Last Thursday the first meeting of the City of San Angelo’s Animal Services Task Force took place at 4:00 p.m. at City Hall. We spoke to City Manager Daniel Valenzuela about the reasons the City Council took the extraordinary step of forming a task force and what he hopes to accomplish through the process.
“Since the COVID pandemic we have ended up with more animals on the street than before.” He said. This has resulted in a frequent over-capacity problem at the animal shelter. The problem has gotten so bad that at times the shelter has to turn people away who bring in stray animals, and there is no room to take more animals caught by the animal services officers. The main problem has been with free roaming dog populations and many more complaints of bites. “We want to reduce dog bites, increase our spay and neuter rate and address the over capacity problem at the shelter.”
The City Council delegated the selection of the Task Force’s members to the City Manager. From the beginning Valenzuela knew he would need a diverse group of members representing all animal groups in the City. The process of selection was informal. Valenzuela began talking with the animal groups and some of the citizens who had come before the Council to discuss these issues. A variety of persons were recommended to him and he personally interviewed every one. Out of the persons interviewed he ultimately selected a group of nine members of active and prominent members of the community in the area of animal rescue and services. Not every person interviewed was selected to serve on the task force. Valenzuelza said he wanted to avoid group think. (Group think is a group psychology problem that occurs when members of a group prioritize harmony over critical thinking and open debate.) Those critical voices and their ideas are instrumental to addressing the problem Valenzuela said. “Including critical voices is the only way. We do not want a group that all agree. We were looking for objectivity and a group that thinks differently.”
“We appreciate the work Concho Valley Paws does with animal adoptions.” Valenzuela said. But the City needs to address its policies for the animal shelter. “On our end we have to keep the shelter open and able to accept the intake of animals to keep roaming animals off the street.” He hopes that the task force can help identify the needs of the shelter and what the City should do to achieve this goal.
The task force is starting by reviewing the City’s ordinances and gathering facts. Since the task force is advisory only, its meetings are closed to the public. An advisory board’s meetings are not required to be open under Texas open meetings laws. The task force will meet weekly, at least during this initial phase of the work. Valenzuela expressed his thanks to the members of the Task Force and all volunteers working to help find a solution. “I am so appreciative of the volunteers who show up and help with solutions.”
The Task Force will be making recommendations for changes to ordinances, policy or practices, all of which will come before City Council for public presentation, comment and consideration.
The task force is led by City Manager Daniel Valenzuela. The members of the task force are:
- Judge Allen Gilbert
- Mary Golder
- Sharon Halfmann
- Heather Hegwood
- Mark Lack
- Kris McGuffin
- Dr. Catie Morris DVM
- Asst. Police Chief Adam Scott
- Kim Spooner
3 Comments
I’m looking forward to good solutions to the stray animal problem in this city.
My hope is that consequences for the human being factor are enforced. It is true that since Covid this problem has grown exponentially, BUT, it was already a growing problem. It just wasn’t taken seriously because it didn’t adversely affect enough people or a particular grouo of people yet.
So instead of being proactive, communities instead are forced to react when the issue has become overwhelming.
People bear the responsibility for choosing to ignore ordinances, laws etc that are put in place to protect the human public and the animals.
Without enforcement people begin to feel that rules don’t apply to them or laws don’t matter. People start to see others ignore the law without consequences, so they feel entitled to follow suit. This
This gives momentum to a huge snowball effect and leads us to where our community is now.
Now let’s take this issue and compare it to San Angelo driver’s disregard for traffic laws and increase in car crashes.
The animal shelter overcrowding is nothing at all to do with Covid. It is to do with the animal shelter’s partnership with Concho Valley Paws and the “Partnership Agreement” both held (and Paws still does) with Best Friends Animal Society who have gone into countless “partnerships” with countless shelters around the country – leaving a trail of destruction wherever they go. If you’d like a bit more insight – google: “A Line Has Been Crossed Danville Area Humane Society – it’s an excellent starting point to a deeper dive. The information is all out there. Best Friends looks like a fab charity doing great work. In reality, IMHO, it is a gigantic scam organisation . They trade “partnership” agreements with often unsuspecting shelters and rescue organisations for the ability to participate in grants/funding opportunities – in return for which they REQUIRE shelters to provide “live outcome data”. The purported aim of Best Friends is to “Save Them All”. Until recently it was save them all BY 2025 – but had to morph into IN 2025 as they failed miserably with the former. It all looks great, until you realise that the ALL only relates to animals who actually get into the shelter. Want to make your live outcome data look good? Just don’t let the dogs in the front door in the first place. Best Friends do NOT support mandatory spay/neuter – as per San Angelo Ordinance. They also promulgate policies such as “managed intake”, “closed intake”, “let them roam” – all of which leaves hundreds of dogs and cats loose on the street, forming packs, breeding, fighting (themselves, people, for their lives). At a recent council meeting on 3 December 2024 Ms Chegwidden, then Assistant Director of Neighorhood & Family Services for the City of San Angelo was forced to admit that kind-hearted citizens had been advised to dump dogs back where they found them (or anywhere else they wanted). This is in breach of the law. The whole situation stinks and is covered by a very sophisticated and evil smoke & mirrors campaign. Best Friends, of course, advertises the high “live outcome” data in its attempts to “Save them All” – and it’s only when you realise what “ALL” means that you start to get the full picture. “Save Them All” brings in multi-million figures in public donations – again, from a well meaning but unsuspecting public. Despite the shelter staff now being prohibited from talking or interacting with anyone from Best Friends (who were in town recently), today Concho Valley Paws advertised a “stipend” funded by Best Friends to any local rescue organisation at $150 per dog and $350 per litter of puppies. The dogs are shelter dogs who are only transferred in terms of ownership to PAWS when a person or an organisation signs up to take them. Here’s how the maths works for these dogs. 40 shelter dogs transfer in ownership to CV Paws. That’s 40 dogs “live outcome” brownie points for the shelter in Best Friends eyes. Paws then shunts off the dogs to other rescue organisations (all of whom are full to overflowing and have been for the past few years) and that’s another 40 “live outcome” brownie points, now for Paws in Best Friends eyes. The receiving rescue organisations then try to get as many dogs as possible “on transport” out of Texas to places like Colorado (MamCo) and Toronto (Redemption Paws) where, apparently, they are short of dogs. This of course is not true. Colorado and Toronto are full to busting with their own overcrowded shelters and rescues. So that’s another 40 brownie points in terms of “live outcome”. Then, if we are lucky, some hapless idiot will pay $800 – $900 for a dog in Toronto, sight unseen and thus the dogs get adopted by a family. There ya go – another 40 brownie points in terms of “live outcome data” for Best Friends. So in total, those original 40 dogs result in “live outcome” data of 160 dogs. Meanwhile, Mr & Mrs Good Citizen of San Angelo find a scared skinny pregnant stray on the street and try to take it to the shelter, where they are happily told by the City of San Angelo “Go dump it back where you found it”. The whole situation sucks and people need to wake up and do their homework.