Rotorua area commander Inspector Herby Ngawhika. Photo / Laura Smith
Police and the council have set a goal to halve violent crime and antisocial behaviour in Rotorua’s CBD by 2026.
It comes as Rotorua’s top cop suggests people have moved from emergency housing motels to the city’s backpackers and hostels — where he says demand for police services is rising.
The target and comments were shared by police area commander Inspector Herby Ngawhika at a Rotorua Lakes Council meeting on Wednesday.
Inner-city businesses had voiced concern in recent months about safety, and Rotorua has also been hit by a spate of youth crime and ram raids.
In a response to Local Democracy Reporting after the meeting, Ngawhika said because the proposal was at the draft stage, many details were under consultation.
He said it was envisaged the initiative would address issues such as antisocial behaviour, shoplifting, graffiti, theft from cars and violent offending.
A request for police crime data relating to violence and…
The Importer store in Grey St is relocating. Photo / Sandra Conchie
A CBD building is set to be knocked down to create a proposed laneway between Grey and Durham Sts.
Furniture and homewares store The Importer, formerly at 79 Grey St, has moved to Mount Maunganui and Tauranga City Council intends to demolish the building to improve pedestrian and cycle connections and accessibility within the city centre’s retail precinct.
The Importer is consolidating its business to its Tawa St store. Its owner has been approached for comment.
Commission chairwoman Anne Tolley told the Bay of Plenty Times the council has an agreement to buy 79 Grey St.
Building the laneway was a “priority action” for the Knowledge and Retail Precincts, as defined in the City Centre Action and Investment Plan, Tolley said.
“The laneway will support pedestrian connections between the retail precinct of Grey St, the University of Waikato and the future public transport spine. Apart from providing better connections between these key city centre assets, it’s also intended that in the short-term, this area would serve as a pop-up green space or carpark.”
“We’re in the early stages of planning for this site, and we’ll share more details with the community once settlement is complete.”
Neighbouring Paw and Partners canine innovative fashion store owner Scott Brownsaid he was disappointed to see any business move from the city centre.
Many commercial and retail premises are up for lease in Tauranga CBD. Photo / Alex Cairns
The Tauranga City Council is going to tap into a special fund to explore a range of initiatives aimed at helping the CBD’s struggling businesses.
Parking, a point of concern for many retailers, will be one of the items on the agenda.
The move has been prompted by calls for action from inner city businesses which say the CBD is in crisis and they are struggling to attract staff because of a lack of parking.
Commissioners were today asked to approve widening the scope of the $500,000 per annum three-year fund to better respond to concerns raised by CBD businesses, including parking restrictions.
The fund was originally intended to help increase the supply of residential accommodation in the city centre.
However, council’s General Manager: City Development and Partnerships Gareth Wallis said the number of people wanting to access the fund had “dried up” so the money could be redirected into finding ways to help CBD businesses.
“As a council, we can do more to support the city centre over the next couple of years,” Wallis said.
“There’s definitely no silver bullet. If there was, we would’ve already done it,” Wallis said.
Hi everyone! And a happy new year! I hope this finds you and yours well. I wanted to reach out today to provide an update on where we stand with our plans for APA!’s campuses, land, and facilities.
As a reminder, your voices were heard in November as you helped us get the APA! Resolution passed with Austin City Council. In that resolution, the city council directed us to work with the City of Austin staff to determine an intake percentage number based on those animals at risk of euthanasia. We continue those discussions with the city and will have an update to share with you in February.
While we remain hopeful that we will finally reach a new agreement with city animal services and sign a long term lease to keep a small portion of our operations on our Town Lake Animal Center (TLAC) campus as soon as possible, we are excited to be exploring our expansion regardless of the TLAC outcome.
The APA! Board of Directors and some other amazing volunteers have been utilizing their connections to help us find Austin properties to purchase and expand our footprint. Right now there are a couple of potential properties we are looking at and because the property is, of course, at a premium in Austin, we are looking at properties with existing buildings we could adjust to fit our programs and services – and also properties with mostly open land. Based on what we find and can afford, the APA! leadership team is working on different solutions with a group of architects to puzzle together which programs and services would fit where and how best to maximize each scenario of property combinations for lifesaving.
What this means for APA! team members and supporters is that change – but exciting change – is on the horizon very soon. By this time next year, we could potentially have 4 locations, including TLAC and Tarrytown! With this expanding footprint we are making sure that each potential place provides a drastic improvement to what we have now. We know that a shelter needs to serve the purposes it should – not mass housing in uncomfortable kennels but getting each animal who needs us most the care, support and rehabilitation they need to get them ready for a home (whether it be foster or adoptive home) and out of kennel as quickly as possible!
We will continue to keep you informed of our property progress and your support we’ll need during this exciting time. Thank you as always for being part of this amazing lifesaving community for people and pets.
Something miraculous happened today. Because of the support YOU have given to APA! over the last couple months, keeping TLAC as a lifesaving mecca in the heart of Austin is 50% accomplished. In fact, your voice was counted today and they received over 2,000 registrations in support. It would NOT have happened without you raising your voice and telling the council that saving our four-legged, and sometimes three-legged, family members’ lives matters to you, even while the rest of the world’s social problems seem to be more important right now.
Today, let’s celebrate that the clouds have parted a bit and we can actually now see a future at TLAC on the horizon. Let’s thank the council members who led, sponsored and voted in favor of this. And let’s keep one foot in front of the other as we continue to put down roots that will keep so many animals from losing their lives needlessly in Austin and the rest of Texas.
We will do an impromptu celebration at ABGB TONIGHT starting at 6pm with the plan to raise a glass at 6:30. Stop by if you can! If the parking lot is full, there is parking in the neighborhood behind ABGB.
We will keep you informed every step of the way from here on out. THANK YOU!
This is the week! Austin City Council will vote Thursday on the future of Austin Pets Alive! at Town Lake Animal Center.
The animals depend on the support of the greater Austin animal-loving community and we are asking if you will take one more quick action to confirm your support for our resolution, agenda item #38.
We want this resolution to pass, as it clearly removes the restriction that would prevent us from saving the lives of those on death row all over our state. This is important because we have long demonstrated that we can save lives in need while also maintaining that Austin’s No Kill status is first and foremost.
We are grateful the resolution also directs City animal services 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.
Check the first box for the regular Austin City Council meeting,
Select item #38 from the drop-down menu,
Click “no” that you do not wish to speak,
Click “For” for your position,
Fill out your identification information and in the box for the topic, please type, “Vote Yes on Item #38.”
That’s it! Your voice will then be counted in support of Thursday’s meeting!
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 are incredibly grateful to Council Member Leslie Pool for her leadership on this resolution and to Mayor Adler, Council Member Kitchen, Council Member Fuentes, and Council Member Casar for co-sponsoring. Please join us in thanking them for their support for APA! and No Kill. We know the Council offices are keeping track of people who email/call in favor of agenda item #38, so it is very important that you fill out that form before noon on Wednesday!
Thank you for being here for the animals, all the animals, and ensuring that APA! continues to keep Austin No Kill.
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.
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.
—————
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!
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!
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