Hi, everyone. Thank y'all for joining us this afternoon. I am going to kind of take a step
back and let Miss Diana take over from here. Okay. Hi, everybody. Good to see you all kind
of sort of by zoom. Thank God we have zoom. Okay, we are going to be opening the floor
for that's what you want me to do first, Brandy, right, is go ahead and do the nominations.
Okay. We're going to open the floor to receive nominations for the chair and vice chair of
the animal shelter advisory committee. And I better be able to see everybody. And I'm
going to go around to each of you and ask you to recommend a nomination for chair. So
John, I will start with you.
Being new to the committee from the first time, I'm not quite for sure how this works
other than, you know, I'm just right now I don't know who to nominate or how to you know,
anything about it. So I'll pass at this point. Okay, we can always come back to John. Okay.
So that's not a problem. And we're also happy to explain anything that goes along with this
process. So don't ever feel like you're excluded or, you know, we're not talking to you enough.
Not a problem. Okay. All right. Miss Anne, let's go to you next. I'll nominate you for
chair again, if you're still interested. Okay. Thank you. And I accept that nomination to
be chair of the animal shelter advisory board again. Thank you. Charlie?
I'm going to say almost the exact same thing. If you were still interested in being the
chair, I would nominate you. Second that. Well, thank you, Charlie. And I accept that.
And let's see. Julian. Hi, Julian. Go ahead and unmute and tell me who you'd like to nominate.
Do I get a nomination? No, Julian is not a member. Where is everybody else? Randy and
myself are also members of the committee. But since we're staff, we're going to withhold
from making any nominations. We do have to vote on the chair and vice chair, but we're
going to withhold from making any nominations. Okay. Are there any other board members present
that I need to ask as far as nomination? Looking at my participants. The only one left is John
and then you will have to do your nomination, Diana. Okay. All right. John, would you like
me to come back to you? Of course. No, you know, that's really, I didn't realize that
that you were able to do it a second time. So I would say, yeah, maybe even a third.
So I would like to nominate you also. Well, thank you, sir. I accept your nomination.
And with that, I will nominate myself and I'll accept that nomination and we'll go on to
vice chair. And Randy, is it okay if I start with that nomination? Yes. Ms. Anne, I would
like to nominate you to continue as co-chair of the animal shelter advisory board. Do you
have any other information? Sure. Thanks. Thank you. And John? I say the same. All right.
Thank you, sir. And Charlie? Yeah, I was also going to see if Anne would like to co-chair
again. Yeah, she is the best, isn't she? We need to fix what's not broken. That's right.
And with that, I will now close nominations for chair and vice chair of the animal shelter
advisory board. And Randy, anything else you need me to do? Just ask Anne if she accepts
the nomination. Anne, do you accept the nomination? Yes, I do. Thanks. Thank you. Okay. Okay.
I'm just looking at my nose to make sure we cover everything. Right. Who knew it was a
bird? So, Randy, I believe we have to take a vote on now that the nominations have been
made. So you'll call for a vote on the chair's nomination. Okay. Do we want to have a show
of hands or how would you like that to manifest? Yes. Okay. All right. May I have a show of
hands for me? No ego here, people. So it's all about bunnies. To continue to be the chair
of the animal shelter advisory board. Show of hands. That would be YouTube. Does everybody
staff also or just? No, it's just the board. Just the board. Okay. Back to that. This is
a training thing. No, it is. You're doing fine. You're doing great. Remember I said
if I just stare, it's because I've seen a squirrel. Okay. And may I see a show of hands
for the continuation of Anne Sullivan to be co-chair of the animal shelter advisory board?
And so just for the record, those both passed unanimously for Diane Leggett to be chair
and Anne Sullivan to be vice chair. Thank you. I'll turn it back over to, do we want
some context? I guess we don't make a motion. We just accept the minutes as is. The next
agenda item will be accepting the dates for the rest of the year for the animal shelter
meetings. I believe those were sent out prior to you and we're just going to agree that
those are going to be the meeting dates for the rest of the year so we can get that on
the record. Sure. May I have a show of hands to the acceptance of the dates for the 2021
shelter advisory board meeting? I had a clarifying question first. Are these going to remain
with an option for remote assistance? One date I might be out of town, but I would still
be able to join via video if this... Oh, I hope so. Remote is if. Okay. So just from
a staff perspective, yes, we are continuing with remote meetings. We don't have any further
direction from council to return to in-person. However, that may be an upcoming discussion
in May or June with council in terms of if some committees phase back to in-person. But
if you have a preference too, that would be helpful to know as well when we have those
discussions with council. Sure. I can feed baby squirrels and do this at the same time.
So do you need another show of hands or are we good with that? I think everyone showed
their hands and we're good to approve. Okay. And now I'd like to consider approval for
the minutes of the October 21st, 2020 animal shelter advisory board meeting. You have a
show of hands. Sorry. Can we make a motion, do a motion in a second and then do the show
of hands? I'm sorry. Sorry, no. On the minutes, that's fine. I'll do that. I'll put a motion
forward to approve the minutes. Thank you. I'll second it. Thank you, John. Okay. Motion
has been on the table and accepted to approve the minutes of October 21st, 2020. So it's
a motion in a second and then you call for, you know, show of hands. Okay. Show of hands.
Thank you. Sarah, I don't know why I do that. I'm still learning myself. It is, it's a process.
It's a process. Okay. Now, Randy, do you want to take over or do you want me to continue?
What's, what's the plan? Yeah, I can go ahead and move into the next agenda item, which
is giving the presentation on first quarter shelter statistics. If you can give me one
moment, I'm going to go ahead and load that on the screen.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank
you. Sorry about that. So we'll start with this fiscal year. We are diligent diligently
still working towards becoming known as the happiest shelter on earth. And I just want
to want you to know that we have made a commitment to our visitors. We are committed to providing
exceptional customer service to everyone who enters our doors and who we interact with
over the phone or who we come in contact with in the field. In addition, we've made a commitment
to our animals where we are committed to providing each and every animal who enters our shelter
with humane care. And this includes increasing our treatment protocols and hands on enrichment.
So for the first quarter of 2021, I wanted to share with you some of our accomplishments
for our shelter. We established an online self service schedule scheduler for our volunteer
orientation. Previously volunteers if they were interested with either email our customers
or animal services email box, or they would just call the shelter or come up to the shelter
and they'd be put in this master list and we will work from the bottom up to get people
in. So what we wanted to do is kind of make it easier for them to volunteer for the shelter.
So what they do now is go online. They there are bi weekly orientations that we have and
they're able to sign up themselves for those orientations. We also have an in house heart
warm treatment protocol for positive dogs who are in the shelter. So no longer do they
have to sit in the shelter when they are heart one positive. If they are there, we are starting
that treatment right when we learn of the diagnosis. And also, as you know, we have
established a queue list appointment scheduler for our adoptions, surrenders and reclaims.
For our field operations, we updated our tethering and dangerous dog ordinances. That was a huge
win for us with the tethering. And I will let you know that other cities have actually
reached out to us, kind of ask, you know, how do we get it passed and some best practices
for that. So we have kind of set the bar for other cities. Also, we've launched spider
technology and later on the presentation, I will kind of dive into what that entails.
And we've also put new MDCs in our ACO trucks. These are state of the line in MDCs. It's
currently what our PD and fire department use in their vehicles. They're tablet-based.
They're able to be taken out of the car and be transported, you know, when they're taking
reports for either cruelty or dangerous dog case. And also for the first quarter, we handled
six court cases. So for our call volume for our lobby operations, we had a total of 7,748
total calls that were handled. That's a 6% increase in call volume. And that's prior
to the queue list service app being implemented into the operation. Previously, if they wanted
to come see an animal or, you know, surrender because of COVID and the doors or the shelter
being shut down, they did have to call in and make an appointment. Now we've taken that
away. They're using that self-service tool and we've seen the decrease in call volume
for our CSRs. Also, that has made a 57% decrease in our customers reaching our voicemail, which
is awesome because now they are getting a real person over the line. They're not having
to leave a voicemail and we're able to handle those calls in a first call resolution. Our
walk-in volume, we've seen a decrease in foot traffic due to the queue list appointments
and also due to COVID safety protocols. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. So I don't
want you all to, you know, think that, hey, we have a decrease in foot traffic means there's
not more adoptions or whatnot. Actually, it's been great because when people are coming
in with their appointments, they already know most of the time what animal that they're
wanting to come see. If it's not a good fit when they visit, they're still able to walk
around and visit with the animals. So we've actually seen an increase in animal adoptions
and we'll get into those numbers a little bit later in the presentation. Our volunteer
hours, of course, there was a 65% decrease due to us limiting the number of daily volunteers
because we wanted to limit the number of people who were actually in the building because
of COVID concerns. Our volunteers, our regular volunteers are returning back. We have loosened
the amount of restraint that we did have the amount of people who were coming in for volunteering.
And so those regular volunteers are coming back. However, some of them still have the
concerns to return due to COVID and we respect that. We are hosting four volunteer orientations
a month and we are limiting that to 10 people per class. And this is something that we have
not reported on, but felt the need that y'all needed to see is what our general donations
that we are receiving from the public. And there's just a note at the bottom to let you
know that these donations do not reflect what DASF donates. This is completely separate.
We of course have seen a decrease in donations. We like to contribute everything to COVID,
but really that is the truth. It's because of COVID. But as you see, December is usually
our highest month of donations. Typically because it's the giving season, people love
to give around Christmas time. And that's when we see the highest number. So our field
operation, we have seen an increase in our call volume from this time, our first quarter
last year. There was a 31% increase in our field calls. The most popular call remains
the stray dog call. We are having intentional follow-up with all calls to receive that first
call resolution. There are some calls that we are not able to achieve that resolution
on is typically your barking dog calls, your stray dog animal calls, if we can't find the
animal when we go out there with the initial call. But we are trying diligently to find
different solutions to see if we can achieve those first call resolutions for those types
of calls we know that we're not getting it for right now. And we are averaging a total
of 19.4 calls a day. So with our accomplishments that I mentioned earlier, our spider technology
that was launched, that was in conjunction with the police department. So what happens
if a resident makes a call into our emergency dispatch, it gets put into the CAD system,
an officer gets dispatched. But what it also does on the back end is sends a text message
to the resident to let them know, like Officer Sanders is going to be there. Your estimated
wait time is 20 minutes, depending on where Officer Sanders is. And then after the interaction,
after the call has cleared, it sends another text message with the survey. And this survey
gives us real time information on how the officer did, was the officer professional,
was their issue actually resolved, and do they felt that their issue was resolved in
a timely manner. And what we are able to grab is some analytics to kind of look at how our
field operation is doing. So for the first quarter, for our question of how satisfied
are you with the professionalism of the Dent Animal Control Officer that you spoke with,
we received a 4.4 out of 5, and that was a total of 71 total answers. And was your situation
resolved to your satisfaction? Out of the 71, there was 53 who said that it was resolved,
13, no, and then nine, not applicable. And then how satisfied do you feel that your request
was handled in a timely manner? Out of 5, it was a 4.2, and that was 75 total answers.
Right now, we are still gathering the data to actually make a benchmark to say, you know,
is a 4.4 actually good or, you know, is that, you know, great, you know, in our eyes, but
we just need to gather just a little bit more data in order to establish those benchmarks.
But I'm very happy with what is being come across. When we get those survey results in,
they are able to leave comments on the interactions with the officers, and I will have, you know,
they have pretty much all been positive. They are very happy with how our field officers
are representing the Animal Services Department out in the field, and that's good to know.
Those shelter operations for our intake for the first quarter, our cats, we saw 414. Four
of those were for safekeeping, seven quarantined, 121 owners surrender, 260 strays, and other
was 22. And other just to let you know, those are coming in from other sources, like transferred
in from another agency or whatnot. Our dog intake, we had 571, nine of those were for
dangerous dog, safekeeping was for nine. Quarantine, we quarantined 49 animals, owners surrender
171, our stray dogs 305, and our other was 28. So our outcomes, I am going to proudly
highlight that our live release rate is at 95%. And that is why I wanted to hit on when
you saw that the foot traffic was down in the shelter. That does not correlate to the
animals not being adopted. Actually, we've seen a greater success this year with with
our adoption rate and us getting those animals, those positive outcomes. For the adoptions,
298 for dogs, 406 for cats. And then our return to owner, I want to highlight that number
for our dogs because our field officers have been working to do return to owners in the
field, rather than bringing the animal into the shelter. They've been working diligently
with that. So that number has significantly increased for us. Also, we're double scanning
for microchips to make sure that we're getting those animals back to their owner within the
same day that they're coming into the shelter. So they're not having to be housed there for
the 96 hours as well. RFEs, we've had 22 for dogs requests for euthanasia to untreatable
for euthanasia for dogs seven and 13 for cats and unmanageable for cats, we've had 16 as
well. So one thing I do want to start highlighting is our vet clinic stats. As you all know,
we have a full service vet clinic here at the shelter. And it's two vet techs and one
Dr. Brandon, our licensed vet who's there on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays. We like
to call them the heartbeat of our shelter because as soon as we have an issue with animals
being sick, or an animal coming that's injured, they're on it, assessing the animal, triaging
them and getting a protocol in place for us to treat their animal. In addition to that,
they do perform surgeries on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays. So for the month of October,
we did 53 dog surgeries 64 November and 16 December 115 cat surgeries, which is awesome
and 130 November 99 December, October one rabbit, November three rabbits in December
one rabbit. So as you know, we did start doing the spay and neuter surgeries on the rabbit.
So I didn't want to highlight that. We did a total of 521 surgeries. They treated a total
of seven heartworm dogs. And that's a total of them going through the complete heartworm
treatment. So they were heartworm negative when they actually left our facility. And
then other surgical surgical procedures that they did five. That was like I think that
was two amputations. And they fixed did a dental surgery on one of the animals. One
good thing that we're seeing with Dr. Brandon that he's willing to do those surgeries in
house where we do not have to send them off to an outside bet, which helps cut down costs
as well. And a tethering update. Since the tethering amendment has passed, we've had
five calls within the first quarter of tethering. We've had one enclosure installed and there
was one in the process. However, that person ended up moving. So out from the home that
they were in. So that enclosure was no longer needed. So currently we still just have the
one enclosure installed. And we also sent out business notifications and visited businesses
who actually sell like tethering materials to kind of educate them on the ordinance change.
We provided them some language, some brochures, and also a flyer to hang in their window if
they wanted to, to let them know that there was an ordinance and you could not legally
tether your animal within the city of Denton any longer. Also we established an animal
enclosure fund. That's actually a donation fund that people are able to donate to in
the event that they, we need to get that enclosure. We actually have a fund set up to pull those
funds from. So that is the end of the shelter update. So y'all have any questions before
I move on to the dangerous dog ordinance amendment.
Randy, you want to bring down the presentation? Oh, I'm sorry.
You mentioned on the thing that we were down on donations and so forth. How is all this
COVID and everything else affecting the, if I'm able to ask the budgeting of the animal
shelter, you know, go ahead. I'm sorry. Did you finish answer your question? I'm
sorry. I did. Okay. So what we are looking at this year
with budget, it didn't really affect the animal shelter at all because our, what we did remove
from our budget when COVID hit was we took money like from our, our uniforms and things
of that sort. We are in the process now of looking at reallocating those funds back to
our budget. However, it wasn't that the money was not depleted from critical items that
we need, such as animal food or medical costs or things of that sort, but honestly it hasn't
impacted our operation financially at all. Okay.
Okay. And next I'm going to go into the dangerous
dog amendment ordinance
for transparency sake, this is item E on the agenda for the presentation in case there's
anyone following along and wishes to see the presentation and backup materials. So just
wanted to mention that. Okay. Thank you.
So amendments to our dangerous animal ordinance. As you know, back in December, we brought
forth a small amendment to our ordinance. It just changed language within the disposition
part of it. However, feedback that we've gotten, cases that we've brought forth, we felt that
it was vital for us to amend our total ordinance to make sure that it's in line with current
state practices and other cities around the Metroplex.
So our current regulations for section 633 through 39 state, if there's a complaintant,
which is usually the victim of the bite attack, they have 30 days to file a written complaint
of the bite. In addition, after that, an investigation is ensued, a determination of probable cause
and then order of impoundment of the dangerous dog. There is a determination hearing that
set and then there is disposition of the dangerous dog after that hearing and that's given by
the magistrate. Depending on what the magistrate decides, the animal is either impounded or
the owner is able to redeem their dog. However, if it's deemed dangerous, they have certain
stipulations within that disposition that they do have to abide by.
Some current challenges that we're facing with the ordinance, how it's written today,
is that there are limited or unclear definitions. Extensive complaint filing period, that 30
day filing period, and then there's also a limitation on who can actually file a complaint.
The secure enclosure definition lacks clarity and the ramifications for failure to comply
with the order once the owner's animal has been deemed dangerous is absent. There's no
distinction for dog on dog on tax versus dog on human attacks.
We researched 15 cities where we reviewed their language, their dangerous dog ordinance
language, and we compared if the city was the size of City of Denton and how they go
about handling their dangerous dogs. Two cities have language that was consistent with what
we were actually seeking for our ordinance. Those cities were City of Dallas and Town
of Flower Mound. So the proposed changes that we're making
is that we want to clearly define the following key terms that are applicable throughout the
ordinance. Those key terms are dangerous dog, aggressive dog, an unprovoked attack, bodily
injury and serious bodily injury. And we also want to decrease the timeframe to file a complaint
from 30 days to 10 days. And the reason we want the 10 days is that mirrors the 10-day
quarantine hold that we have on the animal when it does have a bite. And we do want to
put language in there that once an animal has been deemed dangerous, they will be put
on a dangerous and aggressive dog registry map, and you can see that to the right of
the screen. It's a map that will be added to our website. So if you move into a community,
you have an animal yourself, or you like to take walks and jog, you can go out to this
registry map, zoom in on your address and see if there is any dogs that have been deemed
dangerous. Therefore, you can better prepare yourself or just know, hey, if I see this
animal out, I need to report that to Animal Services. And also the proposed changes that
we want to outline the ramifications for failure to comply. We want to clearly state what the
process is, which will be a tiered system if the owner is not compliant with the final
legal disposition that was given by the magistrate. So with that, does anyone have any questions?
Yes, Randy. Yes, ma'am. And this may not be anything that the city can do, but the one
dangerous dog incident here in front of my house, the people never did get restitution
from people who had the dog. And it was going to cost them far more to go through small
claims court. Is there anything we can do? Because the emergency room bills, at the end
of the day, were over $7,000. So just to make sure I understand, it was ordered by the judge
to pay for the medical bills of the person, the complainant in the situation, and they
haven't paid those bills. Oh, yeah, they're long gone. Okay. Diana, what I can do is pose
that question to our city attorney and see what the next steps are, and I'll get back
with you on that. Wonderful. Thank you. Otherwise, I'm thrilled to death to see us reorganizing
this ordinance. You've done a great job. Thank you. Anne? Yeah, I have a question. So do
we have the wording in the backup for what the new ordinance is going to look like? Actually,
I don't believe it's put in there, but I will make sure that I emailed that to you after
this meeting. Okay. And is the process the same as the tethering? Do we have to review
it to prove it before then it goes to council for final approval? Yes, ma'am. Thanks. Okay.
Any more questions? Okay. We are going to move on to item D, E. Yes, I move on to item
F. F. If the chair is okay with that calling that next item to order. Okay. Yes, please.
Give me one moment to pull this one up. Okay. As you know, and as we all have lived through
snow vid of 2021, I wanted to go ahead and give an update on our response, animal services
response that we had during the week of the inclement weather. This is a presentation
that we did give city council as well. And I wanted to provide that to you as well. And
if you had any questions, answer those. So our goals before we went into this inclement
weather that we knew was coming, so we wanted to make sure that we were able to continue
to provide care to the animals at the shelter. We wanted to continue our service for emergency
calls and assist with the 24, the city's 24 hour emergency warming station that was established.
Also, we wanted to help with any other departments that needed any assistance. So for our adoption
center, our shelter staff worked on an A and B schedule. We had staff come in in the morning.
They took the animals out, cleaned their kennels, fed and gave them water. That shift left.
And then we had a B shift that came in and, you know, did maintenance as well on the kennels
and made sure that the animals had adequate food and water as well. What we did to prepare,
we made sure that water hose and faucets were left to drip to reduce risk of freezing in
the shelter. We responded to the water boil notice by boiling about 60 gallons of water
for the animals. And we also ensured that the shelter was on an emergency circuit to
prevent long outages and keep animals warm. And during that time, just to let you know,
the shelter lost power twice, but it was no more than 45 minutes. Our field operations,
we deployed an emergency response team. And what we did was split the city into three
parts. And we luckily had ACOs who were housed in each of those areas. So if a call came
in in their quadrant, they were able to respond to those calls quickly. During that time,
we ran 76 emergency calls. And typically within the week, we run an average of five. So the
need was there. And our officers were absolutely amazing during that time answering those calls.
We saw 24 calls for cruelty. Majority of those cruelty calls were for animals being left
outside. And we wanted to make sure that we responded to those quickly.
So community efforts that we had, we educated and notified the public through social media.
We tried to push out as much information as we could, defining what adequate shelter was,
making sure that they knew, you know, to tap on your car when you went out, to make sure
that there was no animals hiding in the hood of your car, to let them know, hey, if you're
seeing an animal who doesn't have adequate food or water or shelter, please give us a
call so we could get out there quickly and help. We also assisted with the 24 hour emergency
warming station. We provided kennels, blankets, food for anyone who brought an animal into
that warming station. Because what we did want is someone not being able to come into
that warming station because they didn't, they couldn't bring their animal in. So we wanted
to take that away and we provided all the resources for that. We also delivered food
from our emergency food pantry to those unable to leave their houses. Those were some of
the calls that our officers went on. If we received those through dispatch, we, officers
went out to the shelter, grabbed some food and rolled it out to the address that was
needing that food. And we also collaborated with other departments. We had assisted parks
and rec, you know, they had to use our washer and dryers to wash linens and everything.
So it was really a group effort across the board and all city departments. So what we
have learned and considered for future use is that we wanted to secure resources to assist
residents with outdoor pets. That's installation, dog houses, housing at a shelter. I know me
and Diana talked in links about things that we could do from here on out to provide that
to the animals. We want to ensure that the shelter does have backup generators. We are
currently working with our facility management department to make sure that we are getting
those for our department and also a contingency plan for our field operations. We got very
lucky that we have ACOs who live on the different parts of Denton that they do. However, that
might not be the case next time. So we want to make sure that we have the opportunity
if they need to stay in hotels or we need extra vehicles that we will prepare for that
in the future. And that is the end of my presentation. Does anyone have any questions?
Do we want to have a discussion now about all of the incredibly positive things that
happened during that week? Oh, sure. Can I just bring everybody to tears now? Because
I am forever in the debt of all of you, all of staff, and all of the officers for -- there
was not a moment you did not sit still. And every time you got a call or a text from me
or from whomever, you were on it. And the ideas that came out of this are only going
to help the shelter be the best shelter ever. And if there is any funding that is needed,
you know, the city does have a slush fund. And there is no reason why the shelter can't
always be in a central building. Us people in the loop and the rest of the board may
not know that Julian, the rest of us are good friends with many of the animal shelters around
the area who fared quite badly in this. And Officer Leslie had to sleep at the Lewisville
shelter with absolutely no electricity or warmth and had animals all around her cuddled
in her sleeping bag. And the city was not responsive. So I just don't have anything
else to say except my God, thank you for everything you did, because it was a hell of a week.
And animals lived because of your efforts.
Thank you, Diana. And I will add that once we found that the electricity did go off in
the shelter, I reached out to DMV and they immediately said yes to that to that circuit.
So you know, their response was amazing as well to make sure that the shelter was taken
care of.
Right. That's what I mean. It's just as soon as as soon as something happened, it was handled.
It was like, well, yes, of course. And I also know in the future that that the city has
water stockpiled. And if we have a boil notice again, the shelter will be able to be part
of the distribution of that water. So you won't have to boil it.
And actually, we did receive water from from that stockpile for the shelter pets as well.
Yeah. But don't hesitate to put a list together. I mean, an SOP is is definitely something
that's going to happen. There's just no question because it will when you go before council
and ask for funding for whatever, you'll be able to present the document and say, this
is why this is needed.
My mind is right back in 42 degree weather in my house. So I think we're going to be
traumatized for a long time.
A little bit of PTSD.
A little bit. Yes. But I am I'm eternally grateful to the officers who brought me wildlife.
And I'm sorry, that's risking their lives to get out there in that weather and take
frozen things out of frozen things, ducks on ponds. And when I said, oh, please take
food out for the the ducks that were frozen in place at North Lakes Park, he didn't hesitate.
So I just I could I don't know how much more grateful I can I can have my voice or my heart
or my tears or whatever. It was it was an amazing effort. Thank you.
Thank you. And, you know, our staff is absolutely amazing. They, you know, there was no questions
asked. They wanted to do what was best for the animals during that time. So well, and
I'm sorry, the dogs had a great time. They did. Right. They had a good time. I think
they had more, you know, cuddles than ever.
Did anyone have any other questions? Yes. Yeah, I was going to say similar to what Diana
said, but I'll just echo that sentiment. And then my question was, I know that you
presented this to council. Did you get positive feedback from them on the request that you
had for things like the generator and some other changes that you were looking to make?
Yes, that's actually what we're looking at citywide. So, like I said, we are already
in the works with our facilities department to get to get those items.
Okay, great. Thanks. Great. And again, wherever that falls, whether it's within the city's
budget or something that the DASF fundraiser or we need to help with anything, don't hesitate.
Thank you. And one last thing I just wanted to add before we close out is that if y'all
ever needed to contact the shelter for anything where you have an emergency outside of normal
business hours or whatnot, me, Julian or Dee, I'll make sure that you have our cell phone
numbers. You can always reach out to us. We'll be more than happy to either answer or get
someone out or we'll go out ourselves to try and rectify the situation. But I just want
to make sure that y'all have those line of communications as well if y'all see a need.
First point of contact always is emergency dispatch if it's after hours, calling that
line. But if you feel that it needs immediate attention, please reach out to us and I can
give you our phone numbers if you don't already have them. Okay, thanks. Okay, that is the
end of my presentation. Diana, if you want to go ahead and close out the meeting.
Sure. Do we have any other items open for discussion on the floor? Anybody else want
to have a comment or idea or anything? Okay, well in that case, Sarah, is this a motion?
No, you can just conclude the meeting as chair.
All right. Well, thank you. Well, in that case, this concludes the meeting of the March
24th, is it 24th? Yes, meeting of the Animal Shelter Advisory Board. And we will see you
in a few months. Okay, y'all have a good one. Thanks everybody.