Spay/Neuter resolution

Sep 24, 2009

Council Members Morrison and Spellman are presenting a Resolution today that directs the City Manager to develop a plan to increase spay/neuter within Town Lake Animal Center by 2,000 surgeries by Nov 5, 2009.

Austin Pets Alive! is supportive of any effort on the part of Council to strive towards the goal of becoming a No Kill City.

However, a key item is missing from this Resolution.   Specifically, the budget increase that will allow for 2,000 additional surgeries to should reflect a similar increase in lives saved (adoptions). As we have reported before, TLAC has a bottleneck with getting animals ready for adoption and customer service to process the adoptions. While targeting spay/neuter is great, the bottleneck will still exist because there aren't enough people to behaviorally evaluate the pets and process adoptions.

While we applaud Council for the bold and progressive goal of additional spay/neuter surgeries, this initiative should be taken one logical step further in ensuring that there is a corresponding goal of increasing the number of adoptions at TLAC by an additional 2,000.

We strongly recommend that Council amend the Resolution to read that 2,000 additional lives will be saved with the increased budget item.

Dr. Jefferson and other volunteers are at City Hall today to speak about the Resolution.  More information after today's session.