With new data showing Animal Care Services responds to only about 40% of calls from residents seeking help with stray or dangerous animals, the City of San Antonio plans to increase the department’s budget by roughly 26% in the coming fiscal year.

City Manager Erik Walsh told City Council on Thursday this is the first time Animal Care Services (ACS) has tracked its response rate. It did so as part of a larger investigation into the department’s procedures after dogs fatally mauled a man earlier this year.

Unlike the police department, which must respond to every call, the data revealed ACS sends personnel out to about 40% of the roughly 90,000 calls it receives per year.

ACS Director Shannon Sims said the department plans to bring that rate to 100% over the next three years through increased staff — in particular, officers who respond to dangerous dogs and shelter employees to assist with stray animals.

Mayor Ron Nirenberg praised the changes, but said the department should have asked for help sooner. He noted that in recent years, ACS funding discussions have focused more on different metrics of success, such whether the department was able to avoid euthanizing animals.

“I’m glad we’re getting smarter about the data, but I guess the moral of the story for me is we’ve got to be a little bit more critical about the message that we’re putting out or the metrics that we’re elevating,” Nirenberg said.

“Good, bad and ugly, get these numbers in front of council so we can see where we can help augment the services,” Nirenberg implored ACS Director Shannon Sims.

The proposed budget calls for ACS to receive $26.9 million in fiscal year 2024, which begins in October, up from $21.4 million.

Adding investigators

Sims told City Council on Thursday that his department receives roughly 50,000 calls per year that it deems “critical,” including calls about aggressive animals, animal neglect and cruelty. Of those calls, ACS responds to about 44%.

In the coming fiscal year the department plans to add eight staff members to respond to critical calls. ACS expects to increase its response rate to about 64% in 2024 and reach a 100% response rate in 2026.

In addition to critical calls, Sims said ACS receives about 3,500 calls per year about dog bites, which it typically responds to within 30 hours.

The proposed budget includes funding for four new staff members to investigate dog bites, two officers to investigate dangerous dogs and a supervisor to oversee the team. The change comes as San Antonio has also increased the potential penalties for people whose dogs bite someone while off-leash and not on the owner’s property.

ACS hopes the additional officers will reduce the response time for bites to 16 hours, and increase pet owners’ compliance with sanctions when their dogs have been deemed dangerous, from 55% to 80%.

Dogs are deemed dangerous after someone files a notarized “dangerous dog” affidavit and the department completes an investigation. Requests for such investigations have skyrocketed since the February mauling, when 81-year-old Ramon Najera was killed by two dogs while visiting a friend. The dogs’ two owners were indicted Thursday on two felony charges in connection with the incident.

Dangerous dogs can remain with their owners if they meet certain criteria, as such as retaining insurance coverage and submitting to annual inspections to make sure the dogs are properly confined. 

Full shelters

ACS, which operates a 14-acre campus on the city’s West Side, is considered the largest municipal shelter in South Texas.

This year it will accept an estimated 27,000 animals, and the department hopes to expand its capacity to accept 33,600 animals in 2024.

Still, that number is nowhere near enough to handle the number of animals residents seek to surrender, which includes owned animals people say they can no longer care for as well as found animals residents bring in off the street. People seeking to take animals to the shelter are currently turned away daily due to lack of space.

“Finding placement for pets that arrive on the ACS campus has been one of the greatest challenges that we’re currently facing,” Sims said.

Last year San Antonio lost its designation as a no-kill shelter because the percentage of animals it releases through adoption or to other animal welfare organizations — known as the live release rate — fell below 90%. This year the city’s live release rate sunk to 81%, which is higher than other major Texas cities, but “not something we’re happy about,” Sims said.

“The number of animals I have on my campus, I can’t euthanize my way out of that because of required hold times,” he said, referring to the three- to five-day waiting period before an animal is eligible to be euthanized. “On any given day I may only have 15 or 16 animals that are eligible to be euthanized by the law.”

The shelter currently euthanizes animals for kennel space nearly every day, according to an ACS spokeswoman.

The proposed budget includes funding for five shelter positions aimed at
providing a vet exam within 24 hours of animals arriving at the shelter, reducing the potential spread of disease on campus.

It also proposes funding an additional animal trainer to provide behavioral assessments, as well as additional staff to work with partnering agencies on adoptions.

The city currently pays rescue partners to take animals out of the shelter and find them homes. In the proposed 2024 budget, the city would increase that payment from $84 to $200 per animal, which the department hopes would increase the partner rescues by about 25%.

“We see about 40% of the animals that that leave our facility leave through our rescue partners,” Sims said. “… We believe that by providing those incentives to help those rescues sustain themselves, it has been a big point that allows them to be more successful.”

More free vet services

A 2019 study found there are an estimated 35,000 stray or roaming dogs at any given time in San Antonio — roughly 93% of which are owned. Under the 2024 proposed budget, the city would repeat that study every other year to track its progress in reducing those numbers.

“We believe that our stray and roaming dog numbers have increased over the last three years at a much higher rate,” Sims said.

The city plans to launch TV ads in the coming year to alert residents that it’s illegal to allow their animals to roam.

It’s also ramping up efforts to provide free veterinary services, such as spay and neuter surgeries and vaccinations, in areas of the city where access is limited.

“In areas that need access to free care, there will be a free vaccine clinic nearly every weekend,” Sims said.

The city piloted the idea of free veterinary services last year, and this year unsuccessfully sought permission from the state to perform a broader range of free medical care for owned pets to keep them from being surrendered by their owners.

Those efforts come as the city is desperately seeking options to keep owned animals from ending up in the shelter.