Citizens, City Council discuss E Rate reduction at Fayetteville Animal Shelter
Sally Jo (left), a two-year old Heeler, and Peaches, a two-year-old Pitbull Mix, wait in a kennel inside the adoption room at the Fayetteville Animal Shelter Wednesday afternoon.
Photo: Todd Gill, Flyer staff
A group of local residents and City Council members are looking at ways to help speed up the process of lowering the euthanasia rate – or E Rate – at the Fayetteville Animal Shelter.
Shelter officials expect the E Rate to be around 25 percent by the end of 2012. Reported numbers show the rate was at nearly 50 percent in 2008.
Although the shelter has seen a dramatic decrease in the number of animals euthanized in the past five years, some believe a little more funding and support could go a long way.
But first, it’s important to look at the current situation.
A county-wide facility
Getting to this point hasn’t been an easy process, said animal services superintendent Justine Middleton, especially considering the shelter functions as a county-wide facility which takes in animals from several neighboring cities.
Staff photo
Middleton said 1,672 animals – or 32.5 percent of the 5,138 dogs and cats the shelter received in 2011 – came from outside Fayetteville.
While the shelter does receive about $75 for each animal brought in from outside the city, Middleton said many of those animals require extended stays which eat up both space and extra money in order to keep the animals alive.
There is hope on that horizon, though.
In 2010, Fayetteville officials told the county it would no longer accept animals from outside the city limits. As a result, plans for a Washington County animal shelter began taking shape and a new county facility is set to open later this summer.
New and continued efforts
Middleton said several efforts to decrease the shelter’s overall animal population have helped contribute to a lower E Rate in recent years.
Initiatives include a 2010 foster care program expansion, ongoing low-cost and free adoption events, an increased Facebook presence promoting available animals, and the opening of the Ranger’s Pantry pet food bank, which Middleton said has provided over 40,000 pounds of pet food to financially-strapped residents who can’t afford to feed their pets and may have otherwise turned them over to the shelter.
With continued adoption efforts and less animals being brought in, Middleton expects the E Rate to drop to about 20 percent next year and to 14 percent in 2014.
A push for “no-kill”
Members of a group called No-Kill Fayetteville say they’d like to see the city become a “no-kill” community where all adoptable and treatable animals are saved and where only unadoptable or non-rehabilitatable animals are euthanized.
Staff photo
Scott Harper, a spokesperson for the group, said he would like to see more access to low-cost spay and neutering, a trap-neuter-release program for feral cats, and increased cooperation with regional transport and rescue operations, among other steps outlined in a program called The No Kill Equation.
“We’ve got to spend more of our city resources toward prevention, and reducing the intake at the shelter,” he said. “We want the city to look at these proven programs that are out there.”
With extra funding and a strong push for more community support, No Kill Fayetteville members say they believe the shelter can reach standard “no-kill” E Rates of 10 percent or less.
At a recent town hall meeting, Harper suggested the city add a checkbox to monthly utility bills that would allow residents the option of donating money to the shelter.
According a recent Scripps Howard News Service examination, roughly 1,200 of the nation’s 6,700 shelters and rescue groups identify themselves as “no-kill.” And while the exact E Rates and outcomes at those facilities seem to vary, it’s clear that reducing euthanasia rates as much as possible is something both citizens and Fayetteville Animal Shelter staff are working toward.
City Council support
Ward 2 Alderman Matthew Petty said he, too, would like to see more funding and support for the shelter.
“If you could fund (a specific future program), which would it be?” Petty asked Middleton during a recent City Council agenda session.
Middleton said the biggest need is an expansion of the shelter’s spay and neuter services, specifically a high-volume, no-cost spay/neuter program. Extra staff, including a second veterinarian, would likely be required, though. “My vet just can’t do anymore than he’s doing right now,” said Middleton.
Construction of an isolation facility would also be a big help, she said. Sick animals that need to be quarantined during treatment are sometimes euthanized simply because they pose a threat to healthy animals in the shelter.
Petty said he’d support increasing the shelter’s operational budget to help expand services, but felt like money for additional facilities should come from private sources.
“We might need to turn to the community to raise some of that money,” he said.
Another council member, Ward 4′s Sarah Lewis, said she was happy a discussion was forming at the City Council level.
“The reality is there are logistical reasons why (euthanasia) occurs,” said Lewis. “And this is where the conversation about it starts.”
Dustin Bartholomew contributed to this story
I really hope the city will support the idea of adding a donation checkbox for the shelter on utility bills – it’s an easy reminder and convenient way to contribute. This Fayetteville citizen would donate every month.
Washington County and Northwest Arkansas need an aggressive education campaign to teach people, especially in our more rural communities, why it’s so important to spay and neuter your dogs and cats. We also need to provide much more funding for low-cost and vouchered spay/neuter procedures. Spending the money on prevention saves thousands over dealing with the consequences of unaltered animals. The level of ignorance surrounding people who irresponsibly breed their pets or who let their pets wander around unaltered is astounding.
No-kill shelters, unfortunately, have been massive failures, even in cities where they started off as promising. The Austin, TX shelter, one of the largest cities to go “no-kill”, has had to resort to euthanasia because of being overcrowded. In Northwest Arkansas, these shelters would quickly hit capacity and simply stop accepting animals. Those animals would end up dumped, killed, or otherwise neglected.
Not supporting a no-kill shelter is the dirty secret of those who work in animal rescue (such as myself). All of my dogs are rescues and my heart aches at the thoughts of any animal being euthanized. But, until we aggressively, consistently and systematically spay and neuter our pets, this is just not the solution.
in addition to the utility bill checkbox, the city could also utilize electronic billing for its utility services. this is common practice among businesses, as it saves money (paper, printing, postage, manpower) versus old-school paper invoicing. redirect the savings to the Shelter.
I SO wish the city had online bill pay. My water bill is my only bill that is consistently late, simply because of the hassle of writing a check, finding a stamp, so on.
Behold! https://egov.accessfayetteville.org/utility/
fayettevillian, you can pay your water bill online at https://egov.accessfayetteville.org/utility/
What the what?! I had no idea! Why is there nothing about this service on the actual bill they send? (I’m certain now someone will post a copy of their water bill, with the online bill pay option clearly highlighted.)
Thanks for the info, mpetty and Maddie’s mom!
Some might believe that it is better to go ahead and euthanize an additional 1,300 Dogs, Cats, Kittens and puppies a year like the current system/program is doing, just because they don’t see, understand or believe the FACT that over 30 communities just like ours with open admission shelters across the country are and have succeeded in reaching the No Kill Status of a 10% or less euthanasia rate. I’m not suggesting this is a perfect way to approach our overpopulation problem, but it is the ONLY Working, Documented, Proven Program out there today! So the argument above that Austin may have been faced with the possibility of having to euthanize some animals at 1 point during the year due to lack of space might have been the case, but I assure you the hundreds and hundreds of animals lives that were spared because Austin embraced the No Kill Equation wouldn’t trade places with an animal from Fayetteville’s shelter where an average of 30-35 animals a week, 5 a day were euthanized in 2011.
I also believe hiring a second Veterinarian is not the way to go at all. Spay Arkansas, HSO, local Veterinary clinics and others are willing to work with the City to offer timely, convenient and in many cases at a lower cost than the shelter can, so lets don’t spend more of our money supporting yet another city employee! Lets direct it straight to programs that are part of the solution! Besides if they are right and once the county shelter opens up and takes the load off the shelter then the current veterinarian should have time to at least double the number of alterations he did last year to say 800 and we can contract out another 1,000 procedure to the groups I previously mentioned. I for for one would like to have the choice of where I have my 4 legged family member operated on wouldn’t you?
The check box donation option on our water bills MUST only go towards the Low Cost Spay & Neuter program and/or the Trap Neuter & Release program and not just into the general fund where most donations are currently going, otherwise it might just be spent on raises for the staff or a new roof. Some of us only want to know their hard earned money is going directly to a progressive solution of our over-population problem!
Thank You Fayetteville Flyer for running this very important story, we should have a shelter that truley is a reflection of our values and a shelter others will admire!
“lets don’t spend more of our money supporting yet another city employee!”
Scott, we appreciate your concern for the Fayetteville shelter and for our city budget. It is always good to have the benefit of free advice from experts who don’t live in our city or pay city property taxes yet care about our situation.
Scott, go away!!
Check box on water bills? Seriously? How do you plan to pay for the accounting nightmare this will create? Considering that most direct mail fundraising campaigns net about a 1% response rate, at $1 per bill, that’s a whopping $300 a month for the shelter. (The City sends about 30,000 water bills each month)
While I wouldn’t be one to turn up my nose at an extra 300 bucks a month, consider the extra accounting and processing cost this will add, and the money starts to get eaten up pretty quickly. No, Scott, the costs of something like this cannot be absorbed by the already thin operations budget.
Hell, we can’t even get the City to promote on-line bill pay options on the bills themselves! You think they are going to be able to get something like this right?
So here’s an idea. Leverage the power of today’s communication tech. Find someone to donate the time and expertise to create an app for Animal Services that lets people ‘sponsor’ a furry friend through the app and contribute money for its welfare. Kind of like a “Save the Children” deal where you can ‘sponsor’ a child overseas. Then they can keep tabs on it from their iPhone, with pictures and such, and a new ‘pet’ when that one gets adopted. The funds raised can be funneled through the Friends of the Shelter, and the City doesn’t have to incur any additional operating costs.
Let’s find some real solutions that will really work, instead of yelling and carrying on about how evil the folks are at the Animal Shelter. Look at the progress! 3 years ago the E-rate was almost 50%! They expect to have it down to about 14% soon. I call that real effort and real progress. Not platitudes and preaching.
jmo
“3 years ago the E-rate was almost 50%! They expect to have it down to about 14% soon”
I’d feel glad about this but wonder if the reduction to 14% means that the animals and euthanasia numbers will simply reappear at the new County shelter. I imagine the overall e-rate, County + City, could stay about the same. County e-rate and conditions for the animals can only be guessed at.
Scott, you say that a second vet is not an option because the spay/neuter services can be found at a lower cost elsewhere. Have you ever actually checked prices? The Fayetteville Animal Shelter and their one vet offer $10 spay/neuters to community members that show financial need. That’s compared to the Spay Neuter Clinic at $40, and local vets at anywhere from $100 to $300. Wouldn’t it seem smarter to hire a second vet that can reach all of those families who wouldn’t be able to afford it otherwise for their pets? The one vet at the shelter not only does surgeries for every animal that gets adopted but also for every animal that comes through their $10 program. He is literally slammed with back to back surgeries every day. Just some information for you to consider, from someone who is actually fighting the battle and regularly spaying and neutering animals and has utilized almost every resource available here for it.
Did You Know? Yes!
I did not say a second vet is not an option, I said it’s not the way to go. The cost of adding a second veterinarian would be an ongoing cost of at least $50,000 a year (+-) just to pay his or her base pay then ad another $5 or $10 thousands dollars for the additional labor, drugs and supplies to do these alterations. If you took that same $55,000 to $60,000 and applied it directly to an aggressive, timely and convenient low cost voucher spay & neuter program even at a $50 per procedure voucher allowance, 1,000 or more animals could be altered which will reduce the intake over time and subsequently decrease the overhead at the shelter not to mention save more lives. The price to income qualifying citizens or simply citizens on Medicaid would still only be $10 for each of these procedures and they would now have a choice of when and where to have it done.
Scott definitely wins that numbers argument. That’s not to say that I would be against a second veterinarian in principle, but it’s pretty clear that if we had $50,010 of taxpayers money to spend, that would be 1 operation by a city employee that makes 50,000 a year (using the example) and 1000 operations if we paid a clinic that charges 50 bucks. Clear, right?
I really like Monroe’s suggestion about adopting a pet using modern technology and funding for care that way.
I also worry, like Scott mentioned, about exactly what donations to the general fund of the animal shelter goes towards, but obviously you have that worry with any charity you donate to. I would like to see it going towards acquiring more land/bigger facilities/more food/more people to actually clean up the cages so they aren’t standing in poop all day. I’d like to help as much as possible in raising this money, but I need a little direction in how to go about doing so and how to make sure the money is used wisely. As it is, here is an anecdote:
My wife and I wanted to lend our assistance in any way we could. We heard here on the fayetteville flyer that they were overcrowded and needed people to foster dogs that were scheduled to go on transport at the end of the month. That way space would be freed up for other dogs that needed a chance to be seen. (Why in the world don’t we just have enough space for all the animals to have a chance to be seen??) Nobody at the shelter knew what was going on. One person wanted us to leave because it was 20 minutes until they closed. Nobody knew which dogs were scheduled to go on transport. Nobody even knew where transports went. We simply wanted someone to be capable of telling us how we could help. I realize that working in such situations will desensitize you, but it would be nice to see more organization and awareness in general. Better communication and organisation (embracing a fostering network) seems like it could go a long way to save the lives of animals that have no business being killed (which in my opinion are only animals that are actually suffering and cannot be healed, or actual vicious dogs where rehabilition is deemed impossible). So let’s raise the money as a community and get to work.
FWIW I realized the obvious mistake in my logic about the price of a veterinarian. Of course the operations would be part of the job description, and so the calculation of how money would be better spent would be more complex, and depend on how many operations were performed and for how much. Again I don’t care if we hire a second veterinarian, I just want to do the best/right thing with what money we may have.
Please check out this website to learn more about what can be done.
http://www.nokilladvocacycenter.org/
Do any local veterinarians see injured or sick animals after regular hours? We relied on a great vet clinic for years but now they send patients to the emergency clinic after hours. I’d rather take my animals to someone I know and someone closer than Springdale. Apologies for the somewhat off-topic question. It’s about animal welfare at least.