San Antonio tried euthanizing its way out of a stray dog problem. Now it’s betting big on a different approach.

Even as the city tightens its belt elsewhere, the Animal Care Services Department (ACS) is slated for another budget increase this year — this time aimed at staffing a new animal hospital at its Westside shelter.

The move would bring ACS’ budget up 76% in four years as the city expands its free spay/neuter services, hires more officers to respond to residents’ calls, and adds more programs to encourage responsible pet ownership.

So far, City Council members aren’t sure whether any of it has moved the needle on an issue that spurred a public outcry when an 81-year-old veteran was mauled to death in 2023.

ACS Director John Gary told the City Council in an Aug. 25 budget work session that his team is making progress in every measurable direction — including a higher response rate to calls from the public, and fewer calls received regarding stray or dangerous animals.

They’ve also seen a decrease in calls to handle deceased animals or those hit by cars.

“If you look at our data and our metrics over the years since this investment’s been made, it speaks for itself,” Gary said.

But that hasn’t satisfied a council whose members say they still frequently hear from residents intimidated by unrestrained animals roaming their neighborhoods.

ACS doesn’t collect every animal it receives a call about — it prioritizes those that could pose a danger to the public, as well as those that are sick or injured, to prevent overcrowding at the shelter.

While Gary said the city isn’t trying to achieve “no-kill” status, it uses a prioritization system to target its efforts in the areas experiencing the biggest problems.

“We have to prioritize all of our calls, due to the number of high volume calls that we receive,” Gary said. “The way we operate with our stray dog pickup is that we take [the info] for data purposes … then they use heat mapping to respond to those calls with our Foxtrot team to do sweeps.”

On Tuesday, Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2), who has been among the biggest proponents of increasing the ACS budget in recent years, said that approach has left many disappointed.

“We’re neither striving to become a no-kill shelter, [nor] working to make our city free of stray and roaming dogs,” McKee-Rodriguez said. “Our investments — in the absence of these two goals and a clear strategy today— are leading to some progress, but ultimately the feeling that the priorities of our community are not being addressed meaningfully.”

To Gary, who came from a shelter in Oklahoma City two years ago, the department’s public safety priorities and its animal welfare goals are one in the same.

He said in an interview this week that San Antonio is investing in solutions that are not only humane, but also widely viewed as industry best practices.

Just two decades ago, San Antonio was euthanizing more animals than just about any city in the nation, sweeping strays dogs and cats off the streets and to their death at a rate of roughly 50,000 per year.

Now it’s performing nearly that many spay/neuter surgeries each year — and roughly 88% of the animals that enter ACS’ shelter are either adopted out or returned to their owners.

“The proactive efforts that we’re doing [are] the right approach,” Gary told a council that’s now being asked to make painful budget cuts across many city departments this year. “We now know in the animal welfare industry that the old capture, bring in and euthanize method doesn’t work.”

Last year, the city opened its own free community spay/neuter clinics, one of which will soon be taken over by a private entity that Gary said can perform surgeries at a higher rate.

By next year, ACS will have a new animal hospital operating as well.

“We do more spay-neuter than anywhere else in the country here in San Antonio,” Gary told the City Council.

But San Antonio won’t know whether that’s helping curb the number of animals on the street until it commissions a new study in the coming year.

The most recent was conducted in 2019, and indicated that about 35,000 dogs were living on the street unrestrained at any given time.

“[City leaders] knew that in order to reduce that number, we were going to have to make a significant investment, and they did that,” Gary said. “…I truly, truly believe that two or three years from now, we’re going to be sitting here having a conversation about how the City of San Antonio has changed, due to this investment that’s being made.”

As San Antonio’s budget tightens, however, some city leaders sound less willing to accept that kind of timeline.

This week several council members’ comments suggested live release rates should take a back seat to more aggressive sweeps. Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones also asked Gary whether the cost of euthanizing more animals would be cheaper than the spay/neuter services.

Though McKee-Rodriguez said he was among those disappointed with the results of the city’s investment so far, he noted he couldn’t see cutting back on that department any time soon.

“We can’t afford to slow down our investments in ACS because our problem has the opportunity to reproduce — exponentially,” McKee-Rodriguez said.