[Music]
i don't see it
good morning it is
9 a.m and i'd like to call this meeting
of the animal services center
of the messiah valley board to
order
first could we rise for the pledge
please
i
thank you and thank you all for being
here um
we
sh can becky can you help us determining
the quorum please sure uh
manny sanchos
president
lynn ellens
he's here we have john macias
present
enrique
enriquez excuse me eric enriquez good
morning
here and becky koran
so we have a quorum thank you for that
and just a friendly reminder to those of
you i don't know how much you've been up
here jonathan but just so you know only
three red lights can be on at a time so
if if you're noticing that there's any
trouble with that just just so you know
someone has to turn off their red light
at that time so
just as a friendly reminder of how this
goes
given quorum i would
request any changes to the agenda and
hearing none i would entertain a motion
to approve the agenda
i'll second the motion so there's nobody
moving by
commissioner ellen seconded by
commissioner sanchez
any other questions or
amendments okay hearing none please i
would ask that you call the vote please
board member sanchez
yes board member ellen
mr ellens i really need you to turn the
microphone on and off so i can hear you
okay
thank you
board member macias
yes former gandara yes
chair corn yes thank you thank you the
hedgehog is approved next we're moving
on to the minutes for the prior meeting
on march 24th 2022 i'm not sure if you
all had a chance to look at those they
weren't within your packet but i would
entertain a motion to approve them or um
discuss if there are amendments so move
second
moved by uh board member gandra seconded
by board member sanchez uh please if we
could have a vote board member sanchez
yes board member ellen's
yes thank you board member marcias yes
former gandara yes chair koran yes thank
you thank you
next up we'll have our reports uh
first starting off with the coalition
for pets and people people i would love
to hear from carla baker who works with
cherished canine and i'm very very much
looking forward to hearing
from you carla
an advocate i know
an outspoken advocate who loves animals
more than anything so i've been admiring
you on facebook and you're at action so
great great that you're here thank you
for being here
just
well can we get this off
okay again my name is carla baker and
i'm with cherished canine i really need
you to speak directly into this
microphone please
okay can you hear me now
i feel like a phone commercial
my name is carla baker and i'm with
cherry canine albree rescue
we let me get this done just a second
there we go we were founded in 2013 we
are a foster-based rescue and we're 100
volunteers so we have zero paid
positions
everybody is volunteer for us
our annual budget is only about 60 to 65
000 a year we do save a lot of animals
for that budget so we
we
pinch every corner we can
the next is our mission statement we're
dedicated to rescuing and re-homing
neglected abused and abandoned animals
in las cruces and the surrounding
communities our goal is to decrease the
euthanasia rate at the shelter by
rescuing the dogs before they reach the
shelter
so when we were founded deb and sue
peterson were the only two off the
street with
two hearts four paws were the only off
the street rescue in las cruces las
cruces and there was such a huge need
so what we're doing is we tried to fill
that gap
that doesn't mean we don't pull from the
shelter we actually do pull from the
shelter
we pick up dogs off the street and in
the desert we
look for their homes if we don't find
their existing homes we find new homes
for them we're really into
pushing a lot of dogs out of here right
now we do a monthly transport to
minneapolis or the minneapolis area well
they don't all go there i shouldn't say
that but the majority of our dogs go to
the minneapolis area they get adopted
within a week or two up there
and we get lots of updates on them so
that's been our big push versus we're
still adopting locally but we're really
pushing a lot of them out of here
we do a lot of trapping we have worked
with other organizations we've lent our
traps to other rescues we used to work
quite a bit with the county
acos
and some of those hard like pretzel if
you heard of pretzel we did a lot of we
do a lot of work with other
organizations
we do have a very good working
relationship with the other rescues in
fact we're on a private feed with all
the rescues that we're constantly in
touch with each other
our rescue accepts all breeds we're not
breed specific we everything from young
dogs old dogs
we take them all
medical cases we have a ton of medical
cases right now in fact we just pulled a
dog from
this shelter a couple weeks ago that had
been ran over by a motorcycle
we
we've got probably five or six major
medical cases going on right now
uh we already said we transferred to
rescue partners we have rescue partners
arizona colorado i'm
probably about 10 to 15 states but right
now our biggest push and who's taking
the most from us
are
three rescues located outside of the
minneapolis area so we transport to
kansas city they meet us in kansas city
they transport or actually outside of
wichita not kansas city
they meet us there they transport the
rest of the way up and we do that every
month
with a load we we did ran in we did run
into a little bit of a problem our
transport vehicle is down and out so we
need another vehicle which now it's
costing us to rent a vehicle each month
so
our number one priority now is trying to
find a new transport vehicle so we can
continue to push these dogs out of here
we transport between 20 and 45 every
month to that area
border patrol we actually have provided
dogs to border patrol we have two dogs
in training right now with border patrol
those two puppies were found in the
middle of the desert and burrina with
their litter it was kind of a sick
situation somebody found a box
of about three week old puppies and a
couple had been drug out and half eaten
already
and we took that litter in and
two were adopted by the foster here
locally
one was sent out to
minneapolis and two are in the border
patrol program and they've been there
now years so
it's it takes between a year and a half
to two years to pass or fail so we still
don't know if they've completely made it
but they've made it this far they're
malinois we call them our minnie mouse
because they're smaller than normal
malinois but
there are many mouths so
so anyway we have a good working
relationship with them also
i'm going to just kind of show you you
know rubber meets the road these are the
rebel the one on the left she was just
found in the desert the same area and we
believe she's related to the malinois
puppies we picked up last year
she was picked up
weighing four pounds
in the middle of the desert in barino
and
she is getting ready to be she's now six
weeks old
our next transport's in two weeks she'll
be heading out to minneapolis
the next one over is ruby we pulled her
from the shelter ruby is a little old
lady
she had the last of her teeth pulled
so but she's going into her adoptive
home tomorrow so yay for her
dagwood dagwood was actually born at the
shelter
he was a care and maintenance case i
guess his owner was in prison and he
was
born there he went to
she got out of her jail i think not
prison she got out of jail took him back
long story short we ended up taking the
whole litter back
or out and they all got adopted we still
have dagwood he's gone through a series
of surgeries so he just keeps getting
held back from being able to be
transferred out of here because
he's had
three or four surgeries at this point so
journey i just mentioned her she's the
one that was ran over and hatched about
three weeks ago by a motorcycle
and county aco picked her up took her to
the shelter we got word of it we went
picked her up the next morning
she had quite a few seizures
she was seen by that she went into
seizure activity because of the swelling
in her brain
and
she is doing great she's heading to
minneapolis also
pirate pirate also came from the shelter
pirate um as you can see he's missing
his right eye he was born um with an
underdeveloped eye
and he came in with all of his litter
mates his litter mates were sent on to
colorado he was left behind
so
we were asked to go pull him we did
he's kind of stuck in our rescue he's
been with us for a long time but
we don't um
they're with us until we find a place
for them whether that's another rescue
or a doctor whatever so we our dogs stay
with us we don't euthanize them we
we just stop doing intake we don't
we don't
you know get rid of the ones we have if
we can't find a home for them
so
anyway so in a nutshell that's kind of
what we're about so what uh right now we
have about
um i i think we have about 40 getting
ready to go transfer out we have about
75 in the rescue right now
what questions do you guys have for me
any questions from members of the board
ma'am care board member ellen please
i've been to some of your
events
it's about it
i think it's my understanding that all
of your animals are under foster
care
yes sir all and we don't have a facility
everyone don't have a visibility correct
they all live with somebody you said
that you have a budget of about sixty
five thousand dollars
what do you spend it on
animal care
over
about
over half of it goes to food and
the majority of the rest goes to
the
medical care of the the dog's vet care
this year we're getting slammed we've
had so many surgeries and we're only in
april
do you distribute any of your funds to
do any of the fosters
we provide all needed supplies we don't
provide money
we provide food crates play pins puppy
pads whatever they need every foster has
a different need so they tell us what
they need we provide it we're really
lucky we've got a good community when it
comes to us needing something we put out
the hay we need it and
somebody gets it for us so we're really
lucky in that standpoint now that the
pandemic is
sort of over are you doing any
events now no you know what the pandemic
taught us and and this is funny because
we just had this discussion amongst the
rescues some of us
that we
didn't and we're not adopting out any
less not doing adoption events and now i
can focus more on pushing them out of
here on transports so we are not going
back to having adoption events we are we
are sticking with the
advertising online
and um word of mouth i get a lot of
former adopters calling up and saying
okay i want a playmate for you know
whoever
and we come up with one um
you know we have three being adopted
this week i've got another in the works
so without adoption events we can spend
more time actually doing the adoptions
and like i said we have a wonderful
transport coordinator and she kicks it
when it comes to getting good transport
partners and getting our dogs out of
here do you do cats we do not do cats
how many
i may have missed it how many animals
at a time do you generally have
fostered out
it really is dependent on
what i mean what we all have fosters
we'll have a ton of fosters and we'll
have a ton that need a break or whatever
so it just depends on how many fosters
are saying yes at that time
and how many puppies our numbers shoot
up when we have leaders and letters of
puppies
our last transport we sent out was
almost all puppies well that's not true
there were some adults and some mamas in
there but
the right now we have about 75 and like
i said we have about 40 slated to leave
next month
that's a lot
yeah that is a lot for a little budget
it's a whole lot thank you
thank you
madam chair board member messiest please
mr baker you mentioned earlier that one
of your greatest needs is a vehicle can
you speak more to what kind of vehicle
you're seeking or need for yourself we
our transport vehicles are generally our
last one was an old road runner bus
and we converted it and we had it was
outlined in crates and stuff it lived
its years out in our rescue it's done
right now we've been renting cargo vans
from enterprise every month it's killing
us financially
so we're looking at either
like a large capacity
i'm sorry i keep hitting everything a
large capacity van
or a um
bus kind of the bus is ideal because you
know we can walk down the aisle we have
crates on both sides the van's a little
different because you you know yeah you
kind of block a dog in to get to another
dog and then you have to pull
kills out to get to dogs but whatever we
just need something to move dogs out of
here
thank you
thank you any other questions from the
board
hearing none
carla again thank you so much it is
really meaningful to the shelter and our
animal community that you are
keeping your organization running and
also the advocacy that you do which i
really appreciate especially related to
abused and neglected animals in our
community which is a really critical
and
sad
situation and so
i appreciate you we appreciate you and
and thank you very much for coming here
today and and sharing about cherished
canine perfect thank you have a great
day
madam chair
yes board member ellen
could you come back
carlo don't go yet
i have another question
oh i left this up anyway
i know that you ship dogs out of state a
lot to
partner
rescue operations
but how many direct adoptions has a
percentage of
the number of animals you have at a
given time what's your percentage rate
for direct adoptions at your events for
instance well we don't do events anymore
but about
we right now are transferring out about
twice as many as we are um adopting out
and so we that number is going to shoot
up because we're we're moving our focus
away from adoptions i mean we're still
going to adopt out
but we're just finding you know we're
getting a lot of returns we're getting
it's it's just you know we just got to
return
two days ago we had to take two dogs
back from arizona the owner took one to
the shelter and said it was a stray
thank goodness for microchips
you know they call us
give us a we give them the name of the
adopter and that just happens to be the
good samaritan who found the stray
so um we
you know they're not having our partners
it's the northern states are completely
different mentality when it comes to
animal welfare
the animals i mean we get so many busted
up animals here when i say we i'm not
meaning just our rescue the shelter the
other rescues
and
they just throw away here
the other states look at them as family
members
all right thank you
thank you
any other questions from the board
thank you again thank you so much carla
for being here
um next up we have
city and county acl reports but today
this time we don't have a
county a county acl report we do have a
county representative here but but we
don't have a formal presentation so um
i'll first defer to the city
presentation and then we can go from
there and see if see if we have other
questions from the county
good morning
good morning madam chair members of the
board for the record my name is gino
jimenez i'm the animal control
supervisor for the city and what i'm
going to do is present you our numbers
for march
2020.
so i reported stray animals the officers
responded to 475 stray animals for the
month of march
225 of those were goa meaning that the
officer had no contact with that animal
250 animal stray animals were
apprehended
so
196 animals were impounded at the animal
service center 143 were dogs and 53 were
cats
the officers were successful in field
rtoing 54 animals back to their owner
that meant that 54 of those animals did
not cross the threshold of the asc envy
the officers were also unsuccessful in
re failed rtowing 12 animals in the
field those were animals that had some
sort of id
however for some unknown reason
and my slides later on will show why
those were not able to go back to the
rightful owner
so
we had a total of 66 identifiable
animals
and i know
there was some confusion last month on
this slide in particular and i want to
thank a counselor or board member flotus
for bringing that to my attention what
happened is i had inputted incorrect
numbers so thank you for bringing that
to my attention ma'am
that's why i was confused on how to
respond because i thought my numbers
matched but they didn't thank you for
bringing that to my attention
so here is our three-year
strain animal comparison so again like i
said we had 447 for the month of march
it's keeping with our trend
hopefully these numbers will go down
like they did in 2020 and we can get
back to that trend would be much better
for everybody especially for the asmb
here is our three-year field rto
comparison
we are way way above our past years
so i am very very hopeful
that we continue that upward trend of
being able to field rto animals i think
is one of our highest numbers that we've
had i think the highest we've ever had
was something like 66
but here we are at 54 and this year
those numbers are
surpassing the past two years
here is a new slide that we just started
last month is our community cap program
the green number shows the number of
cats and traps that the officers have
responded to
and the blue line graph
is
excuse me
it shows the number of community cats
that we were able to release out in the
field now again like i said
in the past couple
presentations this is a new program so i
believe that the green numbers are going
to exceed or way surpass
the the released cats
because it is a new program
eventually i believe that those numbers
are going to level out and we're going
to be somewhere equal to or greater than
my next slide is reasons for owner
releasing animals we had 11
dogs that were owner released for
aggression for either towards people and
or other pets
we had seven that were
on the release because the owner could
not care for them any longer two for
sick or injured and one was a euthanasia
request because that animal was sick and
they could no longer care for it i mean
excuse me was elderly and they could no
longer care for it
three for um the owner was moving uh the
owners were moving into one was to an
apartment new apartment complex where
that landlord would not allow them to
keep that type of dog in their facility
and the
one was for a
elderly gentleman that was being
relocated to a retirement facility
we had one that was always escaping and
finally one where the owner claimed that
they did not have time for
my next slide is the reasons that
officers were unable to field rto
identifiable animals back to their owner
10 were for no contact by phone or at
residence and one was actually the wrong
address
and we had one where the microchip was
actually registered to a business
and it was after hours so obviously
there was no no contact made there
that is uh my presentation i will stand
for any questions
are there any exactly
board member ellen's please on the
chip that was registered to a business
you called after hours no answer did you
try to call during the day
afterwards
no
madam chair uh board member ellen no sir
well we because of our time constraints
that animal had to go to the animal
center center
any other questions from the board
board member flores please thank you
well just a comment
gino i think that um those are your
procedures that you did you you stuck
you had to follow procedures and that's
why you
didn't call back during working hours as
you said there were time constraints and
that's just the regulations you follow
correct yes ma'am yeah absolutely it
wasn't as if you said okay too bad
you know
and madam chair board member flotus and
that's a good uh
comment there um the officers try the
best that they can with what they can
and
you know of course policy dictates what
we do
but also if there's nobody there there's
nobody there
you're welcome
thank you board member flores are there
any other questions from the board
hearing none thank you supervisor
jimenez as always thank you for
presenting and you're welcome and
sharing that
next up we have a report from the
shelter uh dr haddon please come on up
and okay dear board members um
uh mr thacker can't director thacker
couldn't be here today and i know that
dr hadden
is is out of her
boss veterinary status and presenting so
i would ask that you uh give her in here
board member ellen are we not going to
hear from the county
no the county
we don't have a presentation from the
county so madam chair
oh okay we do we are in the process of
getting that my apologies we're in the
process of doing that mr macias
has it and okay
passed around so hopefully we will have
the presentation but we might need to
push it a little bit okay
let's let dr hatton get over don't worry
we're gonna we're
well it's all good we will hear from the
county then afterwards so
please state your name to start us off
and then
go ahead
i'm dr hadden um medical director from
animal services center
bear with me all right um the director's
report for
march of 2022
the three-year comparison
of
our current animal count what is in the
facility right now
it's pretty close to what it was last
year
but steadily going up from the years
previous
and if at any point if i skip over
something because this is going to be a
short presentation
please feel free to
interrupt
so march intakes comparing 20 21 and 22.
um we're
[Music]
i want to say significantly higher but
we're quite a bit higher this year
for march intakes
as compared to the last
and at 645 that's about 20.8 animals a
day in march that were taken in
these are our transfers were for a total
of 200
the
the highest the ones that take the most
everyone is important i want to i want
to be sure and emphasize that even the
folks that will take one
but apa
halo
forever homes not forever homes
they are one of the rescues but front
range freedom rescue is a new rescue
they've been taking our ringworm and a
lot of neonates
kittens
so that that's been a huge help for us
again
halo and
colorado puppy rescues they've been
we've been inundated with puppies this
year
well every year but they've been taking
a lot of puppies from us
for us
our returns we've had a total of 13
dogs
and one cat for various reasons
our outcomes
again compared for the last couple years
and this year
adoptions are
up a little bit percentage-wise
from 21.
reclaims are about the same
rescues are down a little that may be
due to disease i can't say for sure
but distemper has been rampant
nationwide
community cats are up a little bit
euthanasias are up which again may be
contributed to by the disease that we're
seeing in the shelter so our live
release rate
is the number of
animals that had an outcome
[Music]
84 were live
our euthanasia reasons again primary is
behavior aggressive dogs and the second
one is the respiratory science which
could be distemper that's not always
diagnosed as distemper
volunteers
big shout out to our volunteers they've
been doing great lots of hours our
volunteer coordinator is really
hitting it hard she they had a volunteer
camp
just this
this past week
and it's
they're expanding what the volunteers
can do for the
for this the center animals
our visitors are up
from february
we did start though the walk-throughs
march 11th so that would account for
some of
the increase
those walk throughs war friday friday
saturday and sunday and then in april
11th is when we started
from
seven days a week open to the public
so the adoptions we split up between
appointments and the walkthroughs the
appointments we still have they're not
required but if somebody wants an
appointment will make an appointment
the appointments that were kept were 92
percent of the appointments made
the finalized adoptions from those
appointments was 47 percent
the march walk-ins we do it we
track them by groups rather than
individuals we had 127 groups which is
roughly 13 a day
we had 27 adoptions
from the walk-ins and that's 20 for
of the walk-in groups
ended up with a final adoption
so comparatively speaking we had
47 percent
adoptions from the appointments
to only 24 percent of the watkins
our website views are going up
facebook views are going up also
i had asked the question
at the at june august and october it'd
be interesting to see what we were
posting that made the views go up
i thought of that late last night so
maybe next time
these are our pets of the week
blue and patricia
and there's questions somewhere
so anyone have any questions thank you
very much dr hadden that was great study
hands and and
and with the animals and with us so i
appreciate that
any questions from the board board
member gandalf thank you um
chair um karen thank you dr hayden for
your work
always very grateful and appreciative
for everything that you do for the
center
i wanted to ask about the groups now are
you scheduling are those appointments
and are you scheduling them at certain
times or i don't understand why you
would qualify it as a group okay
because
the groups are in the walk through hours
so
a family of four come in instead of
counting it as four individuals it's one
group and those are not by appointment
okay
not in
that statistic
it's the the walk-in groups are just
that just walk-ins folks that come
through on our hours that were open
to walk through
did that answer your it does it does
okay thank you i appreciate that um and
i i had as soon as you put up the
facebook and the web i'm like i wonder
what's going on that makes it yeah what
if you know
do you are you saying every week you're
going to post several
things related to that or having events
or something because facebook is the
algorithm is very interesting right you
have to be doing it regularly to see
really
right a good i thought
we'd get
we i always say we will do and it's
never me it's yeah everyone else they
all do it um but to look at facebook
back in that period of time to see what
it was
so that maybe we can do those
those types of posts regularly sure yeah
thank you again i appreciate it you're
welcome thanks um
thank you board member canada any other
questions from the board
no hearing none thank you dr hadden
great job
the pressure's off okay for at least 10
minutes thank you
okay
next up i think we do have a county aco
report
now
yes madam chair it should have been
copied to the server is what i heard i
don't know if we need to refresh
this folder
okay
it might yeah
[Music]
i think yeah if you click that little
refresh in the top
right hand
bar
there
perhaps gentlemen it's one of the
furthest uh furthest down jpa report
march oh okay
okay all right
all right good morning please state your
name thank you for coming out and
presenting uh good morning madam chair
board members my name is jesus friday
i'm the lead officer for the doing coach
enforcement i'm going to be stepping in
primarily ward
so
okay
the reported straight almost trading one
281 reported straight animals 169
straight almost
were picked up um
picked up 45 straight cats
picked up 124 straight dogs
were sick or injured animals four for
four were cats 11 were dogs 13 were
owner surrender animals zero cats 13
dogs
reported straight animal calls of the
for the four-year comparison chart
and this seems
so far we have in march we have a 281
um
alamo or straight animal calls
which um
seems like it is growing a little bit
[Music]
unfortunately
from the other years
or actually no we actually we're
actually going a little bit lower from
where in 2021 2020
in the end 2019 so we're we're we're
down by a little bit so
um the four-year field return to owner
or rto comparison chart
and so far and since for march we have
returned 33
animals
and it is it is
going up since the
since the beginning of the year
so it has been increasing the rtos
and then additional animals picked up
we had zero cats surrendered owner
surrenders we have 13 sick and injured
we have 15
uh one
welfare hold animal
zero neglect or abuse crew or cruelty
three sheltered quarantines five
home quarantines and actually we have
four
uh courthouse uh well three yeah
uh three uh courthold uh courting cases
uh and then life evidence currently we
have four and they're pinning uh court
tomorrow for those four animals that
we're holding for evidence
and we had zero rabies submissions so
far
and then pretty much just the district
that we recover
uh district one hatch radiant springs
oregon district three
uh district four basia district five
anthony and district seven chaparral
and this is just
something from some data for the stratum
was picked up by you know by the
districts
and then seems pretty much our
district four which
appears to be the no actually district
two appears to be the one where we've
been getting more cats or
more dogs unfortunately
and here just a graph for the straight
cats picked up uh the same by jill
but the geo districts um
and it seems like it's the same uh
district show as the one that is we've
been having
uh more of a
stray cat issue
and then the straight cat uh the
straight dogs also
um
appears to be actually district 3 for
this for the
straight dogs
that we've been having uh issues with
we had
13 animals
or really
released 200 30 animals reasons uh two
for
for aggressive two for vicious
uh seven were for unable to care uh one
was for injured and the other one was
for uh dysfunctional request
um any questions
thank you so much i really appreciate i
know you were just seeing this for the
first time too so i appreciate your
you're rolling with it um board member
flores please
thank you madam chair and thank you very
much for your presentation
so i have a couple of questions can you
go back to slide
oops
the one before that
yeah that one that one prompts my
question okay
so when you pick how do you know how
long it takes between the time that you
get a call about a straight animal
um and how long it takes you to get
there like say for example district
three
because district three is um
yeah
i mean
that's like the east mesa
and so i'm just wondering
how long it takes
well isn't there overlap there gino i
mean
i'm sorry madam chair i'm skipping
i i'm just something just occurred to me
so
if there's a call in district 3 for
example which over which includes county
and city
um
how is that handled do do you have a
cross connection i mean do you connect
with the city or vice versa
madam chair board member flores there is
no overlap ma'am um we have
jurisdictional boundaries where i cannot
go into the county to enforce their
ordinance and likewise for them so in
the east mesa our boundary is right
there at the
new mexico the new mexico d.o.t
center where all the
the
heavy equipment is for the d.o.t the
highway department
that is right there right at our
boundary so anything
east of there would be county's
jurisdiction and anything west would be
cities jurisdiction i know it sounds
like a silly question but dogs don't
know bandra boundaries animals so i mean
i say oh i'm in the county and they're
coming after me i better run so i'm just
wondering
because uh it seems like and i know gino
that mr jimenez officer jimenez you have
uh commented that and and so has uh mary
mary was not here today um
officer ward have uh reported that many
times by the time you get to the strays
they're gone and i'm wondering if
they've crossed over
i don't know i'm just wondering
whether there's any coordination there
that's all and ma'am on that we have a
very city and county have a very good
working relationship so for example if
the dog
primarily comes as a city call however
it runs into the county we have like a
chase radius of five miles oh meaning we
can go into the county but we do give
the county officers a courtesy call to
let them know that we are in their
jurisdiction
what we're trying to do that way we
don't step on toes and
and in case we need assistance because
the county officers are going to know
their
jurisdiction better than we do and vice
versa right and so whenever they're
chasing an animal into the city they
also give us that courtesy call and
we'll try to
go help them the best we can so that
that animal can be captured okay
thank you very much and i i do have
another question um
and maybe uh for the two of you actually
how do you
uh do you have the same standards of uh
distinguishing between a vicious dog and
an aggressive dog
and then a vicious dog i think gets put
down as they say he's euthanized it's
euthanized i don't know i'm just
speaking just
but um is there a difference in that
standard and what are the outcomes or
the consequences
man i'm sure board member florida's uh
all depends after you know uh because a
lot of people see people and they say
especially just because of the people
um so after depending if it doesn't have
an owner we'll take the shelter the
shelter will have the couplers they'll
check and they'll team and see the
animal unless the owner of the
depending on what how the animal came
into our hands if it was because i
attacked another animal attacked a human
being that won't have to be it just
depends on the circumstances of what how
we receive that animal
because a lot of times we get calls
people oh it's a pit bull it's vicious
you know and
it just depends on the animal because
any any dog any cat has the potential to
be ambitious is just
we have to study it and make sure that
you know
um
why
the circumstances that he came to us and
then we'll have to proceed from there to
deem the the animal of issues
and i think oh sorry just i think that
this came up once before and and the
shelter also mentioned that they do
their an independent assessment so they
have the notes from the acos and then
also the shelter does their own
independent assessment to see if they
yeah just in case
you know people might say something that
may not be reflected in the and how the
dog behaves
yeah because that assessment by an owner
can be subjective or just a way of
getting you there to get rid of the dog
yes
or the animal yeah and they're they're
just
animals are just like humans they don't
like certain people
you know
i have you know i there's animals that
people are saying hey they they're bad
or they they're rich towards me i go
there when i was i used to be a helmet
control officer and they would come and
i would go and just pick them up and
load them into my unit but
it just depends yes right well thank you
gentlemen and thank you madam chair
any other questions from the board
all right hearing none thank you so much
again great job good job thank you thank
you we appreciate that and
we appreciate you all i appreciate
y'all's flexibility and and moving
around to the the agenda a little bit
there under the reports
next up are committee reports and so i
will look to
assistant city manager enriquez to to
for the finance report
uh thank you madam chair
we did have a meeting last thursday
discuss the finance
report which josh sasebo will present
today we also discuss the budget which
will be an action item
action item b that will have some
comments for that as well all right
thank you acm enriquez josh please thank
you
good morning madam chair members of the
board my name is josh safflin on behalf
of the finance department of the city of
las cruces i'd like to present the
unaudited financial report as of march
31st 2022
so to start with looking at our
statement of net positions we're showing
in the general fund cash of one million
and seventy 165
dollars we also have a receivable
outstanding of four hundred eleven
thousand two hundred and seventy three
dollars
which gives us total assets of one
million five hundred seventy seven
thousand
one hundred and fifty one dollars
we have liabilities of a hundred and
fifteen thousand seven hundred and
eighty three dollars
a revenue collected in advance of a
hundred and ninety seven thousand eight
dollars and this leaves us with an
unassigned fund balance for the period
of one million two hundred sixty four
thousand
three hundred and sixty dollars
looking at our change in net position we
see for the period total revenues of two
million eight hundred twelve thousand
six hundred and forty one dollars
and total expenditures of two million
three hundred and seventy five thousand
four hundred and one dollars which gave
us a positive net change to fund balance
of four hundred thirty seven thousand
two hundred and forty dollars
looking at our budget to actual and
change in net position the total
revenues of 2.8 million are 73.2 percent
of the budget
and the total expenditures of 2.3
million were 61.8 percent of the budget
our parameter of course being 75 percent
so we see that our our revenues are a
little under that and our expenditures
are are significantly below the 75
percent
looking at revenues versus expenditures
the graph we see that for the month of
march our expenditures were quite a bit
above
our revenue for that period
looking at that it looks like the
increases were due to
primarily were in salary and benefits
and there was also a capital outlay
purchase
for that period that would add to that
amount and why we see that going up
looking at our expenditures again our
total expenditures were 2 million three
hundred seventy five thousand four
hundred one dollars
of that salary made up forty nine
percent
benefits were sixteen percent
uh
services were seventeen percent
temporary services were four percent
repairs and maintenance one percent
supplies seven percent
insurance was
two percent capital was three percent of
that and other made up one percent of
our total expenditures
and that will conclude my presentation i
stand for any questions
thank you very much i appreciate your
presentation questions from the board
board member flotus
thank you uh
chair korean
um josh uh mr thank you for your
presentation mr sapple why um
why
was that capital outlay expenditure not
foreseen and therefore that's why it was
higher than
expected or beyond the ex well no uh in
general there they don't
have regular capital expenditures yeah
uh it so the capital expenditure just
wasn't usual it's like you don't see it
throughout the months they'll make one
capital expenditure and so it increased
the expenditure for that period because
it was just that one time expense for it
but
usually capital outlay monies are
foreseen and and you did say that it
wasn't so what was it do you do you know
exactly what that item was uh i should
correct myself then i i did not mean to
say that it was unforeseen
i said that i'm sorry no and that's okay
um primarily basically um
again it's not a regular ongoing
expenditure like you'd see with supplies
and services
but that capital expenditure was
basically just a one-time large expense
and that's why we saw that as a large
increase that month as opposed to
previous months
that wasn't to say that it was unplanned
what
that wasn't to say that it was an
unplanned expense it was an unplanned no
no no no no oh well then i'm back at the
question uh
full circle here how could it not if
it's if it's a big jump in in expenses
how could it not be foreseen well it was
foreseen um
well matt madam sheriff if i wouldn't
mind maybe i'm wrong when i say this
we have our mit expert here well i think
it's part of it was part of the budget
the approved budget however
because there was that one time jump
compared comparatively to the previous
months it was just a one-time hit so it
wasn't a recurring cost and i think
that's what josh is saying is that
the reason for that jump compared to if
you wouldn't mind going back to the
previous sl that's like my question
remains
why did it go up does anybody know yeah
because it was that expensive explaining
what it was but not what it was what was
it for
it was for oh okay i mean if it was it
was a capital expense it was part of the
approved budget but
i don't know what it was for it couldn't
have been approved because it was higher
than expected no it was it's a
i'm i'm sorry no i said it
so the expenditures would have been part
of the approved budget and the capital
expenditure would be part of the
approved budget
it's just noticed that when you look at
the the graph on the screen
it's just we had that jump from about
250 000 to 440 000 and so it was just a
one-time expense
that
hit during the month which is why we had
that jump in so it's not a recurring
cost it was just a one-time
expenditure which was expected in the
calendar year
and expected within the budget yes okay
well then that was my question and i'm
sorry it took this long to ask the
question the correct thank you so much
for your answers uh
board member sanchez and and mr staffel
thank you madam chair
thank you board member flores thank you
josh any other questions from the board
hearing none
um thank you very much josh thanks yeah
and i'd also like to take this
opportunity to
introduce if he would stand up mr
armando lerma he's going to be taking
over the accounting functions
in finance for
asmv so hopefully starting next week
he'll start not next week but next month
he'll be presenting as well to the board
all right great good to meet you we look
forward to hearing from you and what's
happening with you where are you going
josh
absolutely nothing i'll just be still
working upstairs okay okay good good
good job thank you josh thank you josh i
was gonna start crying but okay i'll
save my tears thank you very much for
for always presenting on this and and
keeping up with us and and um
and
really just doing doing right by that we
look forward to you josh for your
thank you so much for all your work josh
you're amazing and we look forward to
hearing from you next month yes
thank you um next up
i think we can leave um patricia and
blue up there who i've continued like i
feel like continued exposure makes us
all fall in love with them especially
patricia who's staring right at you you
generally
yes they're they're they're here for
something soon
really quick on the executive committee
i did meet with
with mr thacker this month
both in the context of drawing up this
agenda discussing something else that
comes up on our discussion items the
distemper discussion and then subsequent
subsequent meeting
i think uh commissioner sanchez also met
with with animal control and we sort of
had some follow-up questions to a
discussion we had in the executive
committee meeting i do want to
bring out one note from the executive
committee meaning about next month's
meeting we don't have a location um for
the meeting that could be televised next
month
both the city and the county uh sort of
places where we can conduct these
meetings in public are are not available
to us at the
next month at the time of our of our
meeting and so
where are you gonna you can
go ahead i was just gonna suggest madam
chair i'm sure nmsu has highly technical
capabilities if maybe we could reach out
to them see if they could host us
i
don't know if that's possible but i
think
the only place i know of at nmsu that
that
can broadcast tv is actually the regents
room so that seems like it's probably an
ask beyond what we would normally do but
we did actually talk with both the folks
the
the city clerk the the city attorney and
and the folks at the county about
possible locations and it seems like the
the only option that we have that we
know that we could count on for the next
meeting is
or one of the conference rooms here at
the city and that would mean that we
would have to record it audio but not
visual and then that would be what would
be posted on on youtube so there there
are a couple options before us one of
them is doing that um which would
maintain our our
public meeting
we're going to say something acm
enriquez
uh madam chair i was just going to say
we can reach out to nmsu and also i i
don't know if you wanted to change the
date if that's another option of the
board deciding to change the date when
this
chambers would be available
changing the date is another option um
that would
that we sort of discussed this a little
bit and i look a little bit to bernice
as she's been trying to work all of
these angles of trying to change the
date find another option
my sense was not that there were an
abundance of times that overlapped with
a similar time as our meeting now that
is
thursday morning so
then it becomes sort of a matter of if
we can make quorum who all can be here
and what the
the
context is um
so
i guess i'm deferring to you all to see
what would the
pleasure of the board be given that the
the option that we have now is have the
meeting
in a smaller space that would result in
not being televised
in the same capacity but could be posted
afterwards
canceling the meeting or we can look at
moving the meeting but that i i really
do have concerns for quorum and
availability of spaces that
that that could overlap so
madam chair i i think that
i was counting the people here today and
we have a few more people here than
usual we do it really
it fluctuates depending on how open so
if you keep a small agenda and don't
include a lot of them
i
i would vote for i would suggest that we
have it here and we have it in the abc
rooms or the b and c rooms the ones the
second floor yeah the second bigger yeah
and we would fit there okay and then we
will work with
becky and bernice and the tech folks for
the city to record it and find a way to
post it afterwards online so i think
becky does that or our tech people do
that i mean record and post and all that
so i don't think that's a problem at all
and then we would keep it the same day
because
i don't know about the rest of the
people in this room but i think we're on
the same boat where one thing changes it
has like
it's like
and for me it's difficult
quite difficult
so i think that would that be my
recommendation thank you okay so what
i'm hearing is we have the meeting in a
different venue that is still accessible
if it's possible that nmsu is an option
that would be great
i don't know that we've ever bridged
that particular conversation before and
if not then we can find a place here at
the city at the same time
to have the meeting and still the public
will still be invited there will still
be public input it will still be
recorded but there won't be a live
broadcast
as we usually have
is that the will of the board or any
other insights
madam chair i
i'm open to either uh
option i i think as as uh councillor
flores have noted um
you know with with
all the varying meetings that we have
across the month it's definitely easier
when we keep the same
same date same time because i have this
time blocked off for this uh for this
meeting so i like i said i think
if a venue
here or somewhere else works and it's
perfectly fine i'm i'm acceptable to
that
okay then hearing
board member ellen's please
uh i'm
not enthusiastic about meeting at nsu
i don't think the public
by and large would realize that we have
changed the meetings
they'll show up here nobody will be here
so i would go with
the room upstairs that's available here
upstairs
so with luck one of the rooms upstairs
will be available for us
so i agree with this location you know
700 north main street being the location
um
and it would just be
i think that parking isn't entirely easy
at nmsu yeah you have to get a parking
permit and yada yada
and get a map yada yada so that's what i
say yada yada
madam chair yes please
one other suggestion could be lcps and
their boardroom
and they have they do have the abilities
to
to stream
okay if they would just be we would just
need their support for their
technical team but
okay then we can we'll look into that
and follow up as a possibility
um not nmsu and i tend to agree that
that's not necessarily
um
so
we will follow up and let you know but
we'll keep the meeting time and just
continue the hustle to try to find a
place to have it but i would say just as
far as accessibility goes the idea
behind having this telecast is that it's
more accessible so that's that's the
that's the thing that we are kind of
discounting in that
go ahead board member allens
i have the same problem with the public
school
location as i do with nmsu
i don't know the public would be aware
that that's where we are okay
well we can allow excuse me madam please
board member
we can
um
inform the public that there would be a
change using our facebook and our web
site and
maybe use radio but i mean
it is what it is we can't be in here so
we're going to try really hard upstairs
but those rooms often are being used
so i'm not even sure that that could
happen and maybe
mr rodriguez while we are
speaking to other agenda items could
find out if those rooms are available
through his channels
i will be meeting with the assistant
superintendent roberto lozano today
and i can speak to him about the
possibility
of meeting there um i know it's a change
it happens
um but i think through our channels we
should
be able to notify the public in well
enough time
right with the change so that they
understand
and we'll post signs up here where they
people need to go
and and i do believe that staff has
actually been working really hard to try
to find a compromise that just hasn't
been very
hasn't panned out yet please board
member must see us madam chair if just
one last suggestion uh certainly we can
do
our best efforts to outreach through
whatever the venue for the meeting will
be but if our roles allow could we
perhaps at least hold the next meeting
in a full virtual forum no
uh we asked we requested this actually
and it's not uh within the disposition
available no there is no special
disposition available
unfortunately
[Laughter]
i wish that would be the ideal situation
frankly
um we could
um so no i i agree that would be the
ideal situation but but alas our the
open meetings act does not allow that
for us
okay thank you we'll continue the search
to find a place but maintain the time
not cancel the meaning
and that's all i have for the executive
report next up the facilities report
board member gandala please thank you
madam chair um you know we
we meet pretty early in the month and so
by the time this meeting
is is we have lots of changes but both
board member allens and i
met with um board director
clint thacker and we spoke initially
about the budget and the request for 2.1
million
that would include
the
staff more staff and the tnr coordinator
because of the
news center coming online
lots of discussion about the current
center and the blacktop being
redone and having to have that done
first before
we were allowing the public to come
in
to do those
those walk-throughs to see the animals
and they were hoping that that would be
done and obviously it has been done and
i see bernice and
dr hinden shaking their head yes because
there was walkthroughs happening as they
had intended to
so that's exciting
there is some dialogue happening with
the asa architects to do
conduct an assessment
related to the existing center and what
it would take to have a top of the line
medical facility for our animals
especially because
we had
visioned
having
spade and neuter and all the other
services for the public and we're just
not at that at that level in capacity
and so we are hopeful that asa will come
back um
with a a proper assessment
as to
what to look forward to
and the necessary changes what it will
cost etc
let's see there's a lot of discussion
about
currently not meeting new mexico
standards act related to the kennels and
the draining that's occur you know when
you go in and clean and the way that the
draining
of the water is currently and a lot of
that needs to change
um
in terms of of
of um
of of being able to redo those kennels
um so that um staff can go in and
properly um
clean and and it drain appropriately
you know that that
particular kennel space was built in the
late 90s
there's tile popping off there's lots of
different things that are happening
related to that because clint isn't here
actually i think the day we met that eve
afternoon there was a meeting so i don't
know if
dr hayden might have
some update and if not that's okay too
we will definitely
get an update to share with the public
and then
we had discussions about
um
the population at the center and
currently there was
412 um at that point but it seems like
it's much higher today
and we talked a lot about
advertising and just sort of awareness
building of what's occurring currently
at the center with 101 gold
um i have here donna dollar
is that from 101 gold okay yes obviously
you don't know what here listen to 101
gold and i'm sort of like sorry about
that but
but but there was a lot maybe an
interview of some sort i'm not sure
um to occur um there um to just
heighten people's realization that the
center exists the services that are
available and
so on and so forth so that concludes my
um
update on facilities
board member ellen's do you have
anything else to add
that was a very thorough review well
thank you i appreciate that i was
struggling like where are my notes
because i don't remember
it's hard to remember when things happen
earlier in the week unless early in the
month unless i write it down so
thankfully i brought my handy notebook
thank you thank you board member
okay that's that's closes our reports
and presentations section of the agenda
next up are our discussion items first
up the mutt and meow fest so please come
on up
um and you all will notice that there
are some promotional materials at your
stations if there we have some more to
share
and they'll also be included with the
minutes but just
just as a note please go ahead start
with your name for the record and
and go on
good morning everyone my name is kelly
heyer i'm with leadership las cruces and
a couple of my leadership members are
here with me
i don't know if you mind standing up or
waving
say hello good morning thank you thank
you all for being here yeah so uh we're
here to talk about mutton meow fest but
first i'll go over a couple of things
about leadership just to kind of give
you a primer
leadership las cruces is a group of
professional development
students who
and it's hosted by the greater las
cruces chamber of commerce it happens
it's a class year so it happens once
once a year and we meet
once every every month every friday
to learn more about the community in all
the different kinds of business sectors
that are here in the challenges that we
have in the community both
private sector public sector
government as well as non-profits so
in addition to
being able to network with each other
with like-minded people
we also are
planning and organizing a community
project which is the mutton meow fest
so each year each class is um is tasked
with coming up with their their own
community project and this year we
wanted to be able to
help
support and facilitate the animal
services center in messiah valley
and so
in doing that we'll be hosting a mutton
meow fest which is a fundraiser in
adopt-a-thon
it'll it's a one-time event that will
happen on saturday may 14th from 10 to 2
pm
and it will be located at the corner of
maine and lowman
and so
it'll be a public event we'll have
several
we'll have
17 to 20 different kinds of vendors
it'll be more of like a like a farmer's
market type of
event and activity there will be
live entertainment
live music food trucks we'll have a
couple of hot dog trucks too which will
be fun kind of to stay on theme
and then also
we'll have uh
we'll have several
other kind of pet friendly type of
activities including a mutt strut as
well as a photo booth so anyone who can
come out
can pay a small fee to take a take a
picture with their own animal and
hopefully maybe stop by the adoption
center area that will be there and maybe
they'll get a little brother or little
sister to go with their current pet
and then we also have the mutt strut
which will be really important because
not only can the public enter the mud
strut and show off their own dog or cat
but it will also be a great opportunity
for
the adoptable pets to come out and strut
their stuff and
and maybe some other members of the
public will fall in love with each of
the animals
the the other emphasis here too is that
it is for both dogs and cats lovers so
it'll be great to then
to be able to support the animal
services center in that way and uh to
your point earlier about the facilities
uh update um that's exactly kind of the
the point of the event is to be able to
support and really showcase the animal
services center and all of the services
they have to offer to the public so
it'll be a great really great
opportunity for everyone to learn more
about the animal services center maybe
adopt an animal
and really just have have a good time
have have some fun and maybe have a hot
dog
so that's all i have today i think
i don't know if anyone
did i cover everything
good morning i'm jennifer charity i'm
co-chair of leadership las cruces this
year and kelly did a great job going
over everything i would just like to say
that we would love to see each and every
one of you out there to support this
class
with them supporting the animal services
center they've done a heck of a job and
have put a lot of time and effort into
this to make this event possible so we
would love to see each and every one of
you out there additionally i will throw
a little plug for leadership las cruces
we are going to be wrapping up this
class year
and we'll be graduating them in june
and shortly we will be getting out
applications for next year so if there
is any of you
um sitting up here on this panel as well
as out in the audience or watching you
are more than welcome to reach out to
the greater las cruces chamber of
commerce or any of us to
obtain an application to be a part of
next year's class but again kudos to
this year's class for putting together
an amazing event and making this happen
thank you for your time
thank you thank you so much um and i i
just want to say first i i will be there
um
i don't know if i'll bring my dog he
doesn't clean up that nicely um
he's a little scruffy
but i so i i we really look forward to
joining you and i would also and i'm
going to put up a little pitch which may
or may not be appropriate i don't know
i'm new to this gig so i'm gonna try
test the limits of appropriateness but i
would like us to to create a match from
the board of our own um sort of coffers
for a donation and so i will start that
and then i'll hit you all up
individually
offline to do that so that we can
generate higher donations on that day so
i will commit to doing that and i'll put
you all on the spot later so
you expect to expect a participatory
call for me thank you so much we
appreciate that
i won't be here uh that day but i'm
happy to support it any way i can
leading up as well as monetarily i meet
your match all right i'm sorry i won't
be here either
i'll hit you up anyway another
commitment i'll be in
i'll actually be in uh tao so if anybody
wants to bring the dogs up there we'll
do it there now but uh yeah but i'll
definitely match thank you or even
surpass what you want okay bring it on
counselor there's all this code
information happens this is exactly what
i wanted thank you thank you so much
kelly jennifer and leadership las cruces
i see brandy my friend over there hello
thank you for being here
and really highlighting the beautiful
things that happen at the center often
they don't get a lot of kudos
but they do
wonderful tireless
work and and i very much appreciate that
and and highlighting the animals there
in hopes that we can get them out you
are in competition with the
primavera fiesta that kidscan is putting
on and
they've asked me to
um
i judge so i'm gonna do my very very
best to be out there but i i just
want you to know that that
my gratitude to each and every one of
you but also it's in competition
unfortunately with another activity
event that i've been asked to to
be a part of so thank you so much
thank you i'm madam chair
thank you thank you so much for
presenting and coming today and we'll be
sure to share
share the information and i'll be sure
to look you all up
shortly
um
thank you again for being here you all
and i think
i think um i'm really i really
appreciate you all coming and and being
here because i think uh you've heard a
lot about why this matters um and and so
what it means to support our shelter and
so it's really meaningful to all of us
that you're that you're putting that
forward so thank you
okay next up uh if we could have a this
is a discussion item that that has been
identified by the shelter of sort of an
up and coming issue and we've had
conversations with with the acos and aco
supervisors
regarding the prevalence of distemper
and
so i invite dr hadden up really quick to
just sort of give an update and
pitch some community buy-in and some
critical thinking and and reflecting on
on intakes and what's happening at the
shelter so thank you again dr hadden for
presenting
okay from from
what you just said what i
had put together to present is a little
different i'll try not to get into too
much detail
about distemper but also go into what
you had you had mentioned and what we
had talked about with acos and whatnot
so about distemper itself canine
distemper virus
the
the many problems with it is one
the viral shedding which is
the period of time that it's contagious
is
before the animals
are sick
and after they get better
okay so that makes it very difficult as
far as containment
um
they can shed the virus for up to a
couple of months after they get over the
disease itself
it presents in different organ
functions it can be in the skin
in the gi tract stomach intestines it
can be in the respiratory tract and in
the nerves
so it can present many different ways
and it can and it can look like kennel
cough
the coughing
it can look like parvo the
enteritis the gut upset
vomiting and diarrhea and it can look
like just dermatitis too we've seen
pustules and puppies so it's hard to say
what it is without testing
the the virus itself is very similar to
the measles virus for what it's worth
there's no standard treatment per se
it's more supportive there
are folks that are looking at antivirals
but it's it's not a standard treatment
as of yet and again the issue with
treating it is the shedding and you have
to have
the biosecurity so you're not putting
the rest of the population at risk if
you
decide to treat
survivability wise
it it it can be survived they can live
through it it's a
relatively low mortality rate meaning
the ones that
are diagnosed with distemper
they don't always die
with it and like 10 percent of them
may get those neurologic symptoms
which they can live with it just depends
on
how it progresses within the individual
it does not the virus itself does not
survive in the environment like parvo is
very difficult to kill the distemper
virus is relatively easy outside of the
body it lasts for minutes or hours so
it's
it doesn't last in the environment
transmission
between the animals coughing an animal
coughing with distemper can
throw at five feet if they're sneezing
it can go 20 feet and fomites us as
kennel workers
working with the animals if they cough
on us and we go into the next kennel and
we can expose the next folks that's part
of the
issue with keeping them true it does not
affect cats
uh board member ellen doctor what are
the symptoms
it's it's a variety of symptoms it can
be
a snotty nose it can be
eye discharge
it can be vomiting it can be diarrhea it
can be hard pads
the nose
on them can get thick that goes along
with the hard pads
that's the problem with
identifying it without doing a
diagnostic test
is that it can present as a range of
things the only
item that is
sort of what they call patho mnemonic
which is if you see that it's this
is
the
neurologic symptoms
if they have uri the upper respiratory
the nasal discharge ocular discharge and
then within a couple of weeks they have
twitching a lot of times their heads
twitch their ears twitch when we see
that we call that distemper without
without testing
because there's not very many other
diseases that
that have that
progression are some of these
symptoms
common to other
canine diseases as well
yes
and it's the combination of
the
ocular and nasal discharge can be
respiratory disease there's a wide range
of
organisms that can cause respiratory
disease
most of which are treatable that's why
we're kind of focusing on the distemper
because the distemper it's
it's survivable
but the
the contagious the infectious aspect of
it is huge it's huge
so you have to have a
specific
testing regimen to determine whether
it's cdv
yes to to say specifically that it is
and we use a pcr test
and we take swabs
and send it to we're using the state lab
so we're just looking at this temper for
now
all right thank you you're welcome
okay
so because of the increased incidence we
wanted to get a handle of it before it
got away
i'd seen adoptions go out and
come back and be sick and then die and i
wasn't liking it so i said we got it we
got to do something because it's not
fair to the animals it's not fair to the
adopters it's not fair the public i just
i
so we we reached out
to
dr cynda crawford
she is with the shelter medicine program
at university of florida which
i am participating in the master's
program thanks to y'all
so um
i had listened to a couple of her
presentations she is known as the
distemper guru she helps shelters
nationwide get through the distemper
outbreaks
so right now
we had well when we spoke with her last
week we had 34 animals under treatment
for respiratory now i'm talking just
dogs right now
animals were under treatment we tested
15. eight of those were positive for
distemper
so it's roughly a 50 percent which is
really high
so it is endemic in our population so we
need to we need to stop
the 25 tests
we took those this week
those were the other animals that are
now under
respiratory treatment
we took those and sent them off
yesterday to see
where we stand with those
what dr crawford
suggests and it's just across the board
what we need is a clean break the clean
break being
old population and incoming population
to not mix
which means we need an empty space
which we don't have
that's why we have asked acos both city
and county to
do what they can to decrease our intake
just for a period of time so that we can
get an empty space
and be able to divide the population
keep the old population while we get
that cleaned up so the new population
isn't intermingling with them
and getting exposed
we've asked for the like i said the
decreased intake
to no healthy strays to the best of
their ability and and they've been
very supportive of it
as much as they can no healthy strays
unless they're
aggressive
and
we are going to try
to
put a hold on owner surrenders
as our city and county
so that owners aren't bringing animals
in right now we already do a
what we call a pre-intake vaccine is we
do a intake vaccine the vaccines that
they would typically get when they get
come in and then
they go home for two weeks and then they
come back and they get a second vaccine
that
second time we had been having them
intaked into
the center
right now we're going to try to see if
we can have them hold on to them
for a little longer just to decrease the
intake that we have so
clint looked up the numbers it's
anywhere from three to five hundred
animals a year we've been getting as
owner surrenders from city and county so
it's a it's a significant number if we
can just if we can do that but of course
if
if the owners are adamant about
no i've got to get rid of the animal
right now then obviously we'll take it
so
um
are there any
questions i'm trying to
about our plans i would entertain
questions from the board but just really
quickly to sort of give a bigger
insight into the conversations that we
had thank you dr hadden i think that
the reality is we have ordinances that
require acos respond to calls that's
that's the basics of of how our animal
control ordinances work
um i think a big part of reducing intake
is a commute and again we're asking the
community
in all of our problems aren't humans the
biggest
problem actually instead of animals but
in this case we're actually requesting
um folks to know what it means when they
call about a stray to know what the
implications are of of an aco picking
them up and potentially taking them to
the shelter where where we're having
this distemper problem
and so definitely
supporting the acos and their efforts to
field return to owners
and supporting the community and
considering what it means to call about
a stray
which i didn't i didn't really think
about that when when i would see a stray
animal on the street i would think oh
getting it picked up is always the
better thing to do
i didn't think about all the
implications of what that is for the
acos and for the for the shelter as that
animal went there and then in this
context of increased incidence of of
distemper which is a national problem um
and so i think that this is sort of a
community request my senses like we're
all in this together this is a critical
issue that we need to think about both
as community members
as the folks working with the board and
and
our acos to sort of think about this
more
broadly and really work to try to create
that space for for
the clean break so i just wanted to put
that other context there for the
conversations that we had offline
related to this too so thank you dr
hadden go ahead
board member flores please
you can call me doctor
thank you dr hadden again
my my question is exactly uh when an aco
picks up an animal
and it's exhibiting there's multiple
symptoms and they're not discernible
just looking at an animal at times
so
is there a um
some
does an aco pick up the stray
and if it doesn't have the eyes or the
nose you know that
those visible symptoms
does the aco just place the animal with
other animals in
the vehicle
and if it
i mean and then
once it gets to the shelter
or the service center
is the animal
readily examined and tested you said dr
hadden that there had to be a diagnostic
test of sorts so
is that done right away
should it be done right away
and how long does it take to get the
results and then if it's positive
they're positive are the animals then
isolated do we have facilities for
isolation
are there a lot of questions and those
are probably all issues you're dealing
with but thank you
it is difficult what we do is if they're
symptomatic we isolate them
right now we may or may not test depend
on the symptoms how
how
the
word confident we are that it's
distemper if we're pretty confident that
it's distemper at that time because of
the situation that we have right now
we have to put them down for the general
population we can't
we don't have a place to separate them
and that's that's the problem i can't
take
we're doing the best we can with what we
have but we separate them but again when
they come on the truck
even like i said they can be shedding
the virus before they're sick so it's
it's everywhere and it's not just an us
problem
it is nationwide
everyone is having more and more
distemper last year it was worse it's
just carrying on
to this year they don't know the reason
behind it dr crawford
thinks that maybe
the vaccine isn't quite as efficient as
it used to be because strains change
over time
this strain that the vaccine is made
from was back in the 60s
so
we're dealing with a lot we can't we
can't test everything
unless we get about
just
off hand about 50 grand a month for me
to test everything that comes in
and in the meantime then we have to hold
them for three to five days to get the
results and those have to be separate
from everybody
actually
so dr hadden given that it would be
about half a million dollars or more per
year just to um
to
deal with the situation you know the
different levels
is there any foundation money or
anything i mean it seems like that would
have to become
that kind of money would have to come
from a foundation i think what do i know
but
um
has that been at all explored or other
sources of revenue for that i haven't
heard of any in
you know through the schooling and the
the teaching and dr crawford hadn't
mentioned any
i was hoping to become part of a
i don't want to say a research but a
pilot program
so that
they could
do our testing for us
i haven't found one yet
so um some sort of a
testing lab that's subsidized by
dr crawford's group or what well just
just anyone in general that who's
looking at how distemper presents how it
spreads how it reacts to vaccine the
other problem is we do vaccinate on
intake
you know so within the hour typically
they'll get vaccinated
and some folks think that they'll react
to the they'll react being they'll have
an immune response within 72 hours
that's not the case it they are not
fully immune which is still not a
hundred percent like everybody knows
with kova you get vaccinated you can
still get it you get vaccinated for the
flu you still get it
it's it's not a hundred percent
it's not a hundred percent but it takes
roughly a hundred days to get up to full
immunity
dogs and cats and that's with boosters i
don't want to get into too much detail
so i apologize for that no it's actually
quite interesting i
i i think my concern is just being able
to approach this
in a way
or to see if there's any sort of
sources you know grant money foundation
money i don't know
and my sense is that the most meaningful
thing in this context is not necessarily
the testing but it's really the
separation
and if we if we had some kind of
capacity which we don't to separate
animals then that would be
i think if we if we were going to spend
a chunk of money or if we were going to
find a chunk of money that would be the
place where we would want to do that but
given that we don't have that in the
moment
the request is do everything we can to
reduce
the population
um
yes yes yes i agree and gino wanted to
madam chair members of the board um we
had this meeting monday
monday i think or tuesday was it tuesday
tuesday county was monday tuesday from
about noon to about one o'clock and
immediately after that i had my staff
meeting at one o'clock i'm sorry i had
my staff meeting at one o'clock and i
gave the officers a
directive to do their best to limit
excuse me
to do their best to limit the intake
already
excuse me and on one of the cases where
i was reviewing one of my officer's
notes she actually made the effort and
went to multiple homes
for a stray dog that had no
identification i bet i think she went to
six homes to to try to field rto that
animal so that's an effort for us to
show that we're supporting the animal
service center um just a note um like dr
hadden said this is not unique to las
cruces or the southwest new mexico
i got a call probably two months ago
from the usda wildlife services where
they had found distemper in skunks and
in foxes already and it was unusual for
them because
like we we know it wasn't
sorry it wasn't that time of year yet
and we were already receiving distemper
calls
thank you very much supervisor jimenez
what i would say is i think what became
clear to me in this conversation that we
had on tuesday um
was sometime i i also have a sense that
some of the accountability that we
expect from our acos that is
quick response time is actually
counterthetical to this to this goal in
some ways right the longer
an aco can spend trying to
to return something to the owner
the better it is for our shelter like
that that is a better situation in every
case and so i think also i would i would
hope that we can consider and think
about how we we assess these things and
make sure that that's a factor to
consider because i do think that just
saying like you know response time is
the only measure
perhaps there are some ways that we can
think about this more nuanced in a more
nuanced way to make sure that the acos
feel feel confident and being able to
put that effort in and not that they're
going to be judged for
for something
like like putting an extra effort to
return an animal to the owner too so i
think that's also on our on our thinking
and
consideration
in our conversation so
all right are there any other
questions
board member ellen's please
doctor if the
animal is vaccinated
but has already got the disease
isn't the dog already out the barn
isn't the dog already wet i'm sorry
oh oh
not necessarily so
within the center we can't we can't
provide intensive care
when we can't provide intensive care and
we can't separate them
we don't know
if the dogs coming in have been
vaccinated or not
again there's testing that we could do
we could do serologic testing to see
where their titers are
and if they're
high enough to
be what they call immune protective
but we don't have the time
or the finances for that because again
it'll take time you draw blood you spin
it down you send it out you wait for
results and all that tells you is if
they are
if they've been vaccinated before and
the
it doesn't even
really tell you at what level they're
protected
just that they are somewhat
so if they're vaccinated and they're
symptomatic
it doesn't mean they're going to die
from it
but coming into the center
symptomatic right now
we may have to put them to sleep because
we can't we can't keep them anywhere we
have
let's see
about 40 animals
which
are under treatment some of those are
housed together with other animals that
aren't under treatment just because one
got sick one didn't but now we have to
keep them together
so it's not
we can't have a single
sick and and keep it anywhere we just
don't have the kennel space
all our kennels have at least two
animals in them
let me rephrase my question maybe i
shouldn't have used that analogy
if the dog already has
the disease
and we vaccinate him anyway because
that's our practice
does the vaccination
have any curative effect
that point in time no
no no and i'm sorry i misunderstood the
question initially
so no it doesn't it doesn't and
additionally when you vaccinate a sick
animal you don't get as much of a immune
response
but it doesn't help cure the disease
that they already have existing
okay thank you
thank you board member islands board
member kandra
you had pushed your button yes thank you
madam chair
thank you
dr hayden for the
um
the education here and and letting us
know sort of what your process is i
think it's important i know that
distemper has been
running and rapid for some time
from last year to present um i'm
thinking um is there a the courthole
facility at
the county is that a possibility hate to
put you all on the spot but since we're
here
um i and i know that that is available
for wolf just exactly that courthold
court holds
but is there a space there that we might
be able to use madam chair and board
member gandera i can share that
currently we might be facing the same
issues given what dr haddon has
mentioned we have a similar setup with
the guillotines and the
the spacing and given
um how quickly it can spread in a
confined environment no not not at this
time
so dr hadden would you like to add
anything
i'm sorry i didn't hear the question
would you like to add anything just in
terms of confinement and spaces
and
the additional thing is the the manpower
the personnel to take care of the
animals
it's it's
it would take a lot of oversight
to bring in
an
inexperienced animal care person
to take care of these because you don't
they would not recognize
fomites
they don't understand
biosecurity
when we're examining examining animals
at the center i change gloves between
every animal
every animal and the kennel staff needs
to also and all it takes is one person
to not
and it just goes and goes and goes
so it would it would be very difficult
to to have the manpower to the
experienced manpower to be able to
contain it sure
thank you appreciate that so how
with this
i see this as a small experiment right
to get to
aspiration of reduction of animals
coming in
but how likely will we be able to do
that and and what is the agreement
between the acos and
i guess the public the center
in terms of you know who are you
bringing in or
what type of animal are you bringing in
are they aggressive
i mean
how likely are we going to how
successful will we be with this
particular experiment and i guess that's
why it's an experiment right we're not
sure
to me every little bit helps okay you
know and acos have said they'll do
what they can and that's all we can ask
for because we know they have their
set of
restrictions as well gina
madam chair members of the board
after our meeting on tuesday we had
discussed a plan of what we were going
to do we are actually going to limit
our intakes of owner releases
at the suggestion of
dr hadden what we're going to do there
is try to convince that dog owner if
they can keep it for a longer period of
time
vaccinate it and then maybe at that
point
if they still need to own or release it
then take it to the animal service
center but at least it's going to go in
with a at least
a first vaccine
for stray animals as you know from my
report we catch maybe 50 percent of our
stray animals
so of those that 50 percent we're going
to make more of an effort to field rto
exactly for that example that i gave
earlier where the officer
went to more homes than we typically do
so we're going to attempt to do
everything we can to limit our intake
during these next two months clint asked
us to start may 1st like i said we've
already started on tuesday
i thought it was important enough that
i've experienced this temper before at
the shelter that i worked at in silver
city and
it spread through there like wildfire so
i understand what the challenges are
that the asumvia is going through right
now
i appreciate that thank you so much
thank you madam chair i just wanted to
point out too the the the aggressive
dogs the dogs that are designated as as
problematic the acos are still
maintaining their obligation to make
sure that they bring those into the
shelter so that's that's not changing at
all so
thank you
how are you making how are we making
alerting the public i know this is a
good start but i really feel there needs
to be
education to the public
related to this and how are we doing
that
there's a plan to do a
a press release
clint has it started i think we're going
to work with our grant writer and then
submit it to
the city and county i don't know the
specifics of how it's going to get put
together
but i have already been forewarned
they're going to want to talk to me
because clint is out
timing is everything but yes a press
release will go out
within the next day or two is my
understanding thank you dr hayden and i
would also recommend that we do
radio spots using your facebook your
website to just inform the public about
distemper and sort of some of the things
the education that you provided today i
think without getting into great detail
in the weeds so much
but
also i just feel it's important that
we're
i'm communicating with the public as
much as we can about this also educating
bringing awareness about the issue and
what exactly
we're trying to do and i'm thinking um
bringing in the other animal advocates
because if you're asking folks to keep
the animals just a little longer
um
that might be posing
you know a different set of
issues and problems and so if there
could be some support for these
individuals that are struggling with our
animals for various reasons financial
medical
you know and the like i i think those
are also important so really asking our
supportive
groups to to help in this endeavor would
be i think another important right
and we will we will post on the webpage
and the facebook page we'll have our
our writer write things because she
writes really well and
get the information out there of course
we just had a vaccine clinic
we do intend on doing more and vaccine
is a big part of
the control
in the community for sure so but yes and
bringing information to our the city
well i know that jennifer every monday
does her little spill on the animals and
this would be something that we could
also
um include and bernice um help me make
sure that happens okay thank you perfect
thank you madam chair thank you board
member macias and then board member
sanchez please madam chair and uh board
member gandala i just i wanted to also
share that as part of the preliminary
discussions that led up to this there
was also a potential evaluation of using
the the new site that we hope will be
coming on online here in september
however it's not currently at a state
where it could hold anything even
temporarily and then also given the
fomite concern it kind of takes it out
of out of potential running
the second thing is at the county we
stand at the ready to be able to amplify
the messaging through our pio office we
would be happy to do that so that we get
on the same page and we push out the
same message
i do think this is also a good reminder
to those people out there that choose to
take on a pet as a part of their family
to truly embrace it as a part of their
family and the needs for vaccination the
needs for with the well-being and
keeping of those pets i know
in my household we've made a commitment
to only adopt adult pets because they
seem to be left by the wayside so often
but we make a big commitment because we
understand the responsibility even when
we have been financially strained so i
think that's something else that we need
to push out into the community in terms
of ownership and working in hand-in-hand
in conjunction with potential
vaccination clinics that can come up
the only thing i would ask from the
vaccine perspective as i seen in other
communities that they have trained
volunteers given that it's it's not uh
inner muscular injection if i'm correct
right it's nasal
and so i'm not sure if we could maybe
train some of uh volunteers to help with
the deployment of that in the community
maybe deputize some of those
leadership las cruces members
but i'm just thinking outside the box
because this is something that we've
seen is coming up as a big issue
not unsimilar to what we're seeing with
the pandemic for the humans here so just
some thoughts
right right yeah if we can
provide
our vaccine clinics have been more in a
one location that's easily accessible
for a lot of folks
we will and i'll have
elaine mentioned we do have a grant that
is helping us kind of focus on certain
areas that we do go in and provide
vaccines among other things
to to these folks
you could potentially get into liability
issues just having
anyone do the vaccines
the distemper parvo is not a problem the
rabies uh a veterinarian has to be on
site
so that that
but we
we are considering because we do have
our hot spots
to focus in those places and provide
vaccines in those areas there are
several in the county that that are hot
spots
okay is that all thank you thank you dr
hadden board member sanchez thank you
madam chair and i just wanted to
follow up on
the comments from
the assistant county manager that
for mayor pro tem i know one of the
things that when our conversation on
monday with dr hadden and mr thacker was
trying to see what you know
absolutely what could we utilize the
courthole facility could we utilize uh
the county fairgrounds what could we
utilize within the county um within the
the purview of the county as well so
that way we could identify and i think
as dr hadden and the assistant county
manager had brought up um
it became a man an issue around how to
man and care for the animals at that
time so
i know that's where i know supervisor
jimenez had mentioned you know the work
that they're doing with the city i think
we're going to be trying to look at
something similar with the county um but
uh you know the other things i mean
there were some other interesting ideas
that were brought up was you know if if
the acos when they have an animal if
there's no record of of a vaccination
could we theoretically
vaccinate them could we just do it there
and be done that way that we know
they're having the animal have the
protection so i think there's been some
really good discussions and i think as
we continue to move on with how we
address this um with the ascmv i think
uh you know we're definitely open to it
on the county and city i think we're
we're all plugged in and having the good
conversation so i appreciate all the
work from dr hadden um
to to inform us and and have those
conversations with us to try to see
what's
going to be feasible and what will work
for the ascm v so thank you dr hatton
board member ellens
this would be my last question
am i correct in assuming
that this is not the only disease that
we vaccinate for upon intake
it is not the only one that we vaccinate
for
so how many vaccinations
does the animal receive on intake
two
but both both of those vaccines
have multiple
parts of them
one is specific to kennel cough
and
para influenza which is also
a respiratory disease the
that vaccine is intranasal it goes in
the nose because you get a quicker
response to it being that it is a
respiratory disease we
give it in the nose and you get a
quicker response with the
mucosa
the injectable vaccine it has distemper
hepatitis para influenza and parvovirus
so it has
four to five
in it it's a cocktail one yes it's a
cocktail
like that given the number of animals
that we're
bringing in lately
this sounds like a very expensive
venture
regarding the cost of vaccines
it
it is but it's necessary
because we can't we can't keep them in a
concentrated environment and not provide
the vaccine there are some shelters that
don't vaccinate on intake but that's the
first thing when you
talk to a shelter consultant
that's one of the first things they want
you to do is vaccinate
thank you board member ellens and again
thank you dr hadden for all your
presentation and being here with us
today and initiating this conversation
okay moving on to our action items and i
i know that we have another
we have two action items on the agenda
the first is
resolution 202205 to accept the 50 000
petco love
animal welfare organization grant um
thank you for coming up
elaine please state your name for the
record um
and
i would entertain a motion to to approve
this um we can usually we discuss before
or after
well madam charles move approval okay
it was moved by commissioner sanchez and
seconded by commissioner ellens yes
okay thank you please
good morning madam chair and board
elaine's tacara simon i'm grant writer
for the ascmv um real quick i would
actually like to address um the question
about getting foundation money um just
real real real quick um
i wanted to mention that
foundations um to which we or anyone
else would apply
they have their own missions they have
their own missions and they don't just
give money for great projects they give
money for great projects that full help
them fulfill their own missions that are
vehicles to help them so you'd have to
find something pretty specific you know
to you know to be searching for grant
money for something like that another
thing about foundation money i just want
to mention real quick
and it's directly relates to this petco
love money is
we applied for this money about eight
months ago i had just started i mean it
takes time there it's not quick and it's
not quick and easy um to find foundation
money it takes time and and effort and a
lot of other things go into it so i just
wanted to address that because um it's a
question that comes up a lot actually
um the petco love 50 000
that we have received the petcola
foundation grant
is you heard me mention operation
catapult before and this is actually to
augment operation catapult and just as a
quick reminder what we're doing is
it's a little bit different we are
proactively going into
communities in the city um and it is
specific to the city because it was sort
of piggybacking on the tnr ordinance
that was passed last august
and helping
[Music]
helping communities that were chosen
that were
specific to using
supervisor jimenez's has a database map
of hot spots where the acs are getting
acos are getting a lot of calls from so
we were using that data to sort of jump
start
these applications that we made
the best friends animal society rachel
ray
had granted us money before for the
manpower
and petco love has now granted us money
to
actually
augment what we're doing um provide um
uh the actual augment our surgical
capacity as we can
work within the communities we're going
in not just to tnr and be the cat people
but we're also going in to work with the
community members and helping them
vaccinate spay neuter and microchip
their own animals um so we're the people
people as well as the animal people
and um
it was long ago when gay vasquez was a
member of city council he had sort of
raised some questions about tnr and and
how um community cats tend to be
concentrated often in underserved
underrepresented economically
disadvantaged communities and the
research backs that up and that's one of
the reasons that we sort of
made these applications specific to that
and
if i could i mentioned supervisor
jimenez he's been great in
offering his his knowledge and his time
very generously to me and medical
director hadden has been
fabulous in helping me figure out how
this is actually going to happen and
happen well and she hasn't torn her hair
out yet nor has she torn out mine so
that's a win
thank you
are there any questions from the board
seeing none thank you um i would ask
that we take a vote please
board member sanchez
board member ellen's yes four member
masseuse yes for member flores yes
and chair koran yes thank you
next up
uh i would entertain a motion to
consider
adopting the asmv fy 23 annual budget
so moved by board member flores so moved
by flores seconded by by ellens
thank you
and so i suspect that there is a
presentation
oh wow doctor hadn't they really
clinton really left it to you huh
[Laughter]
all right
thank you thank y'all for your patience
here
see i can't learn
okay
so this has
oh
sorry about that
this has been previously presented so
i'm
not going to
go into too much depth
so again if you have questions please do
ask
so we'll start with the staffing
some of these
some of these are new positions some are
reclassified positions
and one the veterinarian
is
previously authorized in the budget
the kennel operations that is a new the
operations manager is a new
new position
it's to try to
[Music]
bring together some of the
positions that
right now are under people that it
doesn't it doesn't quite fit in someone
to help see oversee the entire operation
of the center itself
the tnr coordinator has been requested
by the city
animal caregiver specialists are
these are reclassifying two caregiver
positions the specialist position
will include transport
they will help our
rescue folks do the transporting
adding on three animal caregivers the hr
anal analyst
is
we're trying to
bring some of the hr into the center so
that
we can
maybe address things and quicker get
things through the system for instance
hiring
and then the foster coordinator is
reclassifying a
position
right now that is a volunteer position
graciously filled by jerry and
it's something that that we really do
need because that helps us get animals
out of the center
so our revenue
the
22 budget was 3.8 the 23 is we're
looking at 4.8 it is a 28.5
increase
and that includes
the new center
manning the new center
there's
not like i said unless there's a
specific question i wasn't going to go
through line item by line item i believe
you all have it and have been
presented previously
we have things going up and down
licenses because the city doesn't do
licenses anymore
we are looking at
the increase for the
city
i believe so these are on separate
things
the county is at the bottom of this one
was 1.4 million last year we're asking
for 2.1
this year
and then the
city
the city was able to support us a little
more and then but 2.1 this year is what
we're asking
the the rest of the smaller communities
there's not been a change
getting more grants because we now have
a grant writer
who's helping get
get funds
and this is our expenses our expenses
are
obviously going to be going up also
that's a 2.8 percent increase
a lot of the increase is salaries
the contract employees just so you know
are
specifically our contact surgeons that i
have come in to help do surgery we're
trying to do surgery three to four days
a week
and these guys help me out and keep me
out of surgery doing other things
the insurance has gone up
significantly this year also
because
the end because
we're providing a better insurance so a
larger proportion of our employees are
taking insurance and then we have to not
only are we adding on those employees
but we're also adding on the percent
that we have to cover
general supplies come down
they just
things go go back and forth
okay
safety supplies came down because last
year we used
the money to get first aid
boxes around the center now all we got
to do is maintain them
utilities electricity phone that's all
going to go up some given the new
facility or adding on the new facility
the temp agency services this
this is the
the manpower that we use
while we're
hiring kennel help
and
there's a
vehicle repair and maintenance that went
up significantly because we had a lot of
repair on our old van
that we had to do this year
we're trying to
maintenance and repairs is for the
building
and transportation up a little bit we
hope to do more
transports
registration and conference fees has
come down
the liability insurance went up
significantly we did get a new carrier a
new insurance carrier and there
the rates have increased significantly
man of chair
board member ellen could you go back to
the previous line
what are building rentals
building rentals was put in here we were
considering and we are looking at
getting a modular
because right now we don't have a
conference room we don't have enough
office spaces if when if when we add on
an hr analyst when we add on the foster
coordinator
there's a lot of folks where we don't
have office space for the tnr
coordinator
so what we were looking at was a modular
building
we hadn't decided where kind of
back behind the existing building
to house that and a conference room
that's for the existing building
that's behind the existing building
there's no problem with the new facility
when it opens i'm sorry
i didn't hear
she didn't hear you
there's no problem with the new building
in this regard then
no there
there's not enough office space in the
new building
and the
the conference room my understanding
is
it's
it's in the plans
but it's not going to be built right now
that's one of the things that we were
talking about in the facilities meeting
when the architects were talking they
said i forget how much they said the
conference room off the one corner of
the new building how much that would
cost
a little modular back behind
with several offices
would be much less expensive and be able
to get it sooner
so building rentals will be sort of an
annual expense
for the moment
to to a point it will be annual
to a point you know
all right thank you
board member flores thank you
chair corin dr hadden i am trying to
understand
how
we overlooked
not foreseeing
new offices
in the new building
i mean it it seems
like a big oversight it seems well there
so how how can that be explained and are
we going to be looking at that
1460 percent increase
until uh what
until when forever
no it shouldn't be so
what are we looking at here
what is this what does this mean
is it only prospectively is it going to
be prospectively indefinitely is it a
temporary thing i mean that's that's a
huge increase and i'm just wondering
what we were thinking or not thinking
in not
seeing that there was going to be an
expansion of positions and which would
therefore necessitate providing space
for those positions correct this is
bernice navarro can you stand closer to
the mike this is bernice navarro
and
that was one of the considerations that
we did look at when first
getting the plans for the new building
however because of the limited dollar
amounts they had to do a lot of value
engineering
so
you know a lot of
ideas and things that we had initially
some of those things had to be cut or
adjusted
you know we worked with the architects
with the planning everything
so at the end of the
the west side of the building there is
still space to be able to build this
large conference room that we had
originally put in the plans to be able
to do things like that but because of
the cost limitations we had to cut
certain things out so we did have to sit
down and decide what is the most
important parts of this new facility
that we needed to keep on that so this
is just hopefully you know just a
temporary situation this large increase
of course is just the first you know for
this first year
depending on how quickly we can get
other funds things like that to together
to be able to do that
then you know that would be cut out you
know in future budgets what i'm
concerned about here um and thank you so
much bernice but what i'm so concerned
about is that had this been in the plan
and there were some the cuts in the
design of the building where it's going
to be lower at the entrance or whatever
and this port got eliminated but it
could be added or whatever
those
with our arpa money we could have
covered that
because
because you're absolutely corrected
everything the price of everything was x
is exponentially higher now and it
continues
so i'm just kind of um
i'm at a loss as to why
you know we
we didn't look at
um i don't know i mean we have another
go bond money uh go around going you
know gold bond round coming around again
and um
and i don't i haven't seen this
i haven't seen this as a possibility
of
bond money allocations or to be voted on
mr enriquez do you can you shed a light
on that or enlighten me or something
or does anybody have any insight to that
no madam chair and board member flores i
don't know exactly what was
the process when it was value engineered
i know that there were some
items that were reduced i don't know
specifically what and then the arpa
money was only limited as well to
certain geo bond projects you know we
have the sports complex that also needed
some so it just got divided up
appropriately i don't i don't know what
exactly was
taken out of the animal service center
but funds were limited and the costs
just increased
so um bernice were ms davaro were the um
were the changes made
after covet hit
or
was the change
what were the
were the building office the building
excuse me the offices never contemplated
in the expansion
i mean
you mentioned conference room
but those aren't offices so can you
explain that to me please
i don't know exactly at what point
everything was changed i do know when um
they first created it um we do have you
know a couple of new offices that are
going into the the new facility
and so you know we do have a couple of
spaces that are there um the majority of
like the administrative offices are
going to remain in the current facility
so it was
very important to try to consider you
know the housing it's a new adoption
center
and so we were focusing i believe on you
know the
what we could provide you know as far as
space you know we don't have the space
for the animals you know at the current
facility and so that was a large
priority
in first creating you know the the new
facility okay so we kept the focus more
with that
we did you know consider a couple of new
offices additions
a lot of these positions
have only come up recently you know that
we've thought about
they weren't being considered at the
beginning when we started you know with
the gold bond it was more the focus on
how can we provide you know more to the
animals
well i
i
that's quite evident it's evident that
that the the plan to expand did not
include more foresight and
um
and i i think that's that's what i'm
asking for here or not asking or
commenting on and i don't it's not
personal at all so please forgive me
i've been accused of
being harsh and perhaps rude and
sounding too much like an attorney so
i'm sorry about that because it's not
personal
but i'm just i'm just trying to figure
out um and then and then i think dr
hadden and and miss navarro i think
you're also saying
that at least for now it's going to be
31 200 for fy23 so
but fy23 is coming around in about two
or three months so
and then you don't know how much longer
that's going to be so
is there any way of thinking of a
solution to
because you're going to need office
space you just can't have
building rentals or i mean i don't even
know what that means does that mean
you're going to be renting office space
for employees down the street or another
side of the town
or um you know maybe uh i don't know
what they what they call these uh
portables uh adjacent to the to the
built to the uh facility
so those are the questions that really
concern me um and i i
i just have to express that concern i
just don't understand how
we can be looking and and that's
probably an oversight of the maybe the
board i'll take responsibility to a
certain extent but
i know that
speaking just for myself
i have to rely on your experience on
your need and then what you bring to us
is what we
you know or what we took to to the
public to vote on the go bond you know
two three summers ago or
falls ago
so um
i don't know
i i don't know what else to say but all
right thank you
thank you thank you thank you board
member flores um i'm hoping that you all
i think that's about
10 of the total change in budget that
you all are requesting so i think
perhaps there's more to
to be heard so if you could go on that
would be
great
madam chair
board member ellen go back once more
i have a question of lesser magnitude
what was two thousand dollars used for
in fiscal 22 for a building rental if
you know
i don't know
but i can find out oh but bernice knows
that that was the amount that we had
budgeted for 22.
we were storing some old documents
that we had from a long time ago at an
off-site
rental facility and so that's what we
used we did not end up using all of that
because we were able to clear all of
those out so we stopped using that
completely as a former county clerk i
had to use that kind of facility as well
yeah so
yeah
thank you
madam chair
board member sanchez
i i'll i don't want to deliver the point
too much more i just want to make one
kind of comment
when we're looking at
this type of monies and maybe maybe my
i'm off in terms of the costs but
if we're talking 31 000 for
temporary type of office space
many times
you're better off purchasing through
mobile mini
or things of those nature and having it
on site because
in my line of work whenever we we have
uh uh
trailers that have brought uh mobile
trailers that are brought to the sites
and such
the the
costs add up i mean it's usually
depending on the size you're talking
maybe a mobile mini that uses a 40-foot
container
will cost anywhere from two to three
thousand dollars a month if you you send
a long-term agreement so it adds up very
quickly but i know what we've been able
to find is that it's actually cheaper
if you're going to be looking to have
this even for
a significant amount of time just per
and i don't know what the city
what the city
uh procurement code allows for but
it just makes a lot of sense and a lot
of times that it's cheaper
to purchase than have to continue to pay
rent and then
but like i said just something to
consider
but thank you thank you
board member sanchez
go ahead dr hadden
and these are
more of the non-personal service costs
the tuition reimbursements
it went up a hundred percent the reason
is is because that's the cost for my
schooling
but it was just in a on a different line
item last year so it went
to different
these are grant funded
here
board member ellen
how was major equipment and operating
expense
good question
[Music]
we don't know but we can find out and
get that information to you because that
strikes me as a capital expense
and i'm
yeah i don't know enough to speak to
that
but i will
find out and have clint get back with
you
thank you board members
and these
these are again from the grants the
what we're
expecting
to get
and how we're expecting to pay for them
so this just breaks it down makes it a
little easier to see
breaks it down by program
the executive director has a 3.9 percent
medical directors 2.7
the bulk of it goes with kennel
operations is 3.7 percent
oh 37 sorry i misspoke
and 27.6 i missed this that one also
sorry
and then admin services
31.5 percent that one right
so for the total operating expenses of
four million eight hundred eighty nine
thousand and eighty three dollars
madam chair
board member ellens
go back thank her
questions
i'm sorry
you're in the market for a new
veterinarian are you not
could you repeat that i'm sorry
you're in the market for a second
veterinarian yes sir how much is that
person
going to be paid who has currently
offered
when found i believe it's
in the budget for around 105 to 110 000
how does that compare to being in
private practice in las cruces
that i don't know i don't know what they
make in private practice but there was
one posting here for las cruces and it
was comparable
especially considering you don't
necessarily have
after hours and you don't have to
deal with pet owners
so it's it's
it is a
competitive
offer
for what we're asking for
well now the county is
planning on
coming up with a medical van
on a part-time basis
manned by a veterinarian to go out into
the
rural areas
and
it's been very difficult to find
somebody yes and i assume you're
experiencing the same difficulty yes
okay
good luck
to you too
other questions from the board we're at
the questions period right
remember sanchez please
i i think
and and i think there's a couple of
things that i'm i think
i'm curious about um
given i think some of the questions that
remain unanswered um and then i know in
particular we're looking at the red at
the proposed revenues within this budget
i
have some concerns as to whether or not
the county will be
providing up to a certain amount i don't
know whether the city has already
had discussions on increasing ural's
amount as well
and so i think given that
we'll be starting to i mean we've
already started
having i think in may we'll get a little
more into it within the county's
discussions within our initial budget or
proposed budget
is there any opportunity that
we might be able to table this or a
decision on the budget until the next
meeting
just so that we have some
maybe additional clarity on the
questions that we have and then
also on the level of support that we'll
be looking at
i would i would just make a couple of
quick notes on this one we're behind the
ball so this is actually later than at
this presentation actually is probably
one or two months later so as a note
next year we should probably be having
these conversations in february january
or february
um or voting on this in january or
february so i don't know i will sort of
defer to that but i do know that
i don't know when the county is
scheduled to officially approve your
budget but the end of may
i think is past the date that the city
would is scheduled to approve our budget
and i sort of look at our budget folks
who are out here in the audience
well and i think that's that's exactly
and that's exactly the point madam
sharon is just you know if we approve
this budget and then the city and the
county or either either or
decide that we're not meeting this
proposed budget then we're already going
to have to amend this as part of the i
mean i know we'll have the opportunity
to do a final uh budget approval but i
think there's that um and then the other
question i had so that's one question
the other one is
because i i look at the increase
in
insurance costs
and i was wondering i understood that
there's an increase in coverage and an
increase in in utilization
but i it was my understanding that
because this is all done through the
city pool the the city's
uh
insurance plans that there was a
significantly
there was a cost uh reduction that was
realized
in the end so where i thought if i
looked back at it you're talking 200 and
some thousand dollar increase i thought
in in just insurance alone and that
would be one-fifth of
this increase that we're looking at i'm
going to quickly answer a couple of your
questions before i go to board member
flores first uh i do want to say that i
think that the city
in the budget just to go to your prior
question a little bit i know that we
have committed to things like the tnr
operation and the and the efforts
related to that so i know that some
parts of this budget have
have already been sort of supported in
terms of just thinking about them for
the city-wide budget but the overall
operations and and i get your your
subsequent questions the part related to
the insurance i i just want to clarify
i think that this
is a combination sort of like a
three-fold combination one increased is
increasing the proportion of insurance
that's paid and that the city moved to
change that and i think that the we
approved sort of the ascmv matching the
city which is
which is an increased amount of of
contribution
and so i think that increased amount and
the number of people who are now opting
into it is increasing and so i think
that's the subsequent results of that
well i think that's why my question is
stands is because we did approve it
and then but now we're approving now
we're now there's an additional
significant increase as well so we've
already approved it one time at least
for
within our budget
but now there's a
that increase
is significantly more so i don't
understand why we already approved
at least i thought we did approve that
that increase in coverage which we would
have had a i thought a
uh
corresponding budget amendment at that
point to cover for that
but now
from once that was done now we're
increasing a significant amount more so
i guess my question is this is i guess
exactly to that point we've already
approved that increase in coverage
that was in our budget i thought
so why that that shouldn't be a reason
why we're increasing it it's that that
much more it should only be that we have
more people covered
but i don't see why it would increase to
was it on was it 200 000 more i i think
that my understanding is and again i
look to leanne sorry to think about this
but the mid-year budget
adjustment is was not in the initial
budget so the 200 so that increases from
the budget of last year not the but if
we did the major budget adjustment that
would be their budget for fiscal year 22
that would be compared to fiscal year 23
on this presentation am i incorrect in
in that i don't know
because i mean even if we've amended it
that is our current fiscal year 22
budget
well
so i don't know if the presentation was
made that way well if i may
board member flores please thank you
thank you board chair corrine thank you
mr sanchez
but uh fortunately leanne is here and so
is matt and there are magic makers in
in finance and budget
my understanding is
what happened manny is that we went from
60 to 20 and we we increased coverage by
20 percent correct so uh board member
quran is absolutely correct in that
uh that was an increase in the
for
people who were already enrolled and
then more enrolled that's the city is
paying for that
that's a benefit the city is providing
for the employees at the center correct
but i guess what i'm saying is
where would the if we had the
associated budget adjustment to it to
match that increase in coverage
that was in fiscal year 20 the the
amended fiscal year 22 budget
then now we're seeing from fiscal year
22 to 23 a increase of 200 000 more
and the and the discussion is or at
least the response was that it was
because of the increase in coverage and
because of more people more people on it
but did we just not have a lot of people
on
insurance that it would increase yes
three you know
200 percent yes
that's what happened
because a lot of people were uh
peop they had spouses who had better
benefits with the other employer and
this is dynamite i mean 80 percent is uh
is born by the the city of las cruces so
i'm going to look to
to our budget
just a quick question
if sorry i know we're running long uh so
i
i appreciate liam and matt being here
but um i was also under the impression
that the center had a
management analyst that helps with the
day-to-day budget uh are are they here
in case we need to ask the nuanced
questions
okay she was here earlier okay thank you
please if you have any insight so madam
chairs board members mostly i can talk
about the city i will
state that
yes we did as a city we went to the 80
20 on the insurance we did get off could
you identify yourself oh i'm sorry i'm
sorry
uh for the record my name's leanne
demush and i'm the finance director for
the city of las cruces thank you so much
for reminding me commissioner ellis
we did elect to do that we also i think
i'm going to take a step back it got
really loud
we did elect
to we were self-insured just like the
county i think the county still is
self-insured our full self
uh for health insurance and dental we
elected to go back onto the state
and the state premiums were a little bit
lower
because
and i apologize i got a little bit of a
frog you started talking about coughing
and i started coughing earlier
but we
we elected to go back onto the state the
premiums are lower
than what ours were over the past couple
of years our premiums had been going
higher and higher and higher like 12 15
so we looked into what
through our city manager mr pealey we
decided that we would elect to go into
the state because it was a cheaper cost
and after we had enrollment as far as
city employees which we have
approximately
give or take about fifteen hundred we
had about a little over eleven hundred
uh people that were on our insurance and
people that came on to our insurance we
were thinking it would be in the
hundreds you know like wow we're
offering 80 20. we had a total of only
25.
25 new people that joined the insurance
so our insurance cost while
yes our premiums went down but when we
went to the 80 20 we did see a spike
overall for our whole budget was about
2.6 million the city portion of that 2.6
is only 2.1
so that other half a million is only for
the jpas which as you know we have
mervda metro
animal service center and south central
solid waste which has quite a few
employees as well
so to answer your question board member
floors i would have to get with hr and
see exactly how many people came on to
the insurance for animal service center
i do not have that number mail
in front of me
i will tell you i have the the jpa in
front of me right now because that is i
think one of the things that we're
working on
um it is the responsibility of the
animal service center to put in their
own budget into our munis erp system
however in the jpa it does state
that proposed budgets shall be
cooperatively reviewed
by the city and county staff who shall
provide budget development guidance and
advice to the center
we that i am know of and i'll turn to
matt and see if he's aware of i'm not
aware of any meetings that we've
actually had one-on-ones with the animal
service center in the past we had but
for fiscal year 23 i'm unsure
no he is shaking his head no we have not
had any meetings with animal service
center on this budget
it also states in the jpa that the board
shall review and make recommendations
regarding any proposed budget prior to
the center submitting the proposed
budget
to the parties for consideration
and it says the parties intend to pay
each pay for 50
of the center's net operating budget
that is in the jpa so i wanted to bring
that up because i think that you know
that is something that we're working on
right now and just wanted to address to
you that you know we have not helped in
any kind of budget development with them
and i'm unsure if
the county has either and maybe
mr macias has some thoughts on that as
well but we have not cooperated
on anything with them what do you mean
you haven't cooperated we haven't had
any pre-meetings with them uh board
member floors are are you talking
specifically mr moosh uh to the um
animal service
animal service center in so far as the
budget for fiscal year 23 yesterday and
you're talking um
we're talking apples to apples we're
talking about
finance committee to finance committee
or when you say we have not talking to
you i'm saying that but i've just spoken
with what exactly the budget section
actually having individual meetings with
animal services are you talking talking
to
clint clint and his m.a and
you know
just getting input on what their budget
is so that way we can help them with any
kind of analysis or anything like that
so seeing this are you saying that this
is your first impression of this eye
line item um i did see it during the
finance committee meeting that we had
this week yes ma'am but this we it is in
our budget but in our budget um he has
only put in for the revenue that to
receive to him for the city he has not
increased it it's at the same
level that it is right now which is 1.75
million so how does that impact
what we're doing today
it would be that if this board we would
have to take this back to the council
for the main meeting and show this and
if our council agrees to the uh 2.1
million then we would have to make that
change at the dice and the change would
be to what to increase their revenue uh
contribution to how much uh there i
think they're asking 2.3 2.1
2.1 2.1 yes so in fact what um
commissioner sanchez has brought up
is in fact something we have to do i
mean we can't vote on this today if we
don't know what the city has done
correct and the county presumably hasn't
done it either right they have a
different budget
table timetable than we do
their their budget i think is due
like
in september even
august september so they're much later
than we are oh
for the fiscal year
not for fiscal year for
presenting their budget they're sending
their budget to the state i think it's a
different time
timeline than we are
the municipalities for county and city
are different for the state
so if we postpone this uh table not
table but postpone our
table to a date certain
which would be hopefully next month may
um
would that be a terrible thing or i mean
in so far as the um
timing of the uh
of the fiscal year 23. so board chair
and all commissioners my recommendation
would be that if you do want to table
this
we've actually had this with one other
jpa
if a
budget is not approved
at the time that we take our budget then
the budget stays status quo for what it
is for so fiscal year 22 will just roll
into the be exactly the same in fiscal
year 23 and then what we do is is they
can bring um a recommendation to this
board as to what their budget should be
and then all we the city has to do is
take that
to a budget adjustment to the to the
council and then bring and then send it
to the dfa
so
it just means if you don't adopt and
that did happen to one of the jpas under
my watch they didn't get
to their board in time for a
recommendation to give it to the city
and so we just adopted their 22 budget
and then a month later
they just brought their budget to us so
it is doable uh commissioner flores okay
so um
so my question now is do
do you
[Music]
was this just a
unusual situation or do you speak with
the animal center staff
um
about budget items before they actually
come here and prior i mean prior i mean
it seems to me that this should have
been taken care of in january
or february because things move slowly
or whatever go through processes and
steps and whatnot so
um
would we have been so is it something
that you're in touch with with other in
communication with
uh and agreements or whatever
understandings with other jpas or
specifically this jpa or what happened
so um board sharon didn't happen
commissioner flores uh we are in
correspondence oh i'm not a commissioner
never
sorry no it's bad enough being a
counselor thank you board floor uh
board person flores
i apologize ma'am
we have a really great in the past we've
we and and even now we have a great
working relationship with all of the
jpas we work with them you know they
come and they they you know they'll walk
in i mean our doors are always open my
door is always open
we have an open door policy especially
in financial services i mean it's it's
you know
and so at any time they need to work
with us or meet with us we're
we're there for them so that is i mean
that's part of being the fiscal agent
for them and so we do want to work with
them i will tell you you know now being
the finance director you know matt's
more the interim now but in the past we
had a lot of one-on-ones with clint and
also with his m.a mike
so
this year i have to honestly tell you i
was a little bit
taken out of the
the realm of everything being now the
director but you know still trying to
work with them
with the budget
i don't i i can't speak for animal
service center for clint on
what the changes were or anything
you know time i hate to say gets away
from us sometimes
but
i just know that we did not meet
one-on-one with them like we normally do
every year so
mr moosh do you foresee meeting with him
more frequently or at least one to one
and bringing this to us
so that this can come to us in a timely
manner and i would suggest to my fellow
board members who are commissioners
and
mr macias mr
jonathan macias not to be confused with
fernando macias
to uh so that it's all coordinated and
looked at and approved before we have we
get here and then we realize oh nelly
what's really going on and can we really
move forward on this yeah
madam chair uh
board member sanchez please and just
just for at least
to
just to provide this information i know
i know clint had reached out to our
finance team had made a request for the
increase that was all going to be part
of our the request that was going to be
brought to
the board of county commissioners here
next month as we begin our the approval
of our preliminary budget
um but as of now we have not had
any type of recommendation or opposite
on where we could stand with everything
so
we they said i know the request is there
i just haven't heard of any discussion
specific around it and i
i that's i think that's just where my
uh hesitancy comes with just approving
this today is just simply that is we can
approve it but then if either either of
the end of our uh entities decide that
we want to modify it well then we're
then going to have to
um make a
budget adjustment immediately to what we
approved today if we were to approve it
but i i'm open i just want to make sure
we get what we need done
but i just want to try to do it in the
best way possible so leanne thank you so
much
for helping with that information thank
you i i
also wanted to point out that we did
have a preliminary presentation at the
board retreat for for the
city
clint did do an introductory retreat
there so i also i share your concerns
about not there not being the follow-up
in the intervening time
and i hear you i also have
pretty serious concerns about submitting
the exact same budget the city put an
unfunded mandate of tnr onto the animal
services center and so not funding it
again in this budget cycle is and
building a new center without the staff
to fill it
um
i i am a little troubled by our own
processes i guess and and that not
having that conversation leaves us sort
of
saying we're going to do something and
not giving the money to do so so i'm i'm
troubled by our own
internal
communication and process of how that
that happened or fell out
and so
uh
i those concerns
make me
look to you all for a motion although i
see board member flores i don't know if
you want to say more or if you are
just keeping your
i do want to ask leanna question before
i make a motion or whatever
walk away
maybe but leanne seriously our matt
so say we were to approve this today
um
and
it's
so we would probably do it for purposes
of expediency but then
um
you're saying that well then we can we
can approve it today and then when
adjustments or the changes come in
because right now it's set at 2022 and
it'll stay that way unless the city
council
and
the county
commissioners
vote
in their respective chambers
to approve a change
and but there's no guarantee that it
would be
and then we're stuck with 2022 and all
of the budget items are
for naught
so
board chair and
board flores
we if you do recommend moving forward
with this budget then what we would
probably do of course mr enriquez is
here and he can speak on this we
probably need to meet with mr peely and
we can put that recommendation in the
budget now and that way when we come to
you
on may the 16th
then that budget we would show that
budget adjustment or that budget
recommendation from the board and then
you as well
in front of the council
if it's approved when you approve the
resolution then it gets it's in there
it's in that budget
okay
um
and then mr pealey could say no i don't
think so mr enriquez might say no i
don't think so city council might say or
they may say sure and the city council
might say well no i mean i'm just saying
that that's a possibility or yes yes yes
yes yes all the way along and then the
county says no we're not so then what
happens to that budget
yeah who gets hold you know who is
responsible for fulfilling those amounts
if i'm not saying that the the county
would vote uh the same i mean what would
happen um board chair board floors
my um i'm gonna speculate on this but if
the county does not go up to the 2.1
which is what the board will be asking
then what will happen is is the animal
service center will just need to make
some adjustments on their
the revenues will go down and their
expenditures will need to go down with
that so that way they have a balanced
budget
i apologize
does that does that answer your question
well yeah it's i think what it's doing
is uh placing the onus where it
where it should have been in the
beginning right and just throwing the
ball back into the court you know of the
administration of the center right and
yeah and unfortunately chair and fourth
floors um i mean the
the animal service center can only work
with how much you know funding comes in
from the county from the
you know from the city from the other
little small communities around
with what you know the
other revenue is that they have you know
if there's
chips and
things like that
so they have to look at what their
revenues are and they have to look at
you know those expenditures need to
equal those revenues
thank you very much
mr
board member ellen thank you
perhaps i misheard
but something that board memory flourish
said earlier
was that
the city has already improved
two hundred thousand dollar increase in
the insurance
that that would mean to me
that the 2.1 million
as for from the county
is to be used for purposes other than
the increase in the insurance rates
presumably yeah i mean
so may i
answer that question so board chair um
board ellis
the
the the
all of the expenses that are applied for
the animal service center such as the
increase in the premiums are paid by the
animal service center it was not
the city did not bring in additional
funds for those if they elected to go to
the 80 20 the animal service center has
to
accept that additional cost for the 80
20. and it was my understanding that the
board you know
was amiable to accepting the 80 20 and
not remaining at the 60 40. and so when
they did that my understanding is like i
did not see a budget increase during
that time
right and bernice is saying that's
correct
and i think what mr um
thatcher did was was he had quite a bit
of
vacancy savings and he was using the
vacancy savings for this fiscal year to
cover those costs
and i'm
and i'm pretty sure that i'm looking at
yeah i was going to call him chief and
ricky's but mr henricus for that and i
think that is correct
yes
so
and i will say he does
so the animal service center does have
um i just checked this morning because
we just ran payroll they have 12 vacant
positions and they have about five
active um
you know they've got five positions out
there that they're trying to fill so he
does have some some salary some vacancy
savings right now
so when you say that there are vacancy
vacancies
that's wiggle room money
no ma'am that just means that he doesn't
have anybody in that position and that
budget is not being used i'll put it
that way okay all right thank you board
member ellens i don't know if you were
if you had another question
no okay
thank you other questions
from the board
or clarifications from staff
i'm sorry
no i just didn't know if you were
getting news
okay we we were getting a number sorry
uh chair we were getting a salary
savings right now looks like their
salary savings is about a hundred and
fifty three thousand dollars
for the year
okay so it sounds like there are more
questions than answers
in this discussion and and i do have
some follow-ups that i would like to do
offline to see what broke down and and
and are
maybe
delaying this or not not making this
these communications happen sooner to to
really have all the questions answered
when this came before us
um
i would entertain emotion
um
but
i i would i would say again that i am
troubled and i'm speaking to us as a
city council
that we
that we kind of continue to not fulfill
what we said we were going to do and so
i think
i just want to interrogate that as far
as our
our funding and so
what you're referring to is our tnr
but as far as this is concerned
we're
now that
well i'm saying it because if we if we
voted to
table this till till may my
understanding is that then the budget
that will
that we would approve as the city
council would not include any funding
for tnr because it would be the same as
last year correct
chairman that would be
correct unless there is budget within
his budget to use for the tnr
however i do want to point out that even
though we adopt this budget on may 16th
we can come right back to council in
june and even do another budget
adjustment i mean we have that ability
and of course we'd need to work with uh
mr peely and with mr and rickus on that
but
yeah
okay
given that go ahead and come puerto rico
thank you um chair coran so
uh the tnr
is
the money for
the funding for tnr
is in this resolution
yes
it is
it was among the
new staff and increased surgery expenses
i just used
the tnr coordinator was one of the new
positions at the beginning
that we're
adding so it is included in this
if i ever get back there there's got to
be a better way
yeah there's we shouldn't be signing
this yet
no
there
so this is where the
the tnr coordinator it is a new hire it
isn't a new position that is included in
this budget
i'd just like to point out that last
year
hopefully i'm not over over speaking
last year
we did our we did our budget our budget
was approved and the county still didn't
come up with
the
i think they did it half and then the
city came back with an additional
portion
so
we like leanne said we do adjust our
budget given
what we are
provided by both the city and the county
thank you and and i would say that i
know that the jpa conversations are
ongoing so that that particular
conversation is is a longer term one
that we are having i think
so um board member must see us please
madam chair and uh dr hayden just as as
a point of information could you not
take the salary savings and at least run
with the tnr knowing that that's one of
the uh
the requests by the board
potentially sorry
potentially
it's not not to say that we can't and
also
the veterinary position
we
we are using those funds in other areas
that aren't funded so yes we could but
my understanding is
the position itself
has to be approved by the board before
we can even
submit that job description
to the city
and then it takes a while for the city
to go and figure out how much
that position should be paid
so we need
my understanding is that we need the
approval
of the budget so that
we can submit this job
so that we can
fill it
thank you
did you do you want did you want to add
something matt
yes good morning uh
chair coat on and board members so my
name is matthew signs interim chief
budget officer so if they need to adopt
this excuse me so if they would like to
add this position at a later date we can
bring it forward with a budget
adjustment at that time and it can be
added and hr can process that
information as well
you matt did you mean bring it back to
this board or bring it to city council
it would have to come through the
general service center board yes
thank you
any other clear questions clarifications
acm enriquez please yes madam chair just
wanted to add like on the screen that's
showing right now they're looking at
at six new hires
so that's in the new current
budget and the request
we as leanne stated we just recently saw
this and you know whatever breakdowns
took place we need to just continue to
work but
as matt just said we can always come
back and look at the tnr coordinator it
can be a reclass position with the 12
vacancies they have so again that amount
to be determined we still don't know
because we don't know what the cost of
the position is and we don't know if it
will truly be a new hire so there's a
lot of and questions that still need to
be answered and clarified with a lot of
the the budget also the benefits is
something that we really need to break
down and look at how many employees
because that is a
high dollar amount for the amount of
staff that
that the animal service center has so
there's
there's still a lot of questions to be
answered through the budget
thank you i would entertain any motion
on resolution
22-06 the annual budget madam chair i i
believe uh just point of order we have
an existing motion to approve the budget
we do
so we should call the question about
approving the budget
or i would accept an amendment to that
motion
madam chair i don't have a question i'm
on the i'm on the fence i think
i can vote
yes for the budget with the caveat
that we've met like i said i think i
know for the
from
the county side we haven't made a
determination yet on this and it hasn't
been discussed so i think
that's my concern i would vote yeah i
could vote yes for approving the budget
but
like i said more than there might be a
we might need an amendment in the future
to if we don't approve that in the
county
or or we can or we can or or i will you
know we can withdraw the the motion and
table
until we have more details i i could go
either way i just don't know if the
timing causes us issues if we were to
wait till the next
uh board asmv board meeting in may
uh cheer quote on please thank you and
thank you very much for the
recommendation to bump this meeting up a
lot sooner so it coincides with our
budget process here at the city that
would be uh be really helpful to take
that uh to our our council work session
sorry
um
counselor um i'm sorry counselor
board member sanchez thank you very much
for the question it would be a little
bit difficult for us to get that at that
time we would have to scramble
our recommendation would probably be to
bring it forward next year with an
adjustment we can adopt your fy 22
budget as leanne recommended um
[Music]
it would be 22
423 because we'd be adopting according
to the rules we would adopt the current
year budget for next year
so
with that um i will just leave it up to
the board on your your recommendation
but we do have to bring forward our
budget adoption
to city council
on may 16th
so if you are asking for an increase we
would have to present that increase on
the city side which is about 350 000
and get council's recommendation on that
thank you matt
board member flores thank you thank you
chair so
my concern right now is that as a city
councilor
if i vote yes
today
and say
it passes today and and i'm one who
voted yes
um
then um
we
would then
um
take it back to
and the and the
county uh commissioners vote no
at their
you know
at the county
meeting
then
the city would have to go back as leanne
said come back to city council and ask
for an adjustment in the budget
and
and then cl and then the budget items
would have to be
reallocated to make up for a deficiency
in that allocation
board member flores that would be
correct
um
we would have that difference that would
need to be made up because i think in
the proposed budget currently they're
increasing both the county and the
city's contributions so if the county
does not increase their contributions
animal service center is going to be
uh have a
deficit
yeah and that's what we haven't find
they'll either have to reduce their
expenditures or come forward to city
council to re request additional funding
okay
all right did you have any no yeah i i
think yeah yeah that or or um
board chair board floors they would have
to reduce their expenditures like like
matt said and that did happen last year
last year i think they
the board asked for
1.75 from each the county and the city
the county decide elected not to
increase the budget which is you know
their their commissioners can do that
that's theirs and what we did was was we
just made that adjustment in the
revenues and
and we made some adjustments in the
expenditures as well to reflect that and
that's exactly what we did last year
okay so then it means that um
it means that the
allocations the proposed budget by
animal service center
as
if the county doesn't come through then
it has to cut back a lot
and that would be a terrible thing
but the other thing that would be
horrible would be if the county uh
i i'm trying to be diplomatic and it's
very hard for me to be diplomatic i'm
just
but i i think that i i think it might be
an affront to the county if they haven't
had their budget and thank you for
recommending that they take care of
things so that we can at least
where we're on jpas and stuff like that
can coordinate
our calendars
accordingly but so
they
might feel that it's an affront
that that the jpa
say all the city councillors well it's
not going to happen but
say this board voted uh to adopt this um
to this budget today
and then the county decides we just
don't have that money or we just don't
want to allocate that money
um i mean they might feel an affront
that the that the board has the j this
jpa has made a decision that it can't
commit to
i mean it's possible it can feel an
affront
i mean is it possible you you sit you
county people would feel that
we're trying to take care of business
here but would you feel that uh it'd be
an affront because i will tell you that
if the i will tell you conversely
frankly
bluntly that if the county says no we're
not going to carry it out
um i think it's a slap in the face to
this board
because we are we're we're wearing two
hats here we have a commitment and a
loyalty to the jpa
and to the service center
so you know and therein lies a rub where
do we
you know where do we um
how how do we work at this strategically
so that we have a positive outcome so
that we do have the money that has been
proposed for budget and and nobody walks
away i don't want to feel
i i want to stop saying that we pick up
we pick up where the county slacks i
want to stop saying that but i can't it
in fact the county says we can't honor
the budget proposed or adopted by the
jpa it's disrespecting the jpa i mean my
you know that's my so i just want to put
that out there because i don't want to
have
i don't want to walk away
um
saying that the county has
not come through or respected the jpa's
decision thank you thank you madam chair
so
board member sanchez
[Music]
i i'm
i'm good at the moment i'll
if they're when i guess i i'm ready to
to vote or we can like i said i'm still
on the fence
but i think given what counselor flotus
said
i will be saying right now that i would
vote no then if that's how if this is
how a vote here by any member of the
county
is being viewed as whether or not that
we are going to
endorse this increase
then i will vote no on this budget at
this moment because i can't make that
determination until we go through our
full budgeting process that we're going
to increase our
contribution
by 50
i will know that we did increase our
contribution to the animal service
center by 200 000 last year we were at
1.2 million and i know that wasn't to
the level the city wanted but we did
increase some but now we're asking
another 700 000
to be added to the animal service center
and that is something that that's why
i'm saying i have a huge concern with
because it's such a big jump
but if if my vote here will be construed
as endorsing
this without having the full review of
our budget process then i i can't
approve this budget at this time because
i don't know
where our increase of revenues what else
we have across all of our budget so
like i said i think i think if i were to
vote right now i will say no or we can
table till after we have our our
discussions in the county
can i just ask a point of clarification
so if we i just want to point out a few
parliamentary things that i don't
entirely
know exactly what the prescribed thing
is in this case we have a motion on the
floor to approve so typically the
options are yes no
uh or amend um that motion
or withdrawing uh well amending it could
mean tabling it right i think
or
withdraw the motion but in any case we
approve this as it is which suggests
we're all endorsing it subject to the
approval of our governing bodies that's
what that that's what a yes vote would
mean a no vote would mean sort of what
you're alluding to that is i'm not
comfortable with this and or i'm not
comfortable with this without having it
been vetted
by our respective
boards and or staff who can tell us more
about it
and for us we have a different
implication on the city and that
implication is if we don't meet our
budget deadline the same budget as last
year will be submitted which is
equivalent to us not funding the new
shelter expansion or the
the things that we passed
so that's that's what us voting
no no on this would be right
not necessarily
madame chair my understanding is that
the the city would come back to city
council
to um
revise uh
the tnr wouldn't be taken out no
no it wouldn't be taken out of
the plan to fund it it'd be a question
of moving things around
and
i think it would fall on
director
thacker
to move his budget around and maybe not
not you know the ftes out there will not
be fulfilled and then uh the other uh
leg to that would be
the uh coming back to city council
so yes yes so we will be adjusting the
tnr will be funded or should be because
it's on the budget
no that if we vote to reject the budget
then it won't be right so if we vote no
these things are not in the budget
right
that voucher that is my understanding
from animal service center yes ma'am no
so just to clarify what those votes mean
and i add the implication of what it
means for the for us as city councilors
so okay
i just i'm not meaning to complicate it
and i understand the nuance of of these
conversations and our respective bodies
um
and so i would just import chair i would
i'd like to apologize to board sanchez
you are right i'm looking at the revenue
and you did increase the revenue last
year 200 000 the year before was uh 1.25
million sir i apologize thank you no i
just i knew that was just i just wanted
to clarify and i wasn't taking it as any
type of thank you no problem thank you
it's hard to keep all those numbers in
my head absolutely
so my damn chair if
if this board was to say yes to this
because right now
we really need funding for tnr
and
the
the county and i really mean this
respectfully decides that
it can't
it can't meet that
increase
then we
the city
the budget people would come back to
city council to ask for an adjustment or
or clint would
have to make his line item readjustments
so
so we can pass this to get
at least
to get the budget going and to get that
tnr
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so that my understanding is and i don't
know i should let leon talk about my
understanding is if we if we pass this
when the budget appears to us at city
council we would be approving our
portion only which may or may not
include
half of these things or whatever the jp
the jpa would suggest half right ish
half of any new expenditures would be
although that's not necessarily what
comes out that would
but the budget that would be pending the
approval of the county which would may
or may not cut half of these things
right or more of these things that's up
that's in clint's world to budget those
things but that would be
how it would appear to us on the may
16th meeting if we voted yes it would
include our obligation to that
commitment right madam chair
commissioners so what
what the county
i apologize what the county and the city
are doing is contributing you like
revenue into the animal service center
so how the animal service center spins
it is you know up to their director and
to this board as well
so it's not like this is the county
portion and this is the city portion it
is the animal service center messiah
valley
budget if you approve this today then
i'm sure
that
the county representatives will take
that to their commission and make
this is the recommendation from the
board just like we would bring that on
may 16 to our
to our council and say this is a
recommendation from the board
and
i don't know what else to add unless
unless and mr ricketts does if we
and i'm what josie
and jose trevino i'm the comptroller so
you do not need to pass this to get the
tnr position they have 12 vacancies they
could use
one of those vacancies to reclass it
they do have 152 000 in salary savings
what that means is if they don't spend
it in fy 22 it goes to the fund balance
so they would have funding from fy22
to fund a tnr position so
they can use the current position
to reclass if this doesn't get approved
and if we vote
no today what does
can i ask is that becky i don't know if
you i'm
looking to you what does that mean
i'm looking at becky because that's
where christine sits and so i expect you
to have it be imbued with the same
understanding of robert
so i have some but not not as much as
christine definitely um
it really is what you've heard from the
financial people is that if you vote no
it sounds like that the budget that
they've got
for
this year will flow over to next year
that's where it's going to sit
but if you vote for the new one that
still puts clint in a position of having
to
make adjustments
based on what income he does receive
okay whether whether you have approved
this or not he still has to work under
the income he receives
so that's what i understand
i apologize for the board chair just
like mr vino just said while ago you do
have salary savings you can use one of
the vacant positions to re-class for
if it's a tnr coordinator that you're
requesting
there is salary savings and that could
actually be
started now
and we could start that process now in
fiscal year 22 if that is what
but they would need to bring that to
this board
okay
i think i understand
board member ellen
both the county and the city council
will be meeting twice
before we meet
on the last thursday of may
there are so many open questions
that i'm not prepared to vote for this
budget today
i would put it over until
our next meeting
that'll give both bodies the opportunity
to discuss it in greater detail
with
this discussion we've had today in mind
and then
if the city
or i should say if the county
decides to
increase its contribution by x dollars
if this budget then comes back
at our next meeting
it could be tailored
to
reflect what the
commission's decision was to begin with
but i'm not prepared
to vote for it because
it could be viewed as a commitment by
the two county
board members to
support the budget as proposed today
i would prefer
to discuss this in the future until the
next meeting of this board
as a proposal
rather than a commitment
and so i would
move that we postpone this budget
until the next meeting of this board
point of order please
yes board member flores i i think my
understanding is we have an emotion on
the table we have a motion on the action
item i shouldn't say the table
although the table exists over here and
i think that's what you're alluding to
we have a motion on the floor so i would
entertain um a withdrawal of that motion
given what you're saying which my sense
is that you're requesting that we don't
vote not
yes or no up or down but that we table
it i think parliamentarially we need
something different than what's on the
floor to a day certain which is the
fourth thursday in may
personally
i would support an increase in the
county's contribution
but i can't speak to the whole
board of commissioners
but
i'm more comfortable if this is a
proposal
that we're
mulling over rather than an absolute
commitment
which
if the county doesn't decide to
increase
would have some
public relation consequences that i
don't
want to enjoy
board member sanchez i i was just
curious with all the discussion who
motioned and who seconded on this agenda
item i i can ask it down oh do you can
you
no i wrote it i can't think that
so it's sitting on the thing that we
sign
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okay originally when we started this
flores moved and ellen's seconded
is who is the second you you were the
second
which you could withdraw at any time who
was the most who was the mover uh
board member flores moved and board
member ellen second
i don't care if i'm sick and again
that's fine no i think that the the
question is if we withdraw the motion
for approval
and then the motion of the second and
then we can motion for a table
to date certain i believe is that
correct yes sure correct
[Music]
yes
okay okay so i think that's what we need
now is that withdrawal of the motion and
second for approval of this item
so for that we would need
council flores who made the motion to
say i withdraw
my motion
and then we need
ellen's mr allen's to say i withdraw my
second and then we can start all over
again with a new motion and a new second
uh matt when
do you come before city council for
approval the 16th
and this meeting is a 26.
so i'm not going to withdraw my i'm not
going to withdraw
my uh
we can just i'm not going to withdraw my
motion
chair caught on uh board member flores
yes that is correct we come to city
council for adoption on may 16th we also
have a commitment to department of
finance to submit our budget by june 1st
so thank you
then i'll call then recall the question
becky
please
remember sanchez no
[Music]
board member ellens
thank you for voting on the motion to
approve
motion to approve this budget that you
have been discussing
and that was a yes vote or a no vote sir
no
thank you
former macias
no
board member flores
yes
chair corrine yes
the motion fails three to two
all right moving on to the next
item of public input
is there anyone from the public here who
persisted
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um
for 3.5 hours
to speak
we out
debated that okay um
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seeing no one from the public again
hearing no one
it's time for chair and board comments i
start with board member sanchez i have
nothing at this time thank you chair
correct
it's board member comments so
uh board member sanchez yeah oh sorry
chuck around i said i did not
i have no comments i think we've
commented enough already today
thank you
board member macias
no thank you very much for your time
today and i look forward to working in
conjunction with the center as well as
the city so that we can come on uh
come back to this thank you
thank you board member flores are you
serious do you want to hear my comments
thank you
seriously i want to thank everybody
for their work and
we're going to make this happen we'll
get our tnr one way or the other
thank you
[Music]
i have no comments except i still remem
i'm still gonna hit you up just just so
you know i haven't forgotten
um
an hour and a half ago
uh
okay i have no
additional comments i would entertain a
motion to adjourn
so move
sanchez
i second the motion
to adjourn
i guess
you