Thank you for sticking with us as we navigate our way through this journey towards APA!’s forever home.
Just as you help us every day by fostering, adopting, volunteering, and donating to find homes for animals, we really need you to act now so APA! can land safely and continue our important work with as few interruptions as possible.
We have received word that our item DID make it on the agenda for the November 4th city council meeting and we are officially item #38. The resolution is very good overall as it clearly removes the restriction that would prevent us from saving the lives of those on death row all over our state while also maintaining that Austin’s No Kill status is first and foremost. As you may recall, this is important because there are no other city contracts (that we are aware of) that limit the mission and scope of a nonprofit that provides a distinct service to the city. It’s also important because our mission is to eliminate the killing of shelter animals and we can’t do that if our work is artificially restricted.
We are grateful the resolution also directs staff to negotiate with APA! regarding the percentage of animals we are responsible for pulling from the city shelter and clearly indicates those animals should be based on those at risk of euthanasia. This has always been the intent of our partnership with the City and we are eager to ensure our contract reflects that.
We are committed to working with the city, and each of you, into the future to ensure there are checks and balances in place to institutionalize live outcomes and progress for decades to come. Given the fact that AAC has the nation’s largest animal services budget per capita, it is truly time to establish best practices and hold ourselves to a higher standard; a standard expected by our tax-payers. We know that a fair and equitable agreement between APA and the City of Austin is the first step towards achieving this goal and making No Kill a priority in our city.
We are incredibly grateful to the co-sponsors for their leadership: Mayor Adler, Leslie Pool, Ann Kitchen, Greg Casar and Vanessa Fuentes. We recognize how much work has gone into resolving this important issue and we are grateful they have worked so hard to ensure it is placed on the agenda.
What we need now is for you to THANK these co-sponsors and ask your council member to vote yes on agenda item #38 between now and the vote on November 4th.
Thank you for being here for the animals, all the animals, and ensuring that APA! continues to keep Austin No Kill.
Thanks to the dedication of you and our fellow supporters, we can confirm that an item regarding Austin Pets Alive!’s resolution will be on the Austin City Council agenda on Thursday, November 4.
As soon as we have the draft resolution language to share, we will reach out to update you and ask you to take one more final action to help advocate on our behalf.
At stake are the details of how we will be required to operate far into the future:
the number and types of animals we pull from the Austin Animal Center to keep our work in alignment with our mission,
the ability to use any facility we operate, at our own cost, for animals from any location,
and how Austin’s No Kill achievement will be sustained by both Austin city staff and APA!.
History has trained us to know that this meeting and resolution will not just sail through and be easy. We need to count on you to rally alongside us to keep No Kill in the heart of Austin. Our work to save at risk pets is a direct reflection of our community values and we are endlessly grateful to each of you for advocating for our place in Austin.
While critical to our future in the heart of Austin, we would be remiss if we didn’t say that the enormous time and effort negotiating for this resolution competes with fundraising for our daily lifesaving work. While the city has a taxpayer-funded budget and thus does not need to fundraise, every single dollar we use for every single animal we save (even from Austin Animal Center) is fundraised. To make a gift to support our continued lifesaving, please click here.
Today is the last day for our City Council to decide if the work we do for the City of Austin, keeping it a No Kill city by taking all animals who would be euthanized at the Austin Animal Center, is worth the use of one acre of land at Town Lake Animal Center.
We believe No Kill needs to be front and center in Austin.
We believe APA! should be kept in the heart of Austin, showing every other city in our nation that eliminating the killing of pets in our shelter is important to our city, our city council, and to every Austinite.
As you know, our agreement to use that space has been in negotiations for five years, holding up any progress we can make on actually rebuilding there.
At the heart of the issue is the severe reduction in the land that has been allocated to APA! from the council’s original intention of 3.5 acres down to just one acre. No matter what, we are losing more than ⅔ of the land we currently occupy. We are asking for a fair agreement that puts Austin first by ensuring that pets slated for euthanasia at Austin Animal Center have a way out alive. Without APA!’s support, the city would only be saving four out of five animals (about 80%) that enter the city shelter.
We are asking that our city also create a sustainability plan because it is unacceptable that our city animal shelter has the highest budget in the entire country (per animal and per capita) but still expects APA! to do a large percentage of their work for no monetary compensation, only a piece of land that has been reduced severely, and that cannot be used for anything other than parkland or an animal shelter under state law. In addition, the City of Austin requires that APA! pay 100% of all building and demolition costs for a new facility on that land.
Will you speak up again today? We need you to write or call the council offices to let them know once again that you believe in an equitable agreement that keeps APA! in the heart of Austin. We need all of you to reach out to the council today, even if you have called or emailed before. Today’s decision will impact the future of APA! and No Kill in Austin for decades to come and we are counting on you to speak up.
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UPDATE:
Thank you for advocating on behalf of Austin Pets Alive! We have just received word that Austin City Council is planning to vote on the APA! resolution on November 4th.
We believe this still gives us enough time before our agreement terminates on November 23rd to reach an agreement and are grateful to the council and our supporters for prioritizing our life saving work. We believe we will hear more critical information to share with you next week about actions you can take to support APA’s future in Austin!
There is one day left before we know whether the city council has taken action on our APA! Resolution by adding it to the next city council meeting agenda.
What keeps rising to the top of criticism of our resolution from council offices is that they don’t understand why Austin Pets Alive! should be allowed to help communities outside of the greater Austin metro area. They see and hear about animals having long lengths of stay at Austin Animal Center(AAC) and the kennels being overcrowded there. Some believe that Austin Pets Alive!’s primary function, in addition to keeping Austin a No Kill City, should be to relieve the pressure at Austin Animal Center for the city staff. Some also believe that Austin Pets Alive!’s practice of helping animals outside of Austin is actually causing the overcrowding at Austin Animal Center.
The problem with this line of thinking is that “relieving pressure” is not something the City of Austin compensates APA! to do nor is it in line with our mission. APA! has used the Town Lake Animal Center for the last 10 years to keep Austin No Kill by pulling animals from Austin Animal Center who will die if we don’t. The city council has awarded Austin Animal Center with enough funding to relieve their own pressure.
So then why is Austin Animal Center constantly crowded?
It’s because Austin city leadership has given little credence to research and data that clearly shows that Austin has, and has always had, more than enough adopters to take in every single animal at Austin Animal Center AND to adopt every single animal that gets help from APA!, Austin Humane Society and the hundreds of rescue groups who take in animals from across the state.
We believe that the reason that credence is not given is that it is much easier to say “there are not enough adopters,” which implies that increasing adoptions is outside the control of the shelter director and reinforces poor performance.
We believe it is incumbent on us as shelter professionals, and we include Austin Animal Center leadership in that, to look at data when making any decision. We thought, but now realize we might be wrong, that the city manager and the city council also used data to drive decisions. If AAC leadership, and city council members, did that, they would be able to say “I see a problem with too many animals living at AAC at one time” and then connect that to the thought of “what can I do to make this better”. We have said it before but it’s worth repeating: adoptions don’t just happen. They are the result of resources, time, and strategic planning to ensure that the animals housed at AAC are getting opportunities to meet people and to be seen.
To put it in perspective, over the last five years, the city has increased Austin Animal Center’s budget by $1M per year. Tellingly, every single category of programming has benefited from that increased funding EXCEPT “Pet Placement/ Pet Outcomes” which actually fell by 30% in budgeted monies. Why isn’t anyone in leadership, at any level, examining and correcting that instead of strongarming APA! into making up for it?
Austin Pets Alive! has never been interested in being the City of Austin’s “overflow” for a system that lacks oversight, lacks critical thinking, and continues to make poor decisions and we are standing by our mission to save lives.
As individual citizens and as a private nonprofit, we have asked and asked for the government animal shelter to be run well because it is critically important to Austin’s animals and to APA!. That has not worked. We hope this final attempt to wake up our city council will work and we, in partnership with the City of Austin, can finally focus on forward momentum. To keep the support strong through this final day of city council consideration, please keep emailing to express your support for the APA! resolution.
Even if you already have sent an email, we need to keep the message top of mind. Thank you!
Austin Pets Are in Crisis. Supporting Families Through Partnership Is the Answer. We must work together to keep pets with people and out of the shelter.
Here in Austin, 38,000 pets could be displaced by evictions in the coming months. Nationally, that number could be as high as eight million.
After speaking with American Pets Alive! and Human Animal Support Services project director Kristen Hassen, NBC shared this story about how the looming eviction crisis could impact overcrowded shelters by displacing the pets of families who lose their homes.
Austin Pets Alive!, the parent organization to AmPA! and AmPA!’s HASS project, is already seeing the effects of the financial strain so many families have faced during the pandemic. Our APA! Positive Alternatives to Shelter Surrender Facebook page is currently receiving around 1,000 requests for help each month, with countless owners faced with the possibility of having to give up their pets.
We help as many of these families as we can. But the situation for our community’s pet owners is growing increasingly dire. It will get much worse as more families are evicted.
APA! is currently working with the City of Austin to renegotiate our partnership agreement so we can focus even more of our efforts on innovation and progress to support families and shelters in crisis. We want to ensure Austin Pets Alive! and Austin Animal Center can, with our complementary roles, develop our partnership to protect our city’s animals and families.
We come to this partnership with deep experience. AmPA!’s Human Animal Support Services program leads nationwide efforts to develop and implement community-centered animal services programs to keep pets with people, and out of shelters.
What we have learned while bringing this model to hundreds of communities across the country, is this is never a solo effort. Success requires government shelters to partner with other organizations.
That means we and Austin Animal Center must work together, and be based together here in Austin, to ensure that the eviction crisis does not overwhelm AAC and lead to pets needlessly losing their homes, and even their lives.
For a decade now, Austin has been looked to as a model for how to save animals. We are the country’s largest no kill city, and this is largely thanks to the longstanding partnership between Austin Animal Center and Austin Pets Alive!
Other communities look to us for guidance, and inspiration. This is, as it should be, a source of pride for our residents.
Now we need that partnership to sustain and evolve, to meet the tremendous challenges we face together, today, as animal welfare organizations and as a city.
Thirty-eight thousand Austin pets are in danger of losing their homes to eviction, in the coming months. Working together, in our shared city, we can face this.
We are proud to be the leader in animal welfare innovation and now we need a true partnership with our city, so together we can keep Austin pets with their families.
There are only seven days until the final October City Council meeting agenda must be posted.
That means we have seven days to make it clear to the city council members that No Kill in Austin is important and deserves their urgent attention.
There are many layers to this problem, but right now one of the most important things that you, as a supporter of the animals who need us to save their lives, can know is that we simply need a relationship with the city that makes sense.
APA! has kept Austin No Kill by taking animals off the city’s kill list every single day for 10 years now. We will continue to do that. We will not agree to continue serving as Austin Animal Center’s overflow partner. It doesn’t make sense to our mission as a nonprofit organization or the pets that never get a chance to leave a shelter alive.
It is no longer fair to serve as an overflow partner for Austin Animal Center anymore for two main reasons:
First, the rebuildable land leased to APA! by the City of Austin has been dramatically reduced to just one fourth of what we were promised in the Lamar Beach Master Plan. This is not reflected anywhere in the negotiations with city staff or in our actual license agreement. It is as if it doesn’t matter. But it does matter to us because, once we sign an agreement, we cannot use the property in the future the way we have been for the last 10 years. This means we can not build anything new on this property that will even come close to matching our current capacity. It is unreasonable to expect APA! to provide the same level of services to the City when the property we have been given in exchange for those services has been so significantly reduced.
Second, the City of Austin Animal Center has received over $10,000,000 more dollars per year than they had when Austin first became a No Kill city. Our mission is to eliminate the killing of pets in shelters and as long as an animal is at risk in Austin, we will save it. It is not reasonable to ALSO ask APA! to provide free services to Austin Animal Center that they’ve been funded to provide to Austin people and animals.
We believe that APA’s support of the City of Austin, in keeping Austin No Kill and driving the city to be progressive and sustainable, is worth the land we are being given. City Council will have to decide if they agree. Please contact your council member’s office today with an email and follow-up call if you agree. It is so important that the council offices hear your voice before they make the final determination.
Keep Austin No Kill Safe in Austin: City Council must act now!
Thank you for following APA!’s story up until now. And now we urgently need your help. Our bold vision for the future of animal welfare is in immediate jeopardy because we haven’t reached an agreement with our partners at the City of Austin for our 75 year formal public-private partnership that keeps Austin No Kill. After four years of negotiations time will run out for changes in October, and the city council must now act to ensure Austin’s No Kill status.
If not, APA! will be forced to move out of our home and the City of Austin will have NO agreement in place to keep Austin No Kill.
Join our APA! action team and plan more communication to council with us. Your voice matters, and we need it now more than ever…we will help you to speak up.
Learn more about our bold vision for the future. It is far more likely we will achieve lasting progress if we keep Austin Pets Alive! in Austin. This new agreement is a critical first step.
Austin is a No Kill community because of your support and work during the past decade. We will ensure No Kill but rely on the council to direct the city manager to finalize a new and more equitable service agreement with APA!. The council must take action in October before the negotiations formally end, so we haven’t a moment to spare!
This week, we are going back through time to showcase the history of No Kill in Austin and our public-private partnership with the City of Austin.
1998-2001: From the beginning when local attorney Jim Collins created Austin Pets Alive!, it’s mission has been to promote and provide the resources, education and programs needed to eliminate the killing of companion animals in shelters. In order to meet that mission, APA! started as an advocacy organization dedicated to making program and policy changes at the city’s shelter. At this time, the city was euthanizing 85% of the 35,000 animals that entered the shelter on an annual basis. The goal was to make Austin a No Kill City by the year 2000. During this time, the founders coordinated an effective public awareness campaign which led to a doubling of the city shelter’s budget. Additionally, the kill rate was substantially reduced, daily open-adoption hours were introduced, and a volunteer program was created. Despite all of this, No Kill was not reached during this time.
Jim Collins created Austin Pets Alive! article, 1998
2008-2011: Still in line with the mission and reinvigorated with new leadership, APA! shifted its strategy to focus on more direct ways to impact the City of Austin shelter’s euthanasia rate, which by 2007 was at 55% with 25,000 animals entering the shelter on an annual basis. We were still an all volunteer organization with less than $10,000 in the bank and no facility, but that didn’t stop us from thinking big. In 2008, we pulled together as many like-minded people as we possibly could and carved out a business plan that would build the infrastructure to address the needs of the up to 14,000 animals who were dying each year at the city shelter.
2009
One of the first steps in this new strategy was to intervene in the euthanasia process. As is true today, animals came into the city shelter from many different places for various reasons. After pets were taken in, animals surrendered by their owners moved immediately either to the adoption portion of the shelter, to a rescue group (non APA!), or to a euthanasia list. Stray pets were held for three days before the decision was made to euthanize them or attempt to adopt or transfer them to rescue. Long term Austinites might remember when the Town Lake Animal Center (TLAC) shelter was segregated between animals lucky enough to have survived the last 3 days on the left and those who were too big, dark, scarred, sickly or badly behaved and destined to die on the right behind a locked gate. The public was not allowed to even look at the 75% of campus that was the non-adoption side.
2009
Each day, our team received a list of animals, ranging from 20-100 animals long, that were slated for euthanasia. We were given two hours to try to move those animals to safety by 7 p.m. or they would be dead by 11:30 a.m. the next day.
In those two hours, day after day, 365 days a year, our tough-as-nails volunteer team worked at lightning speed. They posted on Facebook and Craigslist, imploring the community to help by fostering for a short period of time. They texted people they knew that liked labs or poodles to try to find a spare bathroom anywhere to house a pet, who might loosely resemble that breed, until they could make it to an adoption event. Every day, they made an impact on that euthanasia list and cut it down by 10% or as much as 100%. Every week, we could add up each day’s progress to figure out the impact we were making. This eventually translated into a yearly impact metric.
As APA!’s strategy was to intervene in the deaths of the animals at the very last minute, the byproduct was the huge increase in public awareness that these very adoptable animals were dying. The awareness led to public outcry and city council action (very similar to what happened in 1999). That turned out to be an incredibly important part of the puzzle, impacting the euthanasia rate beyond even our direct euthanasia list intervention, and led to Austin becoming No Kill.
By the time our original license agreement to operate TLAC came around in 2011, the community had advocated heavily for change at the city of Austin shelter. The city council passed a 2010 No Kill Implementation Plan, recommended to them by the Austin Animal Advisory Commission after an intense year of public input and strategy sessions. That plan included, most importantly:
a mandate for the city shelter to reach a 90% live release rate
a moratorium on killing while any cages were empty (previously this practice left 50 or more kennels open each morning for “possible” intakes)
a directive for the city shelter to grow a foster program and behavior program
a directive to use Town Lake Animal Center (about to be vacated for the new location in East Austin) as an adoption center
an extra $1,000,000 to add to the city shelter budget to help implement these goals
2010
When the city shelter moved from TLAC to east Austin, we had to work tirelessly to gain the ability to use the old shelter. Council Members Martinez and Morrison worked with all parties involved to outline the requirements of that first agreement. Ultimately, APA! agreed to continue taking 3,000 animals from the euthanasia list at the city shelter annually, when the city’s intake was 19,000, the city’s budget was 7 million dollars and they were still euthanizing 2,000 of the pets, even with us pulling 3,000 to safety. The city of Austin and APA! still had a lot of lifesaving work to do to get Austin to No Kill.
March 11, 2010
2011-2019: A lot has changed in the world of animal sheltering and certainly in the City of Austin during the last decade. The city shelter gained an additional 10 million dollars in their budget and today has a budget of 17 million dollars for an average intake of 18,000. Many of those millions were injected into the city shelter’s medical program despite the fact that APA! had been, since 2011, pulling nearly 100% of the medically challenged animals. Even after millions of tax payer dollars went into medical care for city owned animals at Austin Animal Center (AAC), there were still 1,500+ animals with medical needs listed for euthanasia, down from 3,000+, because the medical practices that AAC employed were more like private practice in their expense and less like the triage APA! used to save lives at a low cost.
In fact, at that stage the animals that were still dying (meaning APA! didn’t have capacity to save them after they were listed on euthanasia list) were almost entirely large breed dogs with and without behavioral challenges. However, almost none of the new AAC funding was directed to help increase fostering or adoptions of those dogs. And almost none of the funding was directed to help pet owners keep their big dogs to prevent intake. There was a brief period of AAC leadership, Tawny Hammond, Lee Ann Shenefiel and Kristen Auerbach, that tried to put more resources into large dogs but they were met with resistance. Because of overall inadequate oversight of the very generous new funding directed by council to “make Austin No Kill”, there continued, and continues, to be a euthanasia list with large breed dogs and medical animals, and there continues to be struggles with large breed dog capacity at AAC. APA! continued to take the “leftover” animals who were listed for euthanasia even though no government funding came to APA! for the care of pets from the city shelter. As AAC management tried to overcome overcrowding, they leaned on APA! to take more and more non-euthanasia list large breed dogs.
2012
Even with all of these partnership issues, APA! started a behavior program directed at saving the dogs with challenging histories of trauma to prevent their euthanasia at AAC unless there was a severe, demonstrated public safety risk. As per our mission, we didn’t focus on trying to relieve space issues for AAC but of course tried to help.
2014
When AAC reached a 95% live release rate, and due to the continual turnover of leadership at AAC which left AAC vulnerable to moving backwards to killing, we focused on building institutional sustainability for No Kill in Austin. No Kill is still very much dependent on the city animal services director’s personal philosophy because there is very little throughout city government to institutionalize it.
Thanks to the ongoing work of Council Member Leslie Pool’s office, a new citywide ordinance to preserve a 95% minimum live release rate and an updated animal code went into effect. In addition, we documented memorandums of understanding (MOU)s to preserve internal practices between AAC and APA! that we hoped would cement No Kill practices in Austin. Austin’s No Kill status was further buoyed by the 2017 Economic Impact Study showing No Kill policy had brought $157M into Austin.
2019-2021: Since 2019, the city has maintained a continual live release rate at or above 95%, in accordance with the ordinance. With the largest budget, per capita and per animal, of any government animal shelter in the nation, AAC has received the financial support to achieve this level of lifesaving. Unfortunately, despite all of this progress, policy changes, and historically high budget, the city has shifted its expectation of maintaining capacity for non-euthanasia list animals to achieve No Kill to APA! with no oversight of existing taxpayer fund usage or financial investment in APA!. This is far outside the scope of the original licensing agreement, signed at a time when 2,000+ animals were still dying and the city’s budget was extremely inadequate for lifesaving. We are proud of our role in making Austin No Kill and advocating for appropriate AAC funding but we have no control or oversight of those funds as a completely private entity. Our fear of losing the use of TLAC has exacerbated that inability to advocate for change in the past.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, in early 2020, every shelter in the country emptied their shelters, placing the vast majority of pets in foster homes. This gave the animal welfare industry time to think about the purpose and functions of animal shelters to begin with. APA! pivoted, once again, to focus on keeping human animal families together and launched the Human Animal Support Services (HASS) project. We started HASS because we believe that building the infrastructure to serve community pets and people could dramatically lower the number of pets needing to be institutionalized in the shelter. As APA! and our national arm, American Pets Alive!, worked to implement HASS in most major U.S. cities, we were met within our own city of Austin with some interest but no action to undertake truly solving for why so many animals enter Austin Animal Center every year.
Instead, we, at APA!, have been made painfully aware through multiple crises (the 2021 cold crisis when the city shelter shut down and deferred the public to APA! for help or during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic when the city shelter just stopped all support to community members who needed much more than a website to navigate options during the human crises they faced), that the city expects the public private partnership to continue, for the next 75 years, as simple, quiet overflow for all of the Austin Animal Center problems.
At the same time, the Austin Animal Center is under a high level of scrutiny by the Austin Animal Advisory Commission due to a memo sent by the Austin Animal Center director, claiming that killing of dogs with behavioral histories would need to begin in order to keep capacity at a manageable level, despite a historically low intake of animals. This is unacceptable and we hope the city will use the recommendations from the commission to make lasting change in how the center is managed.
Summer 2021: As of today, the world is rapidly evolving and other cities are passing Austin by as the most progressive for animal welfare. Disheartened by the city’s lack of interest in progressing beyond a No Kill number to build a truly humane community and compounded by the state, and now accepted future, of our facility, we have made the difficult decision to refuse to be the “overflow” for Austin Animal Center any longer or do the rest of the Austin Animal Center’s job for free. We need to go back to a relationship that preserves lifesaving but also drives progress and innovation. Tragically, we are forced to potentially vacate TLAC to gain this but in doing so, we hope Austin will regain its “top” status.
Today: We have let the city know that while we are committed to keeping Austin a No Kill City by taking in animals truly at risk of euthanasia, if there is to be any formal documented agreement with APA! to preserve No Kill status, we will not agree to serve as an overflow facility to animals who are not at risk of euthanasia. And we will not agree to limit the scope of our important and lifesaving work to make the entirety of Texas – and nation – No Kill. It’s still our hope, though now somewhat distant, to have an agreement with the city that allows TLAC to continue as a beacon of hope in this new phase of Austin’s animal history. It is clear that will only happen if the city council directs staff to make it happen.
Soon, we will need your help to advocate for these changes to our contract and to the overall No Kill sustainability plan for Austin. We can’t do this without our supporters now, just as we couldn’t have created this organization without you from the start. I hope this information helps you to understand why so much is happening at once regarding Austin’s No Kill status and why there are no simple decisions for everyone involved.
Thank you,
Ellen Jefferson, DVM President and CEO Austin Pets Alive!/American Pets Alive!
As the second installment in a short series of letters meant to inform you of APA!’s relationship with the City of Austin, we wanted to bring you up to speed on the Town Lake Animal Center (TLAC) property and how it impacts the renegotiation of our license agreement to operate APA!.
Built in the 1950s, the TLAC facility was a huge improvement over what existed before, which was a structure somewhere in Austin that held all the animals in a massive concrete pen without adequate food and water until they were all shot, in front of an audience, when their time was up. The beginning of sheltering in Austin, as in the entire United States, was rooted in the fear of a nationwide pandemic of Rabies.
Austin American Statesman, 1951Austin American Statesman, 1956, laying the pad for the original Ringworm facility and the original Building C
As such, from 1950 all the way until 2008, the intention of housing the animals was never to save them all or any percent close to that. The original purpose of this facility, in fact, was to continue ridding Austin of dogs and cats who didn’t have owners with the means to reclaim them. TLAC and the structures that still stand today serve as an important reminder for all of us of a past that we never want to go back to.
Austin American Statesman, 1977, when TLAC was occupied by the Humane Society
In 2007, the city made the decision to vacate TLAC and embarked on hiring an architect to build a new shelter in East Austin. There was a lot of controversy over the planned move because it would involve removing lost and homeless animals from downtown Austin. The concerns were threefold:
A lack of visibility would lead to more deaths (now substantiated by the commercial market). Then mayor, Lee Leffingwell, compromised, promising the citizens of Austin there would always be an adoption center at TLAC, even after the move.
The new shelter had fewer kennels than TLAC. Staff asserted that more animals could be co-housed at the new shelter so it actually served the same number of pets. Unfortunately, at the time, almost all big dogs were being killed so co-housing was only intended for little dogs.
The addition at the new site of a huge incinerator so the pets who were killed would no longer have to be sent to the city dump in large truck fulls. Luckily, this was struck from the final plans because it was a big expense for a practice that was going to stop.
In the end, the new shelter was approved and slated to open in mid 2011 with the understanding that the old TLAC facility, already in disrepair, would be demolished.
By 2008, APA! started rescue work and began pulling animals from the TLAC euthanasia list so that we could make a measurable impact on the live release rate in the City of Austin. Our goal was to make Austin a No Kill City as fast as humanly possible. At this time, the city was at only a 45% live release rate with 10,000 to 14,000 animals dying every year. APA! volunteers showed up every day to see the animals listed to be killed by 11:30am the following morning, and pull as many as we could into foster homes.
By 2010, when Austin had a 72% live release rate (largely up because of APA!), the city council, championed by Mike Martinez and Laura Morrison and at the recommendation of the Animal Advisory Commission, voted to formally make Austin a No Kill City with a goal of a 90% live release. In the No Kill Implementation Plan that was passed with this vote, a section included keeping open an adoption center at TLAC, specifically by using the Davenport Building (TLAC’s main admin building), after the city shelter moved to its new location. Of course, we already had our eye on using TLAC as our future facility though we heard from Council offices we had a 0% chance of getting it.
By 2011, the year of the city shelter move, APA! helped the city achieve an 89% live release rate. And now we were openly advocating for taking over the old shelter (TLAC) so that we could continue to help Austin and have a building for our organization.
Surprisingly, APA! had to overcome massive obstacles to be able to occupy TLAC, even though it was empty and even though we were the driver of No Kill. The city had plans to tear it down, due to the dilapidated conditions that existed well before we started rescue. The city couldn’t sell it or use it to build anything other than a park or animal shelter since it is dedicated park land with a grandfather clause for animals. At the time, we had a rocky relationship with the city shelter staff due to the nature of how we supported them, by pulling animals off the euthanasia list rather than taking animals they wanted us to take who may or may not ever have been in danger of euthanasia. Although we were awarded the temporary use of TLAC, that relationship made it very hard to keep Lamar Beach for animals, even after we moved in.
In 2017, city council voted, this time championed by council members Kathie Tovo, Leslie Pool, Alison Alter, Steve Adler, Greg Casar to allow APA! to rebuild at TLAC and stay for 75 years, basing future plans on a document called the Lamar Beach Master Plan, that showed the general space we would occupy and what our buildings might look like.
Essentially, in Phase II of the master plan, with an unknown timeline, Cesar Chavez would be moved away from the lake and cross right through our current footprint. To accommodate that, APA! needed to move back towards the YMCA and the railroad track. In that vote, the council directed city staff to “negotiate and execute” the 75 year agreement over the next four years.
You might be thinking, who would want to build when we are sandwiched between Cesar Chavez and the railroad tracks? We would! We had looked for other property throughout Austin but faced neighborhood overlays that have a blanket clause requiring kennels to be voted on by the neighborhood. That was a painful and exhausting process and it was clear the only neighborhood in Austin that wanted us was the one right around TLAC. With the neighborhood restrictions throughout the City of Austin, we faced finding a property outside the city limits which would eliminate visibility of our important work. At the time, we abandoned the idea of an alternate location.
We began these negotiations, sure about our ability to rebuild based on the Master Plan, and expected to get to the 75 year contract signing quickly. However, as soon as the surveyors and architects got busy, it was made clear to us that land issues would halt immediate plans to fundraise and improve the shelter facilities at TLAC. These issues are detailed below:
The power lines over us are the heaviest duty type of transmission power line there is, meaning they cannot be buried. We worked hard with Austin Energy and there is no way around them. Nothing can be built on 30 feet of either side of them. We have TWO sets that run from one side to the other, eliminating over 120 feet of buildable space in a longitudinal section.
We have broached the subject of heavy renovations under the power lines since the power lines were raised after our buildings were built, but Austin Energy has assured us that any site plan request that comes through for renovation will be denied because they believe it is in our best interest to get out from under the lines.
There is a 72” water main that runs from the railroad tracks down to Cesar Chavez that cannot be built over and cannot be moved.
The railroad hill is partially owned by the railroad company and would cost $1M to purchase each of two small chunks that would be technically on our property.
The floodplain is outside the land we would be building on but it prevents us from moving our footprint anywhere else on the land and going through the process of demanding that the master plan be reviewed again.
The property known to us as the “Y Field” in the northeast corner behind us, is where we would be pushed to and it is currently owned by YMCA. In order for us to gain formal access to it, the Y and the city have to finish the agreement that requires the city to build a parking garage on Y property, closer to Cesar Chavez. The status of this is unclear, holding up our ability to formally attain the Y field that would be needed for us to build on.
There are many heritage trees on the property that we do not want to harm and that would be quite expensive to move.
After years of discussion with many city departments that control the entities above, it is clear that whatever space we have left at TLAC will likely be a fourth to a third of the size of the footprint we use today.
As a result, we believe we have no choice but to purchase another property, hopefully for use in addition to TLAC, in order to serve our full mission. This will prove difficult because of the neighborhood restrictions that exist in seemingly every neighborhood within the city limits. We are currently pursuing all leads on land within 30 minutes of downtown Austin for what we hope is ultimately a satellite facility.
So what does that have to do with the negotiation of our license agreement? It means that after years of discussion with many city departments, we have come to learn whatever space we have left at TLAC will likely be just a quarter to third of the footprint we use today. We are bitterly disappointed with this outcome and believe we have no choice but to add a second site because the city cannot fulfill all of our land needs as we once thought. The bottom line is the millions of dollars our non-profit organization provides in lifesaving services to the City of Austin annually, and will spend building at the site, far exceeds the value of having free land to build upon.
I want to be clear, we still want to rebuild whatever we can at TLAC because we believe the extra cost to us is worth it for our mission and for Austin. We know it is necessary for pets to be front and center in our city and if we leave, TLAC will never be used to help animals again. We know our city believes in No Kill as one of its core community principles. Our vision for the future of this land is to use it to show the world that No Kill is a crown jewel of Austin. It should serve as a Phoenix, rising from the ashes of the 500,000 pets that needlessly lost their lives at this site over the last 70 years, and be a sign that history will never repeat itself on Austin’s watch again.
We will continue to keep you updated on these matters and hope you, as one of our valued supporters, will help advocate for keeping the TLAC property for the animals after this short letter series ends. We will continue to look for new property regardless of what happens at TLAC and appreciate the leads our supporters send us. If you think you might have a land lead to send our way, you can find details of what we are looking for here.
As always, we are grateful for the support you have shown to APA! staff and to the pets that are counting on us. If our history has taught us anything, it’s that Austin believes in the value that animals bring to all of our lives and expects us to do everything we can to save them. Thank you for joining us and committing so much to this mission.
Thank you,
Ellen Jefferson, DVM President and CEO Austin Pets Alive!/American Pets Alive!
In 2017, the Austin City Council passed a resolution that APA! could stay on the Town Lake Animal Center (TLAC) property for three 25-year agreements (75 years!). City staff and APA! were directed to negotiate and execute an agreement over the next three years.
Since then, APA!, with the amazing help of our pro-bono attorneys at Drenner Group, and the City has been in intense negotiations, resulting in two emergency extensions to allow both sides more time to come to a consensus. This has proven very difficult and our exact future is unknown. We want to make sure that you, as a valued APA! partner, are being brought along more thoroughly as this unfolds and a final decision is reached in the months ahead. What is crucial for you to know today is that it is impossible for APA! to operate with the TLAC facility service agreement currently in place, and due to the state of our facility, we have no choice but to either renegotiate those terms or find a new facility. We want you to be aware of this as we continue to work with the City of Austin to determine our future in the months ahead.
I’m sure you are asking: why can’t you just keep your current terms? The top-line answer to that is that it’s complicated. The complications involve requirements around the parkland that TLAC sits upon, the campus buildings in various stages of disrepair, the City’s Lamar Beach Master Plan, operations at both Austin Animal Center and APA!, and our vision for the future of No Kill. It is too much to pack into one letter. In an effort to keep you informed but not overwhelmed, we will be sharing this information in pieces over the next few weeks. We welcome your questions and thoughts as you hear our plans unfold.
When we started APA!, our goal was to make Austin a sustainable, No Kill city. We envisioned a place where all pets would be truly safe from death and where euthanasia due to space and time limits would no longer exist. Now, more than a decade and nearly 100,000 lives saved later, we have succeeded in fulfilling that mission year-over-year, making Austin the safest place in America for lost and homeless pets, and spreading that territory into the rest of Texas. This will not change, no matter the outcome of our relationship with the City.
As we are sustained entirely on donations and rely heavily on fosters and volunteers, we could never have accomplished making, and keeping, Austin No Kill without your tireless support. Your ongoing investment has helped us transform Austin and show the world what it looks like when a community comes together to work towards one goal. Every dollar you’ve given, every hour you’ve spent volunteering, and every pet you’ve fostered or adopted have resulted in what has come to seem normal but is truly extraordinary.
Thank you,
Ellen Jefferson, DVM President and CEO Austin Pets Alive!/American Pets Alive!
The City of Austin’s Animal Advisory Commission recently created a Working Group to focus on Austin Animal Center’s shelter space concerns. The Commission held a Special Called meeting this past Monday to discuss the findings of the Working Group as well as hear APA!’s quarterly report. At Monday’s Animal Advisory Commission, APA! President and CEO, Dr. Ellen Jefferson presented. Below is a summary of her comments to the Commission.
Austin Pets Alive! is the largest city of Austin Animal Services partner in lifesaving and the largest subsidizer of the city’s budget to serve Austin animals.
APA! takes animals that have medical and behavioral issues that require a higher cost per animal than the average healthy animal and care. APA! focuses on these animals in an effort to have a measurable effect on the live release rate at Austin Animal Center (AAC).
In June alone, of all the animals that were transferred from AAC to any partner, APA! took 77% of those animals and over 200 times the number taken by the other brick and mortar shelters in Austin.
APA!’s cost to care for the animals pulled this past quarter was approximately $500,000 – $750,000. These numbers are currently being validated through an external agency and will be reflected as accurately as possible in future reports.
APA! receives no funding from the City of Austin but through a license agreement does receive use of the Town Lake Animal Center (TLAC) facility, which on the rental market could reasonably expect to receive about $8 per square foot per year in rent for the use (kennel), the condition its in (deteriorated), and the location it is in which, at best, is $100,000 per quarter. APA! therefore contributed between $400,000-$650,000 last quarter alone to subsidize the city’s budget to serve Austin animals. That is just for the animals we’re taking in from AAC, not for the other work we’re doing in the community.
APA!’s mission is to eliminate the unnecessary killing of shelter animals. Over the last 10 years of this license agreement, the role of APA’s support at AAC has shifted away from lifesaving and into serving as overflow for Austin Animal Center, which was never the intention of the license agreement that was drafted 10 years ago. That’s what we’ve been trying to re-negotiate for the last five years. What that means is that Austin Pets Alive! is serving many animals that should not be at risk of euthenasia in the city’s publicly-funded shelter.
AAC has received an increase in budget of more than $10 million since the original license agreement was signed, and many supports have been put in place over the years by the Austin City Council. APA! is 100% committed to continuing to serve as a safety net for animals that cannot be saved through taxpayer dollars and is currently negotiating a license agreement that more accurately reflects the mission of APA! and the responsible utilization of all the funds put towards animals, whether they are donated or taxpayer-funded.
More than a decade ago, Austin Pets Alive! stepped forward to provide support to the City of Austin in order to improve, and eventually fix, the Austin Animal Center, which at the time was killing more than 14,000 pets annually. Our goal was to teach AAC to implement best practices in No Kill sheltering and transfer animals to APA! that were at imminent risk of dying. We have since partnered with the city to advocate for policy changes and budget growth while offering free consultative and educational services. Then and now, this has a direct cost to APA! of millions of dollars annually. APA! has provided all of this to the city at no cost to them, but at great cost to us. Through our 501c3, we spend millions each year on the animals we pull directly from AAC. In addition, a 2017 study conservatively measures the annual economic impact of the No Kill movement in Austin at more than $157 million.
While we’ve made tremendous progress as a community, becoming the largest No Kill city in America, today we find ourselves at a crossroads.This summer, AAC intakes, adoptions, the number of pets returned to owners, and volunteer hours are at historic lows. Austin Animal Center is headed in the wrong direction and the City of Austin needs to take corrective action. We are fully committed to maintaining Austin’s status as the safest place in the country for homeless pets. Now we need our colleagues at AAC to do their part.
The above graph shows June data for the past five years, indicating that the burden of animals is at a historic, pre-COVID, low. We collected data in several key areas, including volunteer hours and adoptions, to share with you here. While these charts show performance metrics at the Austin Animal Center are on the decline, AAC’s director is threatening to euthanize animals who have been safe in Austin for more than six years. Foster placements are down and APA! is still having to rescue pets from AAC who should be adopted from AAC, simply because the leadership at the shelter refuses to follow best practices or to adhere to either the No Kill Implementation plan or the 95% resolution passed by City Council in 2019.
While we have long been the City’s largest transfer partner, we also do so much more than simply transfer animals to APA!. We provide food and supplies to homeless pet owners and respond in crisis situations like the recent winter storm. We also have an online community of more than 15,000 individuals known as the PASS program. Through this innovative mutual aid platform, APA! helps thousands of pet owners annually who are faced with having to give up their animals due to housing loss, medical issues, or temporary crises. We also provide hundreds of jobs, offer endless volunteer opportunities to Austinites – both groups and individuals, and offer free consulting and operations support to Austin Animal Center through our Maddie’s Fund Learning Academy.
In addition to all of this, we have helped pass the No Kill Resolution/Implementation Plan, Animal Code Amendment Ordinance, 95% Live Release Ordinance, advocated for AAC to receive 10 million dollars in increased funding, shared protocols and training with AAC management to help them implement best practices, and donated countless hours of peer-to-peer training.
The Austin Animal Center, now one of the most highly resourced government shelters in Texas, has the ability to permanently solve the problems that lead to preventable, seasonal overcrowding.
Here is what we are asking AAC to do now, in order to build a sustainable, public-private partnership with Austin Pets Alive!:
Submit the data required in the Animal Code Amendment Ordinance. Transparent, monthly reporting will clearly illustrate to the public and the Animal Advisory Commission that areas of performance that need immediate improvement, including number of foster placements, number of adoptions, and the number of animals returned to their owners.
Implement emergency space protocols and AmPA!’s other proven protocols in order to avoid future, recurring capacity issues. APA! provides support and guidance to hundreds of shelters around the nation. As we offer our transport triage services and transfer-in help, we ask our shelters to do their part to minimize the number of pets APA! has to get out of the shelter.
Remove bottlenecks to outcomes. Currently, adopted pets cannot go home for days or weeks longer because they are awaiting sterilization surgery. These pets have families waiting for them but are taking up valuable kennel space because AAC procedures are inefficient and proven programs have been eliminated, like the VIP adoption program. This is just one example of where AAC needs to work with both the Animal Advisory Commission and the expert team at American Pets Alive! to improve operational efficiency to avoid capacity issues.
Join the hundreds of animal shelters around the nation who are participating in the Human Animal Support Services Project and learn how other successful large organizations, including several large municipal shelters in Texas, are reducing shelter intake, serving more pets and people in their communities, and keeping families together through pet support services.
AUSTIN, TX — Austin FC today announced an innovative community partnership with Austin Pets Alive! to showcase eligible dogs as honorary Austin FC mascots at Q2 Stadium in an effort to raise the profile of dog adoption throughout the region.
The first-of-its-kind honorary mascot partnership will see APA! dogs available for adoption featured as Austin FC honorary mascots at each Austin FC regular season home match throughout the 2021 season. Aligned with Austin’s status as the country’s largest “no-kill” city, Austin FC and Austin Pets Alive! will promote APA!’s rescue, adoption, foster, and volunteerism efforts through this unique community platform.
In support of finding loving homes for adoptable pets available through APA!, Austin FC will provide additional exposure for the featured pets through social media outreach and in-venue activations during each match at Q2 Stadium, including the participation of a dog within the pre-match activations that occurs shortly before kickoff of each match.
“Austin FC’s partnership with APA! is unique in sports yet incredibly authentic in Austin,” said Austin FC President, Andy Loughnane. “By featuring APA! dogs as honorary mascots at Austin FC home matches, our Club and supporters can help at-risk dogs in Austin by introducing them to our dog-loving community.”
“APA! has been fortunate enough to be a part of the Austin community for a little over a decade now,” said Dr. Ellen Jefferson, APA!’s President and CEO. “We’ve grown with this community and are excited to take a seat next to Austin FC and be a part of this new development in such a unique way! This is a really fun adventure to be on!”
“Austin Pets Alive! is beyond honored to join the Austin FC team in such a special way. To be able to highlight the amazing dogs in our care, those that are most at risk for euthanasia, to this audience is really quite a dream. It is our hope to connect with the team and its fans on a deep level and we look forward to cheering for Austin’s team” said Katera Berent, APA!’s PR and Events Manager
Alongside the city’s other shelter systems, APA! supports Austin’s position as a model city for the “No-Kill” movement across the country and internationally. Giving over 90,000 animals a second chance at life over the last decade, APA! believes that every shelter animal in Central Texas and beyond deserves a chance at life. This partnership provides another avenue for APA! to create awareness around the shelter animals available for adoption.
As you likely know, Austin Pets Alive!’s daily work centers around our mission to end the unnecessary killing of shelter pets, which sounds generic but in reality, is extremely difficult. It means that we purposely take pets in who are either already scheduled or soon to be scheduled to be euthanized. There’s no easy way to categorize these populations of animals as they vary. They can be like the animals we save in deep South Texas, healthy adorable pets with no space to go to like we saw during the ice storm, or the animals who have been chosen for a reason to be killed or eliminated from the population.
It’s the latter group that I’ll speak about here. We realized that the most measurable way to make an impact in ending the killing of shelter pets was to actually intervene at the last second before the animal was facing euthanasia, rather than pull animals into our program who were at the front end of their stay in a shelter. The reason that is important is that many rescue groups have the resources to help animals who are ready for adoption and we found a huge gap in the number of groups who can help the animals at the end of the line, especially en masse in large shelters.
We built our programs around these animals – puppies with parvovirus, bottle babies, cats with ringworm, those with Feline Leukemia, etc. Over time we have been able to expand the limits, beyond the city of Austin, of where we intervene in the deaths of these medical groups of animals. However, for big dogs with significant behavior challenges, it is much harder. We have only been able to intervene in the deaths of the behavior dogs in the city of Austin, Austin Animal Center, because of the expense, time, and difficulty in finding solutions for these dogs.
Just like with medical cases, we know we will lose some but we take them anyway and we try.
If you’d like to read more about Zydeco and the difficult situation we are in, please take time to hear from one of his closest friends and one who’s worked with him the longest, Hana Garner our Dog Behavior Training Manager. Her letter tells his story from start to finish and will offer insight into why we’ve made the decision we have.
Gordie Howe Sports Complex in Saskatoon grows to serve more athletes with the help of FieldTurf, Beynon Sports & Playteck Enterprises.
SASKATOON, Saskatchewan, February 8, 2018 (Newswire.com)
– One of Canada’s largest, most ambitious and popular, year-round, community sports complexes is receiving a massive upgrade; setting itself up as a leading example for communities worldwide.
The improvements will elevate the Gordie Howe Sports Complex, in Saskatoon, to a legendary level of public amenities and extend a strong relationship with the Tarkett Sports family – FieldTurf, Beynon Sports & Playteck Enterprises. Included in the upgrade will be a conversion to premium FieldTurf surfaces (including Canada’s first outdoor FieldTurf CORE sports field); adding a winter speed skating oval that converts into a summer outdoor Beynon track by Playteck Enterprises; plus, new indoor and outdoor baseball and softball diamonds, and much more.
“Our history with the Saskatoon sports community goes back to 2005 when we first installed our playing fields at the SaskTel Soccer Centre. Over the years, this relationship has continued to grow and in 2014 we were delighted to build our first FieldTurf Revolution field at the Gordie Howe Sports Complex,” said Eric Daliere, President, Tarkett Sports. “Led by the Friends of the Bowl, this community is leveraging the combined strengths of our Tarkett family by utilizing the unique features in every product we offer; from the debut of our CORE system to the use of FieldTurf Armour to create a winter speed skating track on top of an outdoor Beynon IAAF certified athletic running track – this is a dream project for us.”
Strong community support spearheaded by the visionary leaders of the Friends of the Bowl has experienced significant financial donations from multiple donors and has been encouraged by a supportive Saskatoon City Council.
“Whereas our Mission with the ‘Friends of the Bowl’ is to improve all sporting facilities within the Gordie Howe Sports Complex for the benefit of all citizens of Saskatoon, we are thrilled to be partnering with FieldTurf, Beynon Sports, Playteck Enterprises and its various product lines to ensure that we have the very best of sports surfaces in all areas to be used by all for many years to come,” stated Bryan Kostersoski, Chairperson.
In total, multiple sporting activities will be featured at the Gordie Howe Sports Complex, including football (tackle, flag and touch), soccer, softball, baseball, speed skating, cross-country skiing, track and field, ultimate frisbee, hockey, rugby and lacrosse.
Upgrading the existing facilities at the complex will continue to allow the hosting of future national and international sports championships, now in even more activities than ever before.
Details of newly added features include:
Canada’s first outdoor FieldTurf CORE system. The world’s first multi-layer, dual-polymer turf fiber will debut at the Gordie Howe Sports Complex.
New, indoor, 60,000 square foot multi-sport training center featuring Beynon Sports PolyTurf flooring for weightlifting spaces and general areas, plus indoor FieldTurf fields for softball/baseball infield diamonds.
New Beynon Sports BSS 2000 track and field surface built to Class II IAAF certification standards will be one of the largest and most prestigious athletic facilities across Canada. This unique, 400-meter track with all associated field events as well, will convert to a speed skating oval for use by the skating community throughout the winter months.
Two all-weather, year-round, outdoor FieldTurf baseball infields.
Batting cages, both indoor and outdoor.
The complex was originally created as part of an existing city park and renamed and expanded to honor “Mr. Hockey”, the legendary Gordie Howe, a native son of Saskatoon. From 1946 to 1980, Howe played twenty-six seasons in the National Hockey League and six seasons in the World Hockey Association; his first 25 seasons were spent with the Detroit Red Wings. The support of the Howe family with this city complex continues to this day. Construction on the new additions to the complex begin in April and scheduled for completion by late 2018.
More about the products slated for the Gordie Howe Sports Complex:
FieldTurf CORE is the world’s first multi-layer dual-polymer fiber. Engineered as the premier system, CORE is designed to deliver a more realistic, textured, grass-like shape with optimal durability and resilience. The system is constructed to deliver the highest fiber performance and resiliency available on the market. CORE is designed to provide elite high schools, high-level collegiate programs and professional teams with a system that exceeds even FieldTurf’s current industry-leading products.
Beynon Sports BSS 2000 This Olympic-caliber track system is designed to deliver safe daily training and still be exceptionally fast on race day. The track features a force reduction layer of high-performance butyl rubber and full-depth color polyurethane, finished with Beynon’s specialized Hobart Texture™, engineered to eliminate the EPDM granule migration found in traditional embedded track systems.
Beynon Sports PolyTurf Plus is a seamless sports flooring option, manufactured by Beynon Sports. This polyurethane pad and pour system is formulated for superior durability, precise game line markings, and fast installation. PolyTurf Plus Pad and Pour is also GREENGUARD Gold certified, representing a higher standard of indoor air quality. It is an excellent solution for schools and physical training areas.
FieldTurf Armour Designed to minimize wear and damage to your track & field surface. FieldTurf Armour protects against surface abrasion, surface and base compaction and contamination of the turf and the infill, as a result of event attendee traffic.
ABOUT FIELDTURF
When it comes to artificial turf sports fields, FieldTurf is the most trusted brand in the industry. Whether it’s football, soccer, baseball or any other sport, FieldTurf fields provide athletes with the safety and performance they need to perform at their best, while giving field owners the durability they want to maximize the value of their investment. FieldTurf is the world leader in artificial turf with over 20,000 installations worldwide.
ABOUT BEYNON SPORTS & PLAYTECK
Beynon Sports, the leader in track surfacing, is represented in Canada by Playteck Enterprises. Playteck has been installing, innovating and transforming the Canadian track market over the last 30 years. Alongside their nation-leading 5 Class II IAAF certified tracks, Playteck is the trusted supplier of University of Alberta, the University of Guelph, University of Victoria, Canada Games Center at the University of Prince Edward Island, Foothills Athletic Park in Calgary and countless University and College projects in Canada.
ABOUT TARKETT
Tarkett is a global leader in innovative and sustainable solutions for flooring and sports surfaces. Offering a wide range of products including vinyl, linoleum, carpet, rubber, wood & laminate, synthetic turf and athletic tracks, the Group serves customers in more than 100 countries worldwide. With 12,000 employees and 34 industrial sites, Tarkett sells 1.3 million square meters of flooring every day, for hospitals, schools, housing, hotels, offices, stores and sports fields. Committed to sustainable development, the Group has implemented an eco-innovation strategy and promotes circular economy. Tarkett is listed on Euronext Paris (compartment A, ticker TKTT, ISIN: FR0004188670). www.tarkett.com
