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NEWS
Herding Cats … and Dogs …
in Austin & San Antonio
Last September, as Austin Animal Ser vices was celebrating
its sixth straight month with a 90% live-outcome rate, 80
miles down I-35 in San Antonio, that city’s Animal Care
Services department was dealing with its own, far grimmer,
statistical reality. As San Antonio closed out fiscal year
2011, it was looking at a dismal 31% live-outcome rate, the
kind of number that could drive even the most optimistic
animal lover to despair.
In response, heads rolled. The city demoted shelter
director Gary Hendel, who had been brought in two years
earlier to lower San Antonio’s soaring euthanasia rates,
and replaced him with Joe Angelo, the assistant city budget
director of innovation and reform. Though Angelo
had no prior experience running an animal shelter, he
had a plan to help bring the city’s save rate up: private/
public partnerships.
“While coming up with a strategy to reduce our euthanasia
rates, we researched the best practices of no-kill communities
like Austin and Reno [Nev.], and the recurring
theme with all of them was having a high-volume pet partner,”
said Angelo. San Anton io had little community
involvement and almost no fostering and adoption infrastructure,
no support systems like the kind Austin Animal
Services depends on to keep animals moving
safely out of the shelter, so Angelo and
his staff looked north for inspiration and
saw the success Austin had partnering with
rescue group Austin Pets Alive!. They
decided the best way to start raising their
numbers would be to get an Austin Pets
Alive! of their own.
On Jan. 19, San Antonio Pets Alive!, a
spin-off of the Austin original, and run (at
least for now) by APA! Executive Director Ellen Jefferson,
celebrated its birth by signing a lucrative partnership
agreement with the city of San Antonio. Under the terms of
the agreement, SAPA! will get up to $200,000 for a period of
up to one year to help Animal Care Services increase its live
release rate by up to 4,000 animals. In other words, SAPA!
will get $50 a head for every animal it takes out of ACS, not
to exceed 4,000 animals over the year. Add that $200,000 to
the $120,000 APA! is getting from its Town Lake Animal
Center contract, and the $100,000 the group got for winning
the ASPCA adoption challenge in November, and fiscal year
YMCA Has Designs on TLAC Site
Animal advocates and parks advocates alike were in alarm
mode early this week as news broke that the city is in negotiations
with the YMCA to give land and funding for a new aquatics center
near the Y’s Town Lake branch – possibly impinging on the tract
formerly occupied by the Town Lake Animal Center, and now being
used as a temporary shelter by Austin Pets Alive!.
The animal rights community had suspected the city all along of
having ulterior motives in closing the TLAC, and some view this news
as grim confirmation of those fears. Parks advocates, meanwhile, see
it as another in a series of privatization initiatives coming out of the
city Parks and Recreation Depart ment, with the specific
support of Mayor Lee Lef fing well. And once again, PARD
appears to be trying to sideline the city’s Parks and Recreation
Board, which reportedly asked for a presentation on the plan before
PARD and the Y went public on it, and were rebuffed.
Specifically, this newest initiative comes on the heels of PARD’s
unsuccessful attempts to privatize or repurpose the Austin and
Dottie Jordan Recreation centers last fall, and the city’s controversial
deal to fund construction of a North Austin YMCA, instead of a
long-awaited city rec center which area residents believed they
would get from bond money approved in 2006. – Nick Barbaro
“We don’t have the
space to house an
appropriate number
of animals.”
– Chief Animal
Services Officer
Abigail Smith
16 T H E A U S T I N C H R O N I C L E FEBRUARY 3, 2012 a u s t i n c h r o n i c l e . c o m
2012 is turning out to be a nice one both for Jefferson and
her team and for the animals they rescue.
All of which is presumably great for San Antonio and for
the Pets Alive! brand – but where does it leave Austin?
APA! played a crucial role in getting Austin to “no-kill”
status, and will need to continue playing a crucial role if the
city is to be able to stay there. And with Austin Animal
Services settling into a new shelter that houses nearly 60
fewer dogs than TLAC did – and with intake numbers rising
all the time – it might just be that maintaining no-kill status
is harder than achieving no-kill status. “It’s safe to say
we’ve been operating at or over capacity every day since we
moved into the new shelter,” says Chief Animal Services
Officer Abigail Smith. “Some days we have some space in
holding; some days we don’t. We’re full. We don’t have the
space to house an appropriate number of animals.
“Looking at the raw data, after two months, we’re looking
at increased intake of animals from the Eastside – more
dogs, fewer adoptions and visitors. Things aren’t happening
quickly enough to keep the flow at a manageable level.”
Over at TLAC, meanwhile, APA! is housing an average of
53 dogs a day, only six below its maximum allowed under
the terms of the contract the group signed with the city. In
addition, Smith says, the shelter is currently
fostering 120 animals. Every where you look,
the city is at capacity. Smith hopes people
don’t simply look at the shelter’s sunny save
rate – 92% in December – and think the hard
work has already been done. “Because we’re
no-kill, people aren’t seeing what’s behind
the scenes, which is we’re struggling,” she
says.
To further complicate matters, APA!’s main
Manchaca facility may not be theirs much longer. According
to Jefferson, the landlord is most likely going to be selling
the property in May, so the group has started looking for a
new home. Jefferson wouldn’t rule out TLAC as an option,
though moving in would require an amendment to the current
contract with the city – moreover, the city built that
new Levander Loop shelter because TLAC was deemed to
be unfit for long-term animal care.
So things could get very difficult if APA! either diminishes
its work here to concentrate on San Antonio or, as
some fear, SAPA! starts bringing animals rescued in San
Barrera Killer Dead?
Austin Police say a likely suspect in
the murder of Esme Barrera is dead.
At a Jan. 26 press conference, police
said that 25-year-old James Loren
Brown has been linked through DNA to
a series of attacks on women – including
one around 5am on New Year’s Day
in the 300 block of East 31st Street,
which happened just hours after Barrera
was killed in her King Street cottage
a few blocks west. Brown has also
been linked to four additional assaults
in Central Austin – including three in
July on South Congress and on Barton
Springs Road, and a fourth in September
at Comal and Haskell streets. He is
now being investigated as a suspect in
the attack on King Street and in Barrera’s
murder; there is a “considerable”
J O H N A N D E R S O N
Abigail
Smith
amount of investigative
work yet to be completed
before police can say
definitively whether he was
responsible for Barrera’s
murder, says APD.
Police say Brown was
found earlier this month in
his home in the 3000 block
of Guadalupe – not far from where
Barrera was murdered just after
2:30am on Jan. 1. Brown was found
dead by his roommate, having apparently
committed suicide.
Another woman was attacked just
steps from Barrera’s home about a halfhour
before the murder. That woman
described her attacker to police, who
generated a sketch that was widely dis-
Antonio to cages and homes in Austin, which has an established
rescue infrastructure, but one that is already straining
at the seams. Jefferson says she isn’t concerned about
San Antonio’s currently bare-bones animal welfare community.
“Austin didn’t have any of this when we started
either,” she says. “We’re in the process of getting fosters
and adopters and volunteers signed up. People will start
coming forward when they hear about it. The city is
involved, and the community is engaged.”
As for the concern that APA! might be less involved in
Austin now that the group is branching out, Jefferson – who
is currently splitting her time between Austin and San
Antonio – says her group has set up “organizational safeguards”
to ensure that doesn’t happen. “We’re still as committed
as ever to keeping Austin no-kill.” – Josh Rosenblatt
James Loren Brown
tributed across Austin in the
hopes that a suspect in the
murder would be found.
Police say that a detective
and crime scene specialist
noticed that a photo of
Brown found in his home
resembled the sketch of the
suspect described by the
woman attacked before Barrera’s murder
on New Year’s Day.
Barrera was a well-liked fixture of the
Austin music scene who worked with
kids with special needs at Casis
Elementary School and was studying
for her teaching certificate. For more on
her and the New Year’s Day attacks,
see “Excited About Life,” Jan. 13.
– Jordan Smith