Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
Sandy Springs City Council Work Session - December 16, 2025: Lifeline Animal Project Overview
The Sandy Springs City Council held a work session on December 16, 2025 at 6:00 PM, presided by Mayor Rusty Paul. The sole agenda item was a presentation by Audrey Shoemaker, Shelter Director, on the Lifeline Animal Project at Fulton County Animal Services. The session lasted until 6:16 PM, with no formal votes or decisions.
2025-285 Lifeline Animal Project at Fulton County Animal Services
Audrey Shoemaker presented an overview of the Lifeline Animal Project, which operates Fulton County Animal Services. The organization was founded in 2002 with the mission to end euthanasia of healthy and treatable pets in metro Atlanta. Since 2013, Lifeline has operated the county shelters and implemented numerous life-saving programs. Shoemaker highlighted that intake numbers have been unprecedented in 2025, with over 8,000 animals taken in by the end of the third quarter and an estimated 10,000 by year-end—a massive increase compared to 6,600 in the third quarter of 2024. Dogs are the biggest challenge, but cat intakes have also risen significantly. The City of Atlanta accounts for the majority of intakes, while Sandy Springs represents only 2% of total intakes. Key shelter outcomes include over 4,100 adoptions in the previous year, 1,344 foster placements, and 1,228 animals returned to home. The Dog for the Day & Weekend Warrior program, launched in 2016, increases adoption chances by 14 times. The foster program currently has 699 animals, with more dogs in foster than in the shelter. Lifeline also operates community outreach programs targeting seven zip codes where 38% of residents live below the poverty line, offering spay/neuter services, vaccines, and pet supplies through Healthy Pets events held four times a year. Low-cost spay/neuter clinics in Chamblee and College Park supplement the shelter’s clinic, which is primarily focused on spaying/neutering shelter animals before adoption. Shoemaker also mentioned the Friendly Finder program, which allows finders of stray pets to temporarily foster them, often leading to adoptions.
Councilmember Melody Kelley inquired about recent animal attacks and coordination with law enforcement. Shoemaker responded that Fulton County Police Department will take over field services (animal control, bite investigations, cruelty investigations) starting the following day, which she believes will improve resource coordination. Councilmember Melissa Mular, who has adopted pets from both Fulton and DeKalb shelters, asked how council members can help raise awareness. Shoemaker suggested that community events and communication about shelter overcrowding and adoption as an option would be beneficial. Mular also noted her participation in the Weekend Warrior program and asked about the Home for Holidays program, which Shoemaker confirmed had just concluded. Mayor Rusty Paul shared his personal experience with the old shelter and praised the new facility. He thanked Shoemaker for the presentation and expressed interest in touring the new shelter.
The time for convening has arrived, so we will start this uh evening series of meetings. We're starting with our work session. Uh and the first item is Lifeline Animal Project at Fulton County Animal Services by Audrey Shoemaker. Shoemaker welcome. Thank you for having me. I wanted to thank you guys all for having me. It's uh important to make these connections. And uh Sandy Springs is a beautiful community, but I did get the opportunity to speak with Eden over the summer, and she's a great leader. So uh just want to compliment you all on uh everything that she says about the council and and what you do for the community and for uh including animals in that we really appreciate that. So I'm gonna get started talking about Lifeline Animal Project at Fulton County Animal Services. That's your your county animal facility. Uh the organization was started, founded in uh 2002 with the mission to end the euthanasia of in the euthanasia of healthy treatable pets in the metro Atlanta area. That has been our mission the entire time. Our uh founder and CEO had an experience with a dog in the early 2000s and learned how many pets were losing their lives just due to shelter overcrowding, and she wanted to do something about that. So that remains our mission. In 2012, the contracts for Fulton and DeCap County came up, and she realized that one of the best ways to accomplish that mission was to operate the county shelters. Um we took over the county shelters at the beginning of 2013, and as you can see, we've made tremendous efforts in life saving by uh starting a lot of shelter programs that I'm gonna talk to you guys about. So, just a little bit of background on lifeline. Uh we do we have to accomplish this with with a more of a community and a broad approach. Uh we have the two county shelters, uh, Fulton County that we're gonna be talking about. And there's a lot of programs just through the shelter itself, but we also have a public clinic focusing on community outreach as well. We have that in DeCab, and we also have a uh a no-kill shelter as well as a full service and spay neuter clinic in Shambley, as well as a low-cost spay neuter clinic in College Park that stays very, very busy because as you can imagine, there's not a lot of resources for low-cost spay neuter services, which is a big part of addressing these issues. Some of our key programs that we focus on are the animal shelter. We have a lot of community support programs and community outreach programs. Foster programs are massive in moving animals through the shelter system and expanding our walls beyond just the shelter walls, affordable low-cost spay neuter services and veterinary services, community cat programming, and uh and obviously adoptions are a big piece of moving animals through that system. But we are facing a really really hard time. Since I have been at Fulton County Animal Services, um, I started in 2013, shortly after we were awarded the contract. Uh, these are sort of unprecedented uh intake numbers. So as you can see looking at them, our biggest challenge is really dogs, but we've been taking in a ton of cats this year as well. Um so we're and we're not done quite yet. This is our third quarter.