After 3 months of public meetings and more research of best practices nationally, the Animal Advisory Commission submitted their plan of recommendations to City Council last week.
Part of that plan is APA's proposal to increase our partnership with the City and run their adoption program.
We believe we can leverage our huge volunteer team, foster program, off-site adoption program, and expertise in low-cost, high-volume spay/neuter to move more animals through the program to adoption - 3,754 more animals (in addition to the 10,000 the city is already processing), to be exact. And all for a lower cost than the City could.
Specifically, we are proposing to increase the live outcomes without increasing the city's budget at all. Because we are a nonprofit and can actively fundraise, we plan to bring $1.5 million yearly in private donations to the partnership to cover the increase in costs.
This would, in turn, free up the City's resources to continue focusing on what they do well - animal control and prevention.
We believe we can increase adoptions by expanding our off-site adoptions, increasing hours to the public, increasing public relations, implementing a dog behavior program to help all of the untrained adolescent dogs that are currently being euthanized, and improving efficiencies with getting the animals ready for adoption.
In addition to our proposal, the AAC's plan contains a lot of exciting recommendations and we encourage you to check it out.
City Council will be meeting to discuss the AAC's plan the first week of March.
