal Shelter the best shelter in California.

Thank you.

Hi, uh, just a couple of things.

Um, just uh uh echoing Julie, you know, advertise which dogs are being euthanized, don't make it a criminal offense.

There have been volunteers that I've known that have been banned from ever being able to volunteer again at Front Street because they on their own Facebook pages and Instagram pages marketed animals who were on the euthanasia list.

It should not be a secret.

Other shelters throughout California advertise them.

They're volunteers and the the different people who try to market animals, the different rescues, then really push those animals as a priority to try and save lives.

Don't hide.

As far as the flyers in multiple languages, I would also suggest putting them in the county medical clinics, the low-cost clinics, such as Wellspace and Melina, where there's a lot of people who really need the low-cost services that are available, put those in those clinics.

They have lots of other literature for various things.

That's a really high priority place to put them.

And the one other thing I want to talk about is the high rate of uh turning away animals at Front Street.

Um next door, darn near every day.

You can see somebody found a stray, stray dog, stray cat, try to bring it to Front Street.

It was not sick, so they were turned away.

And they were told to either put it back in place, which is then going to increase our over pet population, or be responsible for finding its owner or finding it a new home.

That is that it's not okay to place the owneress of trying to do the work of the shelter onto the public.

Thank you.

Okay, this is the last time for me.

Hope is a great idea.

But we need be really effective.

We need the people that are working around it.

Like I said, I like Jenna.

I think her heart's in the right place.

But she needs a lot of help.

Okay.

And we're willing to do it.

We don't care.

We're volunteers, but we're out there busting our butt every day for these animals because we get tired of them dying in our arms.

We get tired of them when we show up and find out they strangled each other to death because they couldn't get loose because they're out doing drugs.

Okay, that's just a fact of life.

Okay.

So I see a positive miss from the last time I was in this room.

And it makes me happy because it makes me feel like maybe we're just maybe being heard.

And that's a big deal for us because every day that we go down there and we face this, we wonder where the people are supposed to be helping.

And that's critical for us.

But it's more critical for these animals who suffer every single day.

In the heat, they have no food, they have no water.

We show up and they drink and they drink and they drink.

And it's not because they're owners are taking care of them.

Okay, I'll tell you that right now.

But it's disheartening to feel like we're a couple of people just out there doing the best we can.

And we would love to have you know some kind of force behind us to help us get this stuff done.

Spay and neuter is critical.

Period.

I can show you pictures on my phone of puppies I took the other day.

They were just laying in the dirt, hundred and plus degree weather, and the owners are in their tent having a good old time, no big deal.

Four of them had already died, and I'm sure by tomorrow the next day the rest will be gone.

That's stuff I just can't handle.

So I'm looking to you guys to help us out.

Last speaker.

I got to go on the first ride out of the van.

The reason you haven't seen it yet is because it is brand new and it went out for the first time this last Thursday.

I was very pillaged to get to go with them and see what they do.

Um just remember when you're talking about this, these are really highly emotional situations, but there's a lot of things that I think people aren't realizing there's laws, and you have to work with the laws, and to change those is a lot, and I think that's a little outside of the scope of what we're going through right now.

Um just we have um the we need to remember that these dogs are owned, unfortunately, and we do have to follow that.

These whore stories are absolutely exist, and we want to stop that.

And please call 311 when you see that.

Please work with the right uh um information to get the right uh ACOs to help us.

Um there are animal uh front street is not the only city ACOs, there are multiple.

Uh it takes a lot.

Hope can only do so much from the people that they have.

It's not just Front Street, it is the whole city, and it takes a lot.

Um, what they're doing is great.

They go out and give them education, they try to persuade them to do spay neutering.

I think we absolutely need more spay neuters.

I think everyone here is against breeding.

That's gonna be more of a law thing again.

Um, I don't think anybody here is for animal breeding.

That no one here wants that.

Um thank you for all you guys do to make that happen.

Um and uh anything you can do to help make these changes is amazing.

Thank you so much.

All right, well, it and with that we are adjourned.

Okay, very next time.

Um the way it works, and I use the thing works nice, is that um uh, you know, I'm gonna go to the house.