Update from City Council Meeting on 9-19-19

Sep 27, 2019

It was a very busy day at City Hall with many issues needing to be heard. As a result, our item (Item 84: Animal Code Amendments) did not come up until about 4:30 PM. We are so grateful to everyone who emailed the council members and registered support at City Hall, and we are especially grateful to the item’s sponsor, Council Members Leslie Pool, Ann Kitchen, Kathie Tovo, and Mayor Adler. We are also very appreciative of Council Member Alison Alter’s support of this item throughout the day.

When the item came up, there was an immediate motion to postpone due to some council offices not feeling prepared to discuss. Thankfully, after Council Member Pool reminded each office how long the item had been posted, and Council Member Tovo asked what the other offices hoped to gain by more time, there was a majority who voted to hear the item. After the third or fourth citizen speaker, however, another council member stated they would move their vote from “hear today” to “postpone”. At that point, the Council ended public discussion and postponed until Oct 17th.

Obviously, this is disappointing but overall it is not terrible. There is a date for it to be heard which addresses my main concern that if not heard today, it might fail to get on any agenda in the future.

The opposition appears to be concentrated around four things. Outlined below are the opposition points and our response:

1. Opposition: The amendments do not address everything that community members and some council offices wanted at Austin Animal Services, such as improving the Shelter Neuter Release Program at AAC and big dog enrichment activities, such as daily walks.
   1. Our response: This code amendment was meant to codify current practices only, not make substantial changes to the way that AAC operates or has been operating to achieve No Kill status. Council Member Leslie Pool tried to make this very clear from the dais but unfortunately, it didn’t seem to sink in.
2. Opposition: The rescue access portion of the amendment gives some discretion to the Chief Animal Services Officer to choose euthanasia, without offering a dog to a rescue, if the injury a dog caused was significant enough to warrant it. People also spoke on the need to let the Chief Animal Services Officer euthanize many more without rescue access first, even those that caused lesser injuries and, bizarrely, even allowing for the death of some non-behavioral medical cases without being offered to rescue first that didn’t meet the current criteria of irremediably suffering.

1. Our response: The code amendments were the result of compromise between various viewpoints. We understand that some groups want the power to pull more animals, and some groups don’t want rescue groups to have the power to pull animals. We believe the code amendments, as written, reach an appropriate middle ground and do a good job articulating what is already happening. It would be up for future discussion (and no doubt many, many Animal Advisory Commission meetings) to make this more or less restrictive.

1. Opposition: Citizens feel they did not receive enough notice and opportunity to debate the amendments at the Animal Advisory Commission meetings or for this meeting at City Hall.
   1. Our response: The rescue-access portion of the amendments were passed over a year ago by the Animal Advisory Commission. No one should have been surprised by them and those who opposed them had plenty of opportunity to reach out to their Council Members. The smaller code amendments were passed by the Animal Advisory Commission in August, and no Commissioner asked to reconsider them during the September meeting. In addition, all of the items were noted on the Council Agenda for two weeks.
2. Opposition: That the words “in utero”, used when describing the code that would mandate that the shelter offer an obviously pregnant animal up to rescue groups before spaying her and ending the pregnancy, bore a resemblance to abortion language in human rights issues and therefore, there needed to be caution from the council before acting.
   1. Our response: We believe this wording can be changed to put this discussion outside of the national abortion debate. Our goal is for rescue groups to have the option to rescue pregnant animals before spay. Who could be against that?

At the end of the day, it is clear that we need to be more direct in this request to Council. The only intent of this code amendment is to document what is currently, or very recently has been, the internal processes of the city. The only exception is the broadened scope of the Animal Advisory Commission to include oversight of the city’s Animal Code, which is a no-brainer as they already oversee compliance with state codes.

Don Bland, the new Chief Animal Services Officer, is fully supportive of this measure being passed and has worked with the Council offices to make sure that the amendments make sense at his organization. We applaud his common sense and forward thinking. This is not about him, it is about our future.

Because we have essentially nothing codified now, not even the formula for how we calculate the city’s live release rate that is part of the 95 percent resolution, we are leaving the City’s No Kill Resolution at risk. It is imperative that the first step of codifying existing processes be taken immediately. Codify now, add later!

Your help is very much needed! Sign up here to be informed on how you can register your support for these amendments for Oct 17th council meeting.