Alright, good afternoon.

It's after one o'clock, but we are here for the one o'clock uh budget and special projects meeting.

Today is Wednesday, May 26th.

Item number one, I'll call call this meeting to order two ordinance amending the fiscal year 2025-2026 budget to make supplemental appropriations of 19,587.

I recognize from unappropriate fund balance within the urban and community forestry program.

Jared Morphan budget.

This is just appropriating a uh urban and community forestry grant that the parks department received for the uh 19 and a half thousand dollars.

Um it's going to primarily be used for uh temp labor to go out and do inventorying uh in the parks and all the trees as well as a little bit of a communication material.

Okay, awesome.

We just planted a whole bunch of trees too.

So that's good.

Okay, it's good that we're getting the canopy back.

So all right, any questions?

All right, thank you very much.

Getting off easy, appreciate it.

Item number three, discussion with representatives from the Tulsa Animal Services regarding the proposed FY 2026-2027 budget and capital plan, including discussion on spay and neuter research and future operation funding for the new animal shelter.

Good afternoon.

How are you?

Good.

Hope you all are well, share carriers, animal services.

So I'm just gonna do uh an overview of the uh slide deck that we have for ordering, and also have to talk about additional handouts when we get to the uh new shelter progress.

So we have the mayor council retreat and priorities.

We're gonna look at a little bit of spawner research, our uh positions for budget 2627, and then the new shelter update.

So first of all, I want to thank you all for thinking about us, supporting us, prioritizing us in the past as you as you have.

We could not have uh come this far without you.

Um, we hope to go further.

We're making a lot of improvements we have over the last few years, so I can't thank you enough.

Thank you so much.

Um you're allowing us to focus on a continuum of care and really plan for the future for animal services in the community.

So a lot is attributed to you all and our success.

So thank you.

Um even when we were in the Department of City Experience, we were one of the priorities, and that continues to be while we're under the public safety umbrella and our leader, Mr.

Roberts.

So we understand the importance of that.

We respect it.

We will take advantage of it, and again, just thank you.

So we are committed to programs, policies, and practices aiming uh at maximizing life outcomes for animals in our care programs, including diversion transfers out of the facility, which include a whole lot of partners in state and out of state.

Uh we couldn't do the work we we do now and have successful outcomes without those partners, so we really appreciate those opportunities.

Our policies we're updating most of those, um, at least making sure they're where they need to be for us to do everything lawful and making sure we do best practice for everyday care and investigations is one of those things that we're really looking into that um has increased pertaining to different types of situations and us partnering with uh local law enforcement agencies, so that is a part of our policy review.

And then our practices, um, but also pertain to life saving outcomes for animals that we have and veterinary education and our enforcement efforts.

So under public safety and expectations, our team members, municipal court, police fire, IMSA emergency management.

We're working more and more with fire and police.

We have calls usually every week for both of those agencies, and we assist them as much as possible.

We uh are protecting our residents from at large at large dogs, stray dogs running the streets, which includes uh rabies quarantine when we have fight situations, we're increasing our live release rate in three years.

We've gone from 66 percent to trending 84 percent today.

That is um above the national average and the Oklahoma average currently.

That's awesome.

Thank you, increasing animal investigations for dog fighting and cock fighting, unfortunately for us, these cases have been on the rise.

We've seen an increase, especially with dog fighting, there's something called the link, and usually with these cases for dog fighting and cock fighting.

Um the link includes other crimes and usually convicted felons, domestic violence, um, sexual abuse, child abuse, drugs, weapons.

We see that a lot uh when we're investigating these cases and working with uh local law enforcement and federal law enforcement.

So unfortunately for us, those take a long time.

Those cases do.

It takes a lot of effort and work on our from our team, but it also helps us assist local law enforcement to find these other things that are happening in these situations.

Key department metrics.

You can see to the left, there's one red arrow there.

You can take that as a negative or a positive.

So our stray intake increased 6% in 2024, 14% 2026 versus 2025.

Um, so negative, they're coming into the facility.

The positive is we're getting them off the street.