[Music]
good morning everybody it's 9 03 a.m on
thursday september 23 2021 and we'll be
calling this meeting of the board of
directors of the animal service center
of the messiah valley to order
would i be able to get a roll call
please
certainly
board member mcmahon is absent remember
enriquez
president remember flores
is absent
board member ellen's
is absent
member candara here
board member
board member trujillo is absent chair
sanchez
president okay we have a quorum
uh mr thacker are there any changes to
the agenda i see him shaking his head
there are none so can i get a motion and
a second to approve the agenda please
so moved second gandara
moved by vice chairman stevie seconded
by mayor pro tem gandala
is there any input
okay can i get a roll call on the
approval of agenda please
enriquez
yes
and chairman sanchez
yes we have an approved agenda all right
moving on we are on to the minutes this
is the approval of the minutes from the
ascmv board meeting held on august 26
2021 i will note that there is one uh
minor
change to the
uh
to the minutes there was a
reference to
during the the aco report from the city
of las cruces they had mentioned miss
lucero but it's uh actually we wanted to
reflect lieutenant wittala
so that has been made to the minute so
can i get a motion and a second to
approve the minutes as corrected
i'll move to approve the eight minutes
as amended
second gandara
thank you we have a motion by vice
chairman seconded by mayor pro tem
gandala
are there any other changes to the
minutes
okay hearing none can i get a roll call
please
board member nicholas yes for member
kandra
yes board member betas duvet yes and
chairman sanchez
yes the meeting minutes are approved
all right we're moving on to the reports
and presentation section of the agenda
we will start let's see who do we want
ray lou will you
care to kick us off so we'll start with
the county aco followed by
uh the city
good morning miss work
good morning mary lou ward donaiana
county animal control supervisor
and let me pull up our report for
august of 2021
okay
starting into august of 2021
we reported 244 straight animals
out of those 244 stray animals 163 of
those were picked up
60 of those were stray cats and 103 were
stray dogs
in addition to that we had 16
sick or injured animals
six of those were cats and 10 of those
were dogs
we also had eight owner surrender
animals
those were all dogs
this is a chart
i kind of revamped it a little bit so
that you could see the numbers a little
bit better
on a four-year comparison chart of a
straight animal comparison
for the years compared and if you could
see
we had 244
compared to
2020 which we had 278
2019 we had 431
and 2018 we had 315
those were reported strays so we had a
lot less
well last year we
yeah we still had a lot less
going into these years
now our four-year return to owner
comparison chart as well i kind of
revamped this as well to add the numbers
at the bottom
we returned 23 last year or last month
in august
compared to the months before you could
see the comparison there
and then of course going into our
additional animals that were picked up
we talked about the ones in the red
already
we also had nine welfare holds that were
picked up
zero animal cruelties um two of the
quarantines
and then i added the
rabies submission for bats
we turned in three bat rabies
submissions and two of those were
negative but one did come back positive
for rabies
i left this in here for a reference on
the explanation of the geo districts
and then of course where this is broken
down by the geo-districts of the animals
that were picked up
district number one we had a total of
five number two thirty three
number three twenty seven
number four thirty two
district five thirty three district six
five and district 728 so you could see
where our hot spot areas are
in which district
and then i just broke this down this is
something a new slide that's been added
on our stray cats that were picked up
by districts
so you can show this
as a comparison
for the year to date
and then of course i did the same thing
for our stray dogs
for a year to date
by districts
and then the reasons for owner release
of ownership um
aggressive was one killing livestock
three
a vicious and or dangerous two and then
animals that were sick were two
and for that i'll stand for any
hey is questions any questions for my
sport
miss ward i just was curious it seems
like the last two months i guess
in district two there were
seems like there was just a huge jump in
the number of cats that were picked up
is there anything in particular like a
colony or something of that nature that
was identified or
a residence or something of that nature
um yeah we've had some people that are
trapping out there so we've had some
more people i'm calling for couch in
traps we're trying to discourage people
to trap right now um but we
we're still picking up traps cats and
traps yeah i think if you if you go to
the next slide that's one that i think
caught my attention in particular this
one yes ma'am so it's just like you know
we we had a couple of months that were
high and then it kind of dropped off and
then july and august
district two seemed like it was a
i said that that kind of
area of across the county that
was the hot spot for cats
correct okay yes so they're just
trapping and then making the calls
they're trapping we've had some some
areas where we've had a lot of
people that are complaining they've had
issues they didn't want the cats for
various reasons
so
we've asked for them not to trap
for various reasons
but
you know when there is problems in that
area we can't totally deny not to to
pick anything up
okay thank you miss ward appreciate it
any other questions i think that's it
good morning uh commissioner allen
let the record show nolan's joining us
at 9 10 a.m
uh if there are no other questions do
you have any questions for miss ward or
okay very good okay thank you thank you
and we'll move on to the city aco
good morning mr chairman members of the
board
my name is gino gimez i'm the animal
control supervisor for the city of las
cruces i'm going to present to you
our
numbers for august
uh 2021.
excuse me
for the month of august we responded to
508 calls for strays of those 243 were
goa meaning that the officer did not
have contact with that animal
excuse me
of those we were able to apprehend 265.
288 were impounded at the animal service
center
112 were dogs and 116 were cats
we were successful in field rtoing 37
dogs
and we attempted to fill rto20
so that gave us a total of 57
identifiable animals
here is our three-year
straight call comparison
as you can see by our numbers we're
still averaging the same more or less as
it's keeping within our trend
here is our three-year field rto
comparison
looking at
last month
excuse me july we were up pretty high at
53 but then we dip down to our average
of 37.
so here are some reasons for owner for
citizens owner releasing their animals
five for aggression a two actually
killed the owner's other dog
two dogs for illness owners could not
afford
bills
two
from one owner who was homeless and he
didn't have anywhere or any means to
care for those animals any longer
three dogs owners were unable to care
for
one cat that had become aggressive with
the owner
and one dog the owner was having some
mental health issues and chose to redeem
that dog i mean
i want to release that dog
so here are our reasons for us the
officers being unable to field rto
animals 16 for no contact by phone or at
the residence
one with the microchip was not
registered and three the microchip
information was not current
and with that i will stand for any
questions
okay any questions for uh officer menace
all right
thank you thank you gina you're welcome
welcome back to thank you
all right uh we're on to shelter
statistics and activities and the
executive director report by mr thacker
good morning sir good morning how are
you board
you looking beautiful today as always
my name is clint thacker executive
director at the animal service center
messiah valley here to present to you
the august numbers for the ascm the
current population is 534 as of
yesterday
you see that is up from 2020 but
significantly down from 2019.
we included 2019 in these in this report
as you'll see going through because 2020
was such an odd year for the ascmv as
far as impounds and
pretty much all numbers
so our intake
in 2021 for dogs 381 2021 for cats 310
and then other was seven you see that
really large number from 2019 of 1060
animals that came into the ascmv
2020 was half of that at 571 and then
2021 we're up from that 571 to 698
so we're still
we're slowly doing that climbing etching
into the higher numbers
these are transfers or rescues say that
they came through a total 187
action program for animals is always a
local rescue that does a lot for us
specifically for the sick kittens or
cats newborns
and we appreciate all that they do
some others there halo animal rescue is
a partner we use in colorado
and appreciate their
then with us humane society of utah was
a recipient of flight
animals from dog as my co-pilot
and a new hope rescue as well
i'm sorry halo is located in arizona and
new hope rescue is located in colorado
as a total though 135 dogs 51 cats and
one other
so our returns we had three behavior
problem two landlord doesn't low
allow cannot afford basic cares one and
lifestyle change is one so total is
seven bernice uh was able to get the
dates
like of how long the animal had the
animal to when it surrendered and it was
we're looking at it was on average
between eight and 11 days was all these
animals were owned so it was a pretty
quick
turnaround we encourage and we actually
give paperwork
that says
the power of three three days three
months or three days three weeks and
three months we encourage people to have
them and the reasons why each one of
those landmarks
chairman
mr ellens
clint when we
receive an animal from the owner
do we ever get the medical records
for the animal well we can
transport them when we
send them out for adoption well these
animals were our animals to begin with
so we have the medical record especially
from just those three days or 11 days
but if an animal comes in and they have
the information from it then yes we do
get we do take that medical information
if they don't have any medical
information which is often the case we
start the animal over on vaccines
for that
okay
because i got an animal from
a breeder that
was
trying to find someone
and i was able to get permission to
access
the animal's medical records
from the previous vet
okay
so the outcomes and
i want to
have you focus specifically on the
percentage because that's what's going
to be telling the story because like if
you remember 2019 you see the adoptions
there were 258 and that's a really big
number but remember the intake we had in
2019 was over a thousand animals
and in 2021 you look at the it's only
140 adoptions
but remember we only had 500 i think it
was 590 something animals come in so
just half
but with just half the animals we're
only four percent below
the adoption
the adoption numbers therefore
percentage-wise so the percentage is the
important one to keep an eye out for
that one
uh reclaimed for 2021 with 11 or 11 and
a half percent with 80 26.8 percent for
rescued animals
that's actually the highest in the two
years that are the three years that are
there
in the graph so we're grateful for that
community cats was at 10.3 euthanasia
did go higher to 33 percent
that's 230 animals so a live release
rate of 67.8 percent
here's the euthanasia reasons
so the number one again reason is
behavior feral we're experi we're
expecting that to drop now that we have
a tnr program in the city
it's still though going to be up there
because our
capability our capacity
is not all is not matching what the
demand is
we were basing our numbers off of 2019
and 2020 to absorb
the amount of feral
animals coming in
and that number it looks like is going
to be tripled
i mean it is it's just
amazing the number of cats that are
coming in
so our total number of visitors 656 in
august that's quite a ways down from
july of the of the 1179
but we still are up there with 656.
we had 196 appointments made
88 of those were kept and 60 percent
however 118
resulted in finalized adoptions at the
ascmp
website views for forty thousand two
hundred and eighty three and again if
you're watching that's not original hits
that's
spots on or hits on each page so if you
view an animal that's one page and if
you go back
to the original that's another hit and
then you view another animal that's
another hit so just keep that in mind
that's not original views
but still 40 283 is pretty darn good
facebook views is our third highest with
2954.
and these are adorable pets of the week
corn and i was told that's pronounced
jacques
so j-a-q
but these animals are available for
adoption there at the ascmv
all right any questions all right thank
you mr thank you any questions for clint
my advice here
thank you chair and thank you clint uh
going back to slide five
i know that there was a couple returns
for landlord issues and i know on your
paperwork you have
um
some information asking about if you own
a home
or a rental and so i just wanted to see
obviously there's going to be issues
from time to time but if there was
anything that was noted with these two
cases for the i'm sorry was it the
landlord the landlord issues all right i
don't know anything specific noted but i
can tell you our process for adoptions
we do not require paperwork we don't we
we took all of that out and we're going
on what the individual says i think at
some point you have to trust
people and
also on the other side of that is that
they will take ownership of the animal
and get the animal to where they they
could take if not
so
that's the conversation we have with
them
it's up to the individual to know what
their
what their limitations are
but i can find out on those too and see
if there's anything specific about it
and get that back to you
thank you and thank you chair
thank you amanda vice chair are there
any other questions mr
mayor pro-tem
yes um
clint
i know we received a few a letter with a
petition i guess from folks from the
community related to adoption
i know you try to stress the
percentages right
um and i think some of of of the
commentary was we think we need to open
up
um the center and
so that folks can
freely view the
the animals and such can you address
that or is there a place or a time
later in the agenda that that is going
to be expressed
no i'd love to address it now that's
fine thank you
so the letter was was sent
to the board and also other city and
county officials
um
while it was it was well-meaning it was
a little bit misleading especially on
the numbers when you're comparing
again like we said before over a
thousand impounds of course you're going
to have more adoptions so that's why
it's important to look at the percentage
of that
regarding the the policy we have for
appointment-based
adoptions i
if we just go off purely the we're still
in a pandemic we're here in masks we're
sitting five feet apart
we have a more dangerous variant out
there than what originally started
and i need to keep my staff
safe and if that is limiting those
individuals if you look at i looked at
staff number or not staff numbers but
visitors to the center
it was over 2200 people
coming into the center
and
i do not want to
expose my staff to that number of
individuals
not only is it for keeping them safe
it's also most of my staff has
significant others and also young
children and some live with their
parents to expose them
not only that if an employee as we
learned back in november of 2020
if an employee has covered
it
spreads like wildfire and we had that we
have it was so bad that we had to close
the center down
that significantly impacted our capacity
of care euthanasias will go through the
roof if that happens again
so that is that is the driving force
right now i urge the board to continue
to do appointment to to support the
appointment-based
adoptions
at least until the
pandemic is over let's get on safe
ground
and that will also give us more time to
evaluate and see where we are because
this is so new we don't know if we are
saving considerable amount of money
because we don't have people walking
through and getting passing on the
sicknesses to the to the animals side by
side and so on um
so we're looking at numbers that way you
know are we are we spending less on a
specific type of medicine that
that helps treat um
kennel cough
you know so we're just looking at those
things to see if it actually is
advantageous but bottom line
i want to keep my staff safe not only
because i care for them but i also care
for the animals
thank you clint i really appreciate you
addressing that i felt like let's hit it
head on and i i feel very strongly about
the center continuing
with the appointments
um i think it's it's
imperative for the safety and well-being
not only of your staff but the animals
as well
um
clint so the question you
commented about the 2200 folks in 2019
that came in
now can you address from that 2200
um
how many actually adopted animals from
those 2200 i remember
vaguely in the six years that i've i
can't
i can't um quote statistics per se
um but i vaguely remember that you're
always going to have people who come in
with family and sort of
use that as an outing and some
may not be serious to adopt
animals and so please tell me do you
have that number of the 2200
that has actually adopted animals
from the center
so the answer to that is no i i don't
and the number might be skewed a little
bit because as you said the family would
come
uh mom while dad's working mom might
bring the kids in and that would be four
people
you know and so it would be greatly
skewed if we looked at even the
percentage of the people coming into one
adoption versus now we only allow two
people
uh per appointment
but i can tell you that it was not a
high percentage of of the people coming
in and animals leaving i remember no are
seeing that and saying holy cow we have
2 200 people coming in
and i think you even addressed that if i
remember once when i first came on we
were signing people in and we still do
that but we wanted to know if they're
interested in volunteering and if
they're interested in more info
and we're still capturing that info
but
as far as if they adopt it or not
it would be hard to tell
heart would be hard to get that
information but i know it wasn't a
significant number thank you clint i
appreciate you addressing that and then
a slide 10 and 11 do you mind going
yeah the web page views um so i proves
through your website often
um and i select an
animal but it always
and
it always takes me back to the beginning
right so
i don't know how advantageous that is
because i'm like i want now i have to go
from the beginning all the way to
wherever you know
the next animal is if you will so
i'm thinking i think these are great
numbers i think people are definitely
interested to see what's available and
whatnot but does
is there a way
um
that you can capture like i saw that you
were interested you know
in this animal and is there anything
that we can do to answer you know the
questions to really capitalize
on the views here i'm not sure if
there's a app if facebook allows or if
you can capture that in some form or
fashion
i think it's a great question and and
i'm going to echo your frustrations on
when you go back a page it totally
restarts
that's the way it's it's actually not a
website thing it's a shelter love thing
our shelter software because they have a
code that you put in so when you go back
a page the code refreshes
and and reloads so it is frustrating
i know that we've told shelter love that
we need needed to st or just refresh
for that filter selection the individual
had they put it on their to-do list and
their to-do list is very long from
from the ascmv
so in regards to your other questions
it's not that frustrating to me really
but you know
i i don't get that animals they kind of
look the same after a while you know and
so it's hard to keep track but anyhow
so regarding your other questions there
i just lost it what was your other
question um capitalizing on yes yeah all
right so there's several ways that an
individual can get a hold of us if they
they can contact us they call us and say
i'm interested in this id number they
can also send us a message on facebook
say i'm interested in this animalness id
number uh they can even email us as well
that's on there that they can they can
send it and the email goes to
the entire ascmv not just to one person
so we have individuals that respond to
those emails another thing you can do is
start a application for adoption
uh through the website and that i
believe if i remember correctly there's
a button on each animal there that says
start adoption process and what that
does is that sends a notification
to shelter love and when somebody
like our adoption specialist or for an
office they log in there's a big red
number that shows how many there are
waiting for
um
quote-unquote approval
so they'll be contacted by the front
staff for that so there's multiple ways
to show interest in an animal
the best way though is to call us so
then we can tell you if there's anything
on that animal if it might not be
available it might be going on transport
or it might be under medical treatment
things like that so the best is to call
us
thank you clint for that i appreciate it
and it's always important to review that
for folks that are listening in and for
the folks that are here today
blast is
um so do you have to fill out the
application in its entirety to get a
um email or whatever whatever contact
that the staff is is
mode is using to contact folks
that's a great question i'm not sure on
that i can get back to you okay all
right thank you thank you mr chair
appreciate it thank you mayor pro tem
good morning councillor uh floyd
just wanted to let the reflect let the
record reflect that cancer float has
joined us at 9 25 a.m
good morning all right are there any
questions for mr thacker
okay
clint i think we're good thank you
okay we're on to committee reports
starting with finance mr enriquez
uh good morning chair thank you the
finance committee did not meet last week
as we did not have uh board members
present so mr saffield is here to give
the finance report and my understanding
no issues and he'll go through it now
thank you
good morning mr chair members of the
board my name is josh saffel and on
behalf of the finance department of the
city of las cruces i'd like to present
the unaudited financial report for the
period ended august 31st 2021
so to start with we'll look at the
statement of net position
in the general fund there was cash of 1
million
eighty nine thousand
one hundred twenty two dollars
receivables of three hundred and
nineteen thousand
so we had total assets of one million
seven hundred and eight thousand one
hundred and twenty two dollars
of that liabilities we had sixty eight
thousand two hundred and sixty nine
revenue collected in advance of one
hundred seventy nine thousand eight
hundred and sixty nine which left in the
general fund a fund balance an
unassigned fund balance of one million
four hundred fifty nine thousand nine
hundred and eighty four dollars
in the capital projects fund we had cash
of twenty nine thousand seven hundred
and ninety eight dollars and a
restricted fund balance of twenty nine
thousand seven hundred and ninety eight
dollars
in the capital assets fund we had our
total capital assets less the
accumulated depreciation amount totaling
759 dollars and
an equal amount in the unassigned fund
balance looking at our change in net
position for all funds uh for the
general fund we had total revenues of
this period of 996
931 dollars
and total expenditures of 352
hundred and seventy one
so for the period we had a positive net
change to fund balance of six hundred
and forty four thousand six hundred and
sixty dollars
as we can see there was no activity in
the capital projects fund nor any
activity in the capital assets fund
looking at our budget to actual
for total revenues the 996 000 was 26.2
percent of budget
and our total expenditures of 352 000
were 9.3 percent of budget uh this being
the second month of the period
we had a budget parameter of 16.7
so we were well above that with revenue
and slightly under that with total
expenditures
looking at our revenues and expenditures
of course
this will look familiar from last year
as well we see that we started off with
a very large gap between the revenue and
the
expense
and that was due of course to the
contributions from the
city and the county and of course now we
see the the drop-off
where we
have the revenue is now only slightly
above expenditures but that's still
good
showing that we are bringing in more
money than we are spending at this point
finally looking at a percentage of total
expenditures again our total
expenditures uh at this point are 352
271 dollars
of that 69 percent was made up of
personnel expenses
15 was made up of services
nine percent for insurance
five percent for supplies
and one percent for other and one
percent for repairs and maintenance
uh that will conclude my presentation
and i stand for any questions
thank you mr stefan are there any
questions on the finance report
councillor flores
thank you uh mr chairman thank you uh
josh mr sapple
so um insofar as the general fund uh is
concerned
does um
is a general fund a fund from which
other funds can um
have funds transferred
did i
the funds are the funds or the funds but
say for example one fund is falling
short is it possible to transfer
from the general fund to that particular
fund
uh yes i believe that would be possible
but of course it would require action
from the board correct correct
um and i had another question and
um
oh
personnel
so 69
of the of the of the budget goes to
personnel
and is that allocated personnel or is
that
allocated funds or do we actually have
those
those employees
personnel
now
the 69 that was represented there was of
the actual expenditures so i'd say the
69 represents actual employees that are
there
and is there in fact an allocation
anywhere for
more employees
i believe so but the department might
know more
clinthacker executive director animal
service center for sea valley uh madame
flores our chair for us we
so so yes we have money for additional
employees to come in
so the money that was spent there that
shows was the actual amount spent in in
last month period
it does not reflect that that is our the
69 is not the total percentage of our
budget for employees does that ask you a
question yeah well josh answered it and
okay the question you're supposed to
answer is is there any money or i would
like you to answer i'm directing you to
answer this question
my question is
are there any
are there any positions that are
unfilled
yes there are
okay and how where would those funds
come from from that's why i was asking
about the general fund money yeah so it
would come from the same fund that the
current ones are being paid out of in my
personnel budget okay so um
is and and
it's not our job at all to be telling
you to um
you know when to hire how to fi hire
uh but it is our job to make sure
that the
center is uh staffed so that it
operates at an optimal
level
and
do you have anything to say about that
clint
yes i can briefly we have uh lower
levels of staffing right now we kept it
low in 2020
and and also coming into 2021 because we
didn't unsure of what covert was going
to bring we had lower number of animals
so the capacity of care there was good
uh how are satisfactory however
now more animals coming in and we're
scrambling to hire individuals but as
you'll see in the presentation later
it's difficult right now to hire
individuals at the low amount we're
paying
and we're going to get that later in the
presentation but yes we are working out
i think we i believe we have seven
slated to be coming in
in different departments
for in the next coming weeks okay and so
in your uh presentation
that is coming up within a few minutes
uh will you be covering those issues and
um
proposing solutions uh to that shortage
yes ma'am
and do you have to go uh
hat in hand to
to who to the board to the city manager
to the county manager where do those
funds come from we'll be able to absorb
that with the plan that we have in place
oh in terms of in terms of our budget in
terms of budget and in terms of salary
so i don't get into too much detail
right now but the salary increase we
plan on raising the wage our minimum
wage that we're paying individuals right
now and that will bring in more people
for the job
um right now i'm only hiring 11 and
three cents is what staff is starting at
yeah it's again we're going to talk
about it so the higher wage that where
that i am able to hire at and also
absorb into my personnel budget without
asking for more funds
from the city or the county is that 11
an hour um
for full-time part-time
full-time
and part-time
and part-time so irrespective of
full-time part-time it's a little dollar
an hour and any benefits i mean is there
anything that an employee gets besides
tired
besides tired so i said yeah
so the yes a full-time employee is
eligible for benefits through the
through the city
so how many full-time employees do you
have and how many part-time employees do
you have i'd have to get that number for
you to be exact
it'd be good to know clint just because
i know that we as a board
really care about uh the animals you and
of course the staff
and we want it to run efficiently
and um
and and do you have a high turnover yes
our average is about two years holy
really
okay thank you very much uh clint mr
thinker and thank you uh mr chair
sanchez
thank you counselor
are there any questions for mrs steffel
all right
thank you
okay we're on to the executive committee
which
we held with myself mr thacker and vice
chairman tuvi and they really
don't have a lot from the meeting i
think that's reflective in that even in
our agenda we didn't have a lot of we
don't have any items for approval
we did discuss
the
uh what was going to be the work session
which is now in this
agenda the
future plans of the ascmv
and then we also discussed the future
participation for the coalition for pets
and people so
but from a high level i think that was
everything
pretty close to what we discussed and
there wasn't a whole lot there but um
i don't know if there's any questions
any other input
that i missed like thanks clint i just
want to make sure everybody from what i
had on my notes and recalls
okay very good all right we're moving on
uh to the facilities committee mayor
pro-tem gandara did you have an any
updates
we did have a meeting um
looking for we did have a meeting yeah
we did have a meeting ipod i'm looking
for my notes um honestly i i am a little
disorganized so
um clint help me
we always talk about
what i remember is the issue with
correcting
um
that area that the ponding area
and we were moving through and now we
have to put a stop to it
because um the ideas that we've had and
plant with the
city and others is not going to work
it's not large enough
and so
they were working on meaning they the
city
coming back to the drawing board and
trying to figure out a different
um
design for for um the ponding area
and if you remember that ponding area is
causing us grief um and we need to
correct it
um and so clint i know it's been almost
a month since we've met
um is there an update for that yes there
is so the city i
thankfully the city is doing a very good
job of keeping us in the for foremost of
having it done we've had two
engineers different firms come and i
believe they're getting a quote for
for that project what it was as we had
the issue is we have a ponding area a
retention pond inside our fenced area
it's way too close to the ascmv it
gathers mosquitoes
and also other
the water doesn't drain it just sits and
it has to evaporate it doesn't drain out
so we were going to move it but then we
found out we couldn't build one large
enough to accept that you had to you
have to build one to replace what it was
originally designed for not what it
currently holds
so they said that that retention pond is
actually supposed to be a lot deeper but
through the years the silt and
everything that's gone in has
accumulated
and not made it as deep so with the five
foot buffer of our property that you
have to have we can't make one big
enough
so engineering is coming out and they
have to engineer
a properly
engineered retention pond
for that but like i said two have
already come out so they're still
working on it
thank you i found my notes yeah i'm not
that i'm not that disorganized after all
um
um we spoke of also
um
you were moving kennels
right um that that week um
and
um how did that go clint
it's been a challenge but we if you
remember for the new construction we
lost the lot area impound lot behind our
main gate that is all now turned over to
construction so we turned all of our
impound area back to the east side of
the shelter what's called our x kennels
so
our
building maintenance individual
paul reeves has done an excellent job in
getting everything moved over we are now
impounding out of that area and it's
just a matter of getting you know i
think this might be better over here and
this just kind of the small wrinkles
ironed out so we're in that process now
cool thank you
um and then
we talked about
vacancies um where we were at with
hiring
at the point you were hiring animal
caregivers because you had a couple of
vacancies animal care specialists
is on the horizon and needing to write a
job description
am i correct in that so the animal care
specialist description's been written
it's it's been in the hands of hr for
some time now
to be able they have to go through a
consultant and get the salary range and
everything
done for that so we're just waiting on
that to be completed so when you say for
some time what do you speak what's the
timeline
we'll have to look up to be exact but i
know it's been months
um
mr enriquez could you please check on
that and get back to us okay perfect
thank you also um you were looking at a
vet tech and surgical um
surgical um
tech i guess
um
there's a vacancy and i have here or or
no no no they're starting on september
12th
a surgical tech yes
and he had actually because delays with
the city
he has not started yet but he will be
shortly
another
area mr enriquez if you would please
check with
hr and we'll i'll be meeting with ifo uh
mr pealey this afternoon for my regular
individual meetings that i have with him
and i'll talk to him about some of the
delays and try to get that
moving
um
i think
that's it
and then we always talk about the the
new facility and where we're at yeah the
new facility is looking great like i
said they took over our lot area
foundations are in and they're doing the
rough-in for the electrical and the
plumbing underground
so we're ecstatic for that one thing i
do want to add is is we had a clogging
drain issue in
one of our drain or one of our kennels a
specific kennel not a large run but a
specific kennel and when roto-rooter
came out to unclog it they found that it
goes right straight down into dirt so
the p-trap that's in there was broken
so yesterday or two days ago they were
able to they had to cut it out
the cement area and then dig down
replace the p-trap and then fill it all
back up so that was completed that work
was done
we're also now on a maintenance schedule
with
not roto-rooter i think it's maddox
plumbing
bernice is that right
maddox plumbing for
preventive care
okay
i'm sorry so maddox plumbing for
preventive care and they come out and
they just they do the main lines on a
preventive maintenance schedule instead
of when there is a problem
and that's working out fairly well yeah
i appreciate the update um
clint yep
that's all mr chair
try we try to be thorough
okay and then maybe um
clint i'm not sure if you want to change
the date
uh maybe more towards the middle of the
month and
maybe we can um
you know do that so
because at the beginning of the month
you're updating me but there's always
changes um when we get to this point so
things move pretty quick at the ascmv so
i serve at your pleasure so whatever
you'd like to meet i'd be more than
happy to well maybe mr ellens and i
commissioner ellens and i can talk about
what may be the appropriate day for him
and we will try to
rearrange a time to meet so that we're
getting up-to-date information okay
great thank you thank you mr chair
thank you mayor from time gander
okay so we're on
to the exciting discussion items for mr
thacker your backup again
gotta wear those comfortable shoes today
clint yes all right we're on discussion
item 5a which is discussed the future
plans
of the ascmv
take it away
thank you very much clint thacker
executive director of the animal service
center messi valley i'm very excited to
present this
presentation to you this is a long time
in coming i hope to have it in a little
less of such a formal setting
to get a lot more discussion however i
know we
time
is not tight today but we want to have a
good discussion in a reasonable amount
of time so
earlier about probably about two months
ago two separate individuals came to me
and asked me and they were on the and
they're on the board
if you had a magic wand and waved it
what's going to happen what would you do
so i had several meetings with our
managers
who are with me today and
to answer any questions that come
specific and the following plan is what
we came up with
from that session
so i this is a big picture this is uh
something that we want to
present to you um
and in order to get through it all just
i i want to go through but if you have
topics you know conversation discussed
and one thing we can sure hit it
so a quick error real quick so i just
want to clarify so we want to go ahead
and for
to try to move in an expeditious manner
maybe take notes ask questions at the
end so that way you can get through the
presentation yes okay so if there's no
objections on the board we'll just take
down notes and then
we'll we'll ask them at the end of the
presentation
and my slides are not numbered i
apologize but it's you can tell me what
one to go to
so an overview we want to talk about
staffing levels and not just in total
but i really do want to get specific on
the departments we want to talk about a
new department we want to create at the
animal service center
we're going to address the jpa
animal control some critical needs that
are needed sooner rather than later in a
specific area and then we're going to
have a review so you have that fresh of
everything that we've talked about
most of all the most important at the
ascmv is our people without
our friends and the work family there is
no way we'd be able to get anything done
i appreciate every single one of those
those people without them
i would not be able to i would not have
a job and
the people of dona ana county would not
be able to be served
so the staffing levels
i'm not going to go into a lot of detail
right now on this there's other slides
but we're looking at for the front
office is five full time and three part
time and i'm talking about new staff
this is not we want to hire these this
is
we need funding for brand new staff
these and also these are all for
specific reasons it's not for we would
like to have them it'd be nice
uh the firm office for instance needs an
office lead and also
new individuals for uh the new center
that's coming up
and then three additional part-time
because we want to go out and get to the
off sites more right now it's only one
we want to get out on the weekends
friday saturday sunday when individuals
are busy
in the kennel we're looking at eight
full-time and four part-time
these are additional animal caregivers
that's what acg is animal caregiver
these are individuals that care for the
animals
they are going to be out at the new
center
for that
which is where we would like to to place
those and then
with the new building comes a new
building maintenance individual
that will be working believe it or not
there's actually quite a bit of work for
a building maintenance person on a brand
new building
with warranties and etc that need to be
followed and done
adoption rescue coordinator
and also five enrichment and behavior
specialists so a full-time lead
for that crew and then four part-time
mothers and these individuals would be
in charge of basic enrichment for the
animals
as well as some training basic training
going on so total eight full time four
part time
our medical department
uh looking at four full-time
most importantly there the addition of
the spay neuter coordinator with tnr
happening
and a spay and neuter coordination needs
to be complete it is outrageous right
now
what we're dealing with so
that's needed
the administration the hr specialist is
something that's exciting and it was a
great idea that was brought to us by
bernice
and we'll go over that more and then our
new department we want to focus on is
community outreach i have a community
outreach coordinator
they're going to be over education
specialist social media trap need
retrieve program manager and then manage
intake
and we're going to go over each one of
those and what the roles are going to be
so a total of six new staff for the
administration
side right commissioner uh our counselor
flores this slide is for you
our staff wages
currently right now we start at 1103.
that is not what i like to just to refer
to you as a living wage
there's no way you can live off of that
low of pay
to help that in the past we've
instituted like merit increases
but at 3 percent it just takes
it takes so long and that's if a three
percent raise
is capable that year
the center has had no cola
or cost of living increases
either in the time so
what we want to do is increase the
minimum pay at the animal service center
so everybody
will be making at least 14 an hour when
talking with our budget analysis
talking uh with others throughout the
area 14 an hour is a competitive pay
if you look at
going to fast food they're around
thirteen eighty uh to a little over
thirteen dollars an hour
and the reason why we want to
do the 14 is we would hire people at the
13 an hour
with an incentive that if you're there
long enough to be off probation which is
one year
then you get another dollar increase
after that with only the average of
around two years
of retention we're hoping that that will
pick up quite a bit because a lot of
work goes into training these
individuals
just to have them leave
after even a year or even months later
as i stated before in a hiring pool that
we did for the front office there was 10
applicants but when we put them through
the tour of the center only three people
showed up for the tour
and having months and months it
literally takes five to six months to to
have a hiring pool
go through the process and for them to
be contacted
and so only go through three which
probably one or two of those will be
dropped out
for interviews
so having a higher pay with that
incentive will create more of a hiring
pool as well i have a lot of my staff my
coworkers are working two jobs i've had
to do that in my career that is
extremely stressful especially if you
have family
that counts on you to be home and nobody
else there to
to make dinners and help with homework
et cetera so our desire is that we
pay this higher wage so people can one
be home with families
live off of it and also spend
or more focused time on the ascmv so we
can have a benefit there
to go back really quick to the minimum
increase it wouldn't be just for those
that have the 14 an hour increase it
would also be for other staff and we're
currently working on that we want it to
be as equitable as possible
we've had several different types of
plans come through
through the managers but we're working
on how to be the most equitable for that
increase
the great thing is is working with our
budget analysis we
he's he's done a great job and we see
that we can roll this out in two years
and it's all absorbed by the ascm so
half we're looking at it's a 27 increase
from 1103 to 14
so if we do half of that 27 percent this
year
and then a half in the next fiscal year
both of those would be able to be
absorbed
another limitation we currently have is
i believe it was two years ago the
federal government changed what an
exempt employee can make
but they didn't specify or they didn't
state how much they currently make it
was the minimum that their job makes
perfect example of this is our assistant
kennel supervisor he's been there a long
time he makes more
than the 35 thousand dollars but his job
starts at 35 000 is the limit for the
exempt employee but his job starts him
the pay starts at 32 000
so because his job the salary range
the minimum is below that 35 he no
longer qualifies as exempt employee even
though he makes more in his current in
his current job
and i see a lot of wrinkled brows i
promise i i called and called hr about
this several times because we lost our
kennel our assistant kennel supervisor
and also our front office supervisor
because of this
when i say lost that means that they
went they went to non-exempt instead of
exempt which means i have to pay
overtime which means they can't be
included in some of the things that we
do
or else their job their schedule have to
be adjusted later on it just adds
it's not cohesive to a team unit so we
want to look at those and see if we can
get all of those see if we can get some
job
minimum pays
changed for that
this is our new department we want we
want to focus on this is exciting the
community outreach program
this is a total change
to our mission
our mission has really nothing to do
with
education or social media
it has to do with caring for animals
in a way that
meets the laws so we'll be changing our
mission with this one
so first we have a supervisor that would
be over
all of our community outreach
and then an education specialist
this is near and dear to my heart i love
working with kids i love being in
schools
as an animal control officer i started
and ran my very own
award-winning i might add
education program
i'd go into schools and just talk about
responsible pet ownership
what to do or all safety around stray
animals and it was fun i love doing it
and we have nothing like that
nothing
and our children
need
to have that education because they're
going to grow up to be animal owners as
well
not only would they be in schools the
education specialists but they'd also be
at job fairs education anywhere possible
that they can have an audience
i don't know about you but social media
just confuses me a lot
somebody sent me one of those qr codes
and i'm like what do i do with this now
this is this is not new up and coming
stuff this is basic things that the
public out there the up and coming
generation
knows profusely and they depend on it
the problem is somebody says just upload
it to tick tock or do a tick tock or put
it on instagram
it is it is not as easy as just taking a
picture and uploading it if we had
somebody we have several failed starts i
should say we have an instagram page not
a lot goes on we have a snapchat it's
basically for ads we have a tick tock
that only has like two things on it so a
lot of good intentions but not a lot of
follow through so a social media
specialist would solely this would be
their job
to answer to to look at i think is a
great job for somebody into just walking
into the marketing
department somebody young who knows how
to do these things
so
that future there trap neuter return
program manager we can talk more about
this
after this presentation is one about our
tnr
program and how we're absorbing it but
this would be our trap meter return
program manager
so it might be a little bit different
than the actual what we're asking for
for the tnr but they would basically run
the trap neuter return program they have
to work very closely with animal control
officers
they can work on uh handling deterrence
they can work on talking with
individuals you know trap rental all
these things that are coming up we could
have somebody to run it and then our
intake manager originally we were going
to have our adoption specialists and
rescue coordinators handled this
but it obviously it was just way too
much work or just the rescue side was
way too much work an intake manager is
an individual that meets with people if
they want to surrender their dog like in
gino and mary lou's presentation where
they said they couldn't afford it
financial issues
they would meet with them and say
what can we do to help you do you want
to own your dog and they'd say yes okay
what can we do and they would gather
those resources and help them out people
who don't have a place to live
wear some apartments that allow
specific breeds that may be an issue
so that would be it's a resource center
an individual to talk to
to get that through it's called
intake diversion
it's very common in the industry
and a program that we'd like to start
all right this is again bernice's
brainchild and probably a little bit
selfish on her part which i love because
she is so overwhelmed with the
just alone the ordering and just keeping
us going
the last thing that she likes to deal
with is having to deal and work
on hiring individuals so this hr
specialist i want to say is a direct
liaison with hr and what i mean by that
is they have the same rights
in the hiring program called munis and
also neogov
as does hr so they would be able to walk
our staff since we have a lot of
turnover
and we have a lot of need they'd be able
to walk
these new hires through the process
at times we end up waiting weeks just
for an email to get sent to to our
individuals who are waiting
this hr specialist to be able to do it
that also they'd be able to schedule
drug testing they'd be able to onboard
individuals they would be able to let us
know sometimes
we have staff new hires show up we had
no idea we're coming
and as a new employee if i showed up
and they didn't know i that would be
horrible
just horrible and so
like with
our new hire our grant specialist i
emailed her before she came and i said
i'm so excited to have you on we got
great plans i mean just imagine if your
supervisor did that and contacted you
saying this is what to expect the first
day
and with an hr specialist that gave you
the heads up they're starting
and had a for sure date we could start
doing that and have a lot more quality
onboarding program
the other big thing they'll be doing
is our payroll
i so it was bernice that was doing it
before and her workload was so much that
she could not so i took it away from her
i was going to do it and i was told by
the city that i am definitely 100 not
allowed to do payroll if i do
disciplinary action on somebody
and then mess up on payroll it might
look construed as as penalizing them
so then we had to give it to our front
office specialist who does offend a
front office manager she does a
fantastic job however she too is a
manager
so we have um
that same issue so this hr specialist
would be able to to do payroll in a
proper manner
all right more of the nitty-gritty in
medical
kudos to dr hadden and having the
foresight and the vision that she has
on expanding and also taking on these
extra things
extra animals extra surgeries
for the ascmv
she wants to increase the
surgery scheduled to be five days per
week plus so maybe even more
this is going to take quite a bit of
planning and also resources on our part
there we want to renovate the adoptable
cat room once the new center is built
we're going to renovate that area it's
centrally located in the center between
all the kennels
and the front lobby so we're able to
it's a perfect place to do surgery it's
bright
and
large enough to get several surgical
tables and things in there for a lot of
staff to be moving around i don't know
if you know this or not but surgery
prepping and the actual surgery is not a
standstill process
i go back there and i visit and talk
with them i am always in the way
so they need room and that's the best
place to do it
so that renovations coming up
kennel surgical kennel assistance is
also a new position this is individuals
that
their main priority may be to clean the
kennels of the surgery animals but they
can also help with any like technical
scrubbing
of instruments things like that
we are requesting an additional spay
neuter coordinator i've already gone
over the increase of trap needed return
but more importantly we want to start
qualifying our low income clients
with those qualifiers
the same we're currently working with
snap to do it they do a great job but if
we can eliminate the middle person
and go directly with us the
communication is a lot easier
we would still do snap surgeries there's
nothing wrong with snap we just want to
take care of that process ourselves so
that would take two spay neuter
coordinators to do that
and again as mentioned to optimize the
tnr efforts would be important as well
all right here's the next one the mobile
space spay and neuter van
i can't tell you the number of emails i
get even from people outside of new
mexico that want this to happen
and we look forward to that and we can
with this big vision that we have we
would be asking for the additional staff
that could make that happen however you
don't just pull up into an outlying area
and put a sign up that says spay and
neuter there has to be coordination
how you're going to advertise it how
you're going to be scheduling it
contacting them telling them what
records to bring
not to feed your animals
the night before when to pick up where
to park where to even have the event it
is so much work
so we are requesting the mobile clinic
coordinator also be part of that as well
all right to switch gears a little bit
the joint powers agreement
i'm not sure of the last update to the
joint powers agreement was
but as all board members have stated to
me that there are some things that need
to change and i echo that if somebody
was to come up to me and say
i have three seconds you tell me what
would you change in the jpa these would
be
it for one i don't think we need to meet
monthly i think a quarterly morning or
quarterly board meeting is sufficient if
something needs to happen before that
always have you know the work sessions
or even a meeting that needs to be
called is great we were doing drug
testing with the city of las cruces
however that was
stopped because it was not part of the
jpa
we also wanted to do a little bit more
education mandating with the acos we're
currently the center is currently doing
what's called a fear-free shelter
program
and and our staff is going through that
it's it's basically is let's make the
center less
or take the center out as a
reason for stress for these animals
so we want to be able to say acos you
need to have this acos you need to have
that
the next one is a big one as well the
ability to manage intakes
we need to say that once we get to a
specific number that our staff can
handle
is that it's emergencies only we we're
full let's only take the ones that
really have to come
and then
as many of you know as probably all of
you know i have been beating the drama
of let's become part of the city let's
become part of the city
well
and i'm grateful that the the time has
gone by that we're able to think more
about it talking with our managers
talking with our budget analysis talking
with other people
that used to be part of their own and
then were absorbed into a municipal
government
they would not recommend it and they
would not
they said that if we had the choice we
would stay
as as separate
because there's some things that can be
done by us that cannot be done
as part of the government or a setting
for instance a good example of this
would be
the salary increases i'd like to do
if i was part of the city you'd have to
be approved by hr go through the systems
of going through
a director up to assistant manager and
then most likely
approved by city council
from that 27 percent is a huge increase
uh with this i can present to the board
i can say this is what i like to do i
can get some blessing
and then move forward on it so there's
some liberties such as that that would
go away pretty much the freedom
to do those would go away for that
next is animal control so that's well
what are we going to do with animal
control if you don't want to be a part
of it that was the main drive was
becoming part of the city so that animal
control would be with the center and we
could better mandate what was going on
so my proposal is is we do a messiah
valley animal care and control i'm not
set on the name it just sounded good
so
but with that we can have acl education
specify specifically
what needs to be done and also change
our approach a little bit i think animal
control has come a long way since i've
gotten here but we can do much more
as far as the community approach
let's be
less enforcement
more of we're here to help let's help
you
however in order for us to do that we
need more animal control officers
so with that we're looking at one
supervisor four lead officers uh that
would work
and then seven additional acos with
what's already what they're already at
full time or fully staffed
uh seven additional
we also would like them to have some
office space
at either the new center or at the
existing center
we have some plans to put cubicles and
things in the front lobby
not necessarily plans but thoughts i
should say for that
all right some critical needs
if many of you remember we had a
double-wide trailer that was west of the
animal service center uses our medical
facility it was
it was bad we'll just leave it at that
so we got a grant for seventy seven
thousand dollars
to
[Music]
get rid of that double wide trailer and
get some type of cement slab and work in
there which we did if you see the purple
is all existing work
and then the little yellow line going
around is the trench i don't know if you
can see
there let's see if you can see my cursor
but the
yellow line going around the purple is a
trench there that's a drain system
so what our proposal is
is to extend the cement out 10 feet like
it states here and put kennels on both
sides of that trench so when somebody is
cleaning in the front
the animal can be in the back
um and it's going to be covered with the
guillotine door
and vice versa when they're cleaning the
other ways
so the cement work is 20 000 new kennels
was quoted at 156 000. we need some air
movement through there with some large
industrial fans for outdoors 6000 and
then a misting fan system basically just
one of those really large
evaporated evaporated coolers is 4 000
that can blow that cooler air around and
circulate better so in total 186
thousand dollars
that cannot be absorbed into the budget
critical need we would like to see this
funded by next year
before the before next summer
this it was incredibly difficult
to house animals in this area this this
summer
i if you want dr hadden can talk more on
it on the sickness and the issues of it
but as far as on a cleaning standpoint
it was next to impossible
to keep it satisfactory
all right next uh
on just left of this is the picture of
the new building of the ascmv
just left of the new building so that
would be
west
this little uh you see a square outlined
here that is it was a large gathering
area that i'd like to have on the center
and it was one of the first things that
was cut
because of the value engineering it's
called in other words we need to cut
things to afford the building the
necessities
this pretty much is just a box with a
floor it's all we're looking for we just
want an area where we can gather as uh
as
in staff meetings
but also i thought more than that this
could be more have a door for the
outside
and people could come in when the
center's not open like on holidays and
we could have dog training in there we
could do
gatherings of
groups want to meet i mean it's it's
open as a community center
so and
and fund it that way um
speaking with
the city uh department that's building
the new building
right now it would per square feet i
mean we're looking with this size it
would be 1.3 million dollars to do
to do it that way and that is a lot and
the reason is is anytime it's adjacent
there's a lot of codes to do with it you
have to have a bathroom in it you have
to have certain number of exits you have
to
and so on so
but we i've moved that number over to
our grant writer
and
looking at her to
see if she can get multiple grants for a
project like this
for a community center that would
improve i want people to come to the
center i don't i don't want it to be a
place where you bring your animal to put
to sleep
but let's be a place where people like
to come and visit and see the animals
and this will aid definitely for that
all right so in review
we have a brand new department we want
to create
community outreach
we have the education specialist social
media trap new to return
intake
we have some positions that we want to
create as well
uh are new add two
front office five full time three part
time kennel area eight full time four
part time
each one of those full-time individuals
is around thirty to thirty two thousand
dollars
and the part-time 17k for that
medical department
uh four full-time and that's around an
average of about 30 34-35 000.
with our administration the six
full-time that includes the hr
supervisor
or the hr specialist the supervisor for
community outreach and all the community
outreach positions
so total positions we are looking at is
23 full-time seven part-time
865 thousand dollars and if you add
about 11 percent for
uh
benefits then you're looking at 955
then we have to think about the
computers the cubicles the emails the
supplies all of this costs money to get
things started so we're looking at
around 1 million dollars
increase is what will
for the future now this is not all at
once for instance i i can't start adding
positions with no offices
i can't build something that's not ready
to be built however as we start piecing
these things in i would like to have a
healthy discussion with the board
about the feasility of funding
these big picture items
and overall thank you very much for
listening we're excited about the future
that the aes cmv has
and i look forward to a discussion
all right thank you mr thacker
councillor flores
thank you mr chair and thank you clint
mr thacker
so i have um one question
to begin with oh man there's like one
question well yeah and my big question
is
you're presenting to us all the
wonderful things that
the center should be and i totally agree
with your assessment i have no grounds
for disagreeing because i'm not in your
position but based on the needs that
you've presented it makes a lot of sense
the part i don't understand and if you
could please explain this to me as if i
were a four-year-old or maybe a
two-year-old and you're familiar with
those because you've had eight of them
or excuse me seven of those
um
i um
you're asking to be independent
and
yet and so can you explain to me what it
would mean to break away from the jpa
and be totally independent from the city
and the county and
that's what i saw and that's what i
understood
so
explain to me how that would happen we
were supposed to have a work session on
that and i cancelled a hair appointment
that took me like four months to get so
this is what you get
but that's not the important part the
important part is that i was really
looking forward to a profound discussion
as to
the dissolution of the jpa
and
and so if you could
uh explain how
you're asking on the one hand this is
what we need
and you're asking this board to do it
at the same time you're dissolving the
jpa and the jpa would mean the
dissolution of this board
and you know the financing and
everything that's authorized by the
state of new mexico
would go with it so can you explain to
me that dichotomy it's i see it as a
dichotomy yes ma'am so i i'm sorry if
that came across as dissolving the jpa
that was never the mention of it we
wanted to keep the jpa just revise it
with some of those things that i
mentioned
in there
the addition would be is that i bring in
animal control
under us so the city would no longer
have animal control or the county would
no longer have animal control uh it
would be one unit
the messiah valley animal care and
control for for all of it but we would
still have a jpa because the funding
would still be there oh so what is it
exactly the jpa
i mean what does
so you want the jpa but you want more
autonomy
so we would still have a board that
would be
sitting up here once a month or
quarterly as you've requested perhaps
so
how does how
how would that work
clint how
how would
i mean from you know
from where i'm sitting i don't
understand
i can't visualize i can't conceptualize
as a better word
how it would really function
and
oh
yeah i mean you want to break away from
the jpa but you don't
no i don't there there's no discussion
about breaking away from the jpa
it's it's it was a discussion of want to
revamp the jpa and
and to turn it in so it includes the jpa
includes specific things such as
the animal service center mercia valley
will provide animal care and control
and
for
dona county so we we have to revamp the
jpa and submit a new application to the
state of new mexico
i don't think so we just need to uh
i they believe counselor flores it would
be just looking at updating the current
jpa
with some of the things or the
suggestions and i believe that the
reason for the the discussion that clint
was bringing up is because
i think he had prefaced it with there
was the discussion of
the ascmv going under the city
rather and so i think what he was just
trying to say is that i think he would
like to continue under the current
board where it's a joint where we have a
jpa between the county and the city
versus going completely under the city
of las cruces i think that's what i
understood from the conversation that's
what's correct
but he would like to have some addition
some
recommended some changes to the jp the
existing jpa okay have you spoken with
our city attorney oh it's not your city
attorney well it's something that i
would definitely have to ask city
attorney or go to the state of new
mexico to find out
uh whether it be a brand new application
because the terms would be different a
jpa is is issued upon the terms that
it's submitted to
that they receive and these terms would
be changing and i and they're
significant
and
there's a lot of money involved i mean
the new asks alone are over a million
dollars
which are wonderful and believe me if i
had the money if i was a bloomberg i'd
write the check myself but you know just
the working person here
retired no less it's kind of sorta but
at any rate um i i would like to further
explore that if you feel
clint uh
and your staff believes uh with their
expertise and the way you all work
uh that that would be more efficient
then i would definitely
but we have to we have to look at that
we have to look at
and
whether we have to do a brand new
application to to the state finance
department of new mexico so um
i also wanted to ask you a clint what is
an exempt employee you say anyone
earning more than 32 or 35 000 is no
longer an exempt employee and what is an
exempt employee exempt employee
there's there's two classifications of
employee exempt and not exempt and
non-exempt
in a nutshell can earn overtime
and an exempt employee is an individual
who
is salary based so that they get a check
no matter how much how many hours they
work
they get the same amount okay and not
they cannot earn overtime okay
and then
you your
administration asks are
an hr specialist who would be seated at
the
located there
at the animal
center
and
it would act as a liaison
and
so
and you said that and i
i think it's it sounds like a good idea
but i'm still not sure about this whole
new uh comp you know uh whatever um
so the person would be
taking care of pretty much picking up
the flak that our hr office isn't doing
i mean carlos bay to spade yes and and
and and by the way mr um
assistant city manager that is prevalent
throughout other departments it's
something that i learned shortly after
i was elected people were asking me to
look into applications they had filed
years before not necessarily at the
animal service center but in other
departments
so um
that is something i hope
we individually will take up with
well we're not a quorum here anyway as
city councilors so um it's something
that i've taken up with um
with mr peely
um insofar as why it's taking so long
not even a letter like you know
if you can sit and wait for two or three
more years before we get to you uh
please hang on type of letter you know
just a courtesy letter after an
application's been made
so
um
[Music]
and and thank you bernice for all the
work that you've done in addition to
everything you're supposed to do on top
of that you are doing payroll and and so
all everything
if you were to be your own um
on your own or under the terms of a new
jpa
all of this would be covered clint
well we would still
just like the existing jpa is is that
all finances like payroll are all
handled by the city and so that could
stay as one of one of the things is that
the city is our fiscal manager yeah
because if not we would lose our
auditing we would lose um
all those things and then we'd have to
go search out for those our own
all right
and um
insofar as uh
there's so much information you
presented today um
and i by the way i want to you know
really applaud you or you know your your
proposals are laudatory i think that
it's wonderful that you want to do all
these things to make the center
uh more efficient and run smoothly and
and your employees are happy and i
believe in happy employees you have
happy employees you have a good
production
and also a safe place for our little
critters
so i do i i do have other questions but
perhaps my colleagues will ask them and
it'll be covered i'm sure in what
they're asking and thank you very much
clint for your presentation thank you mr
chair thank you thank you councillor
flotus bye sir mr chairman um the
commissioner islands will go to vice
chairman to souve and then we'll come
back to you commissioners
thank you chair and thank you clint um i
know i was one person who
had asked about short-term and long-term
vision as i got onto the the board about
a year and a half ago
and i think we oftentimes get so wrapped
up in the day-to-day and just managing
that we need to start somewhere to look
for the future and i
am very pleased with a lot of what
you've put down
and looking at making sure that we have
equitable wages
and looking at that community outreach
piece as well i think there is a lot
that we need to work on
and looking at the the tnr piece and i
know we're going to speak about that
later but we know as we
make choices and ordinances even on
council we want these to be successful
and that requires coordination
and when we first spoke about this the
only comment and concern that i did
bring up was that of the jpa and looking
at that i know
my fellow colleagues on the council
we've been trying to be very innovative
and looking at ways that we can help
partner
and look at that future perspective of
what does it mean for the center and
that's with our go bonds that's when
issues happen
that the city is picking up a lot of
those extra pieces and so if we are to
stay as a jpa i would want to say
that i'd love to see what type of
collaboration we can have with the
county that helps us match those needs
that the city is providing as well
you know we are expanding in many ways
we are going to need new employees and
it is all for the benefit of the people
not only in the city but for the county
as well
the ideas of acos that are cross-trained
that can go through the city and the
county is something that i think will
help with staffing
and will lead to probably better
management as well and hopefully less
stress on the acos if we can have more
employees like that so there's a lot of
pieces and parts to this and i think we
have to start somewhere with the
conversation so today is a great day to
do that
but looking forward i'd love to hear
at least if not today but take some time
but talk with the
the county on what they see with their
plan on helping improve
the services and what type of
responsibilities and and
physically and otherwise to help with
this
thank you and thank you chair
thank you madam vice chair commissioner
allen
glenn could you go back to the
joint powers agreement slide please
what does remain separate from city and
county mean that means that the gpa will
stay in place because there was talk of
bringing the avscmv into the city
and then dissolving the jpa
so my proposal is that we keep the jpa
revise it
and have animal control from the city of
the county come into
the ascmv
it's the word separate that
i'm
asking about all right i can take it out
i mean i'm not sure
how do we how are we separate in what
sense
i was when i wrote it i was thinking of
to remain separate from the city or in
other words to stop
coming into the city
i i wanted to
it's a bad word choice i understand that
i just wanted to
be
certain that you understand that we no
longer want to be part of the city let's
keep the jpa
and move forward there
because
you're still going to get appointees
from the city council and from the
county commission presumably
yeah yeah this board would stay
you said that your average turnover was
about two years
what kinds of positions
turn over more frequently and less
frequently our biggest turnover is
animal caregivers as you can imagine
that is an incredibly hard job to do
cleaning in adverse conditions and also
cleaning adverse things you're basically
spraying animal waste down a drain and
and working hard on getting animals to
stay healthy and there's a lot of
pressure on you we also have front
office staff where
it's always their fault that the dog got
impounded
and they get taken out on they get
yelled at it's a hard job to have
some of our longest ones of course is
the management positions
that keep that up i have i have one
manager that's been there over 10 years
so
this is a pretty expensive menu that you
presented
from whence comes the money
it will be from the city and the county
and that's the discussion that um
counselor studio is saying vice chair
was
that discussion needs to happen of
of how it's going to work out and i'd
love to have a discussion too because
we're looking at a city building
that we're going to be moving into it's
paid power by city
by city residents but housing county
animals and it's it's a discussion that
needs to happen regardless
these are your druthers
but
is it still in the works that the city
will take over the animal shelter
and the county will basically be
charge per animal or some such formula
well with this presentation that i've
said and that's the discussion about the
word separate we i i do not want
the city to absorb the ascmv
we in other words i'm saying no longer i
want to work
so instead of being
like them
like the city and county i wanted to be
the ascm and city and county
to work together well that's what you
want but what's it going to be
for the moment
well right now it's
it's the city and the county and the
ascmd
well my understanding was that the city
will take over the animal shelter
this board would be dissolved
and i think that's why county would be
charged a fee per animal
that's brought in
i think that's where it was going but no
longer for on me
i mean the city
i'm speaking outside of my mouth here i
guess but
any party can dissolve the jpa with
written notice
i can't stop that but the executive
director of the ascmv is standing here
saying that let's not dissolve the jpa
let's revise it
and let's work together
but you don't have the
final say
correct
so to be continued then
thank you mr chairman
thank you commissioners
yeah thank you clint i appreciate the
your presentation and all the work that
you and your staff have have um
provided i i know it's it's a lot um
and so clint have you had an opportunity
to speak to
mr andriquez and to the city to include
um
county manager macias about your
thoughts on this because
probably now
four years i would say three and a half
years we've been speaking of okay what
is the best way to to handle this
um knowing that you know the geo bond
was in place um knowing that the last
budget
the city put forth um quite a bit of
money um
and and and
in addition to the money that we put
forth
and so i think there was the discussion
two and three managers ago
that
we would be
we we are considering um
dissolving right the gpa and coming into
um the city of las cruces so i i guess i
want to hear from you in terms of the
number of conversations and then her
hear from mr andre is exactly what is
being discussed at the executive level
because i hear the rumblings right i
hear that acl is being moved or going to
be moved into different places but that
really hasn't been discussed um
further so all this is like a puzzle
piece that right that
isn't quite fitting yet so give me your
interpretation i i've had really good
discussions with the city manager mr
pealey i've had
one or two meetings with
the assistant city manager
and
the one with with eric best assistant
city manager was
not worrisome to me but
when he said that they're thinking of
moving animal control under truth
another department and i said whoa the
whole reason why
i'm saying that i want to do this was so
we could have animal control so we could
work more towards changing that
apartment to be something that's not
and so that actually got me started
thinking let's let's think about a
better and other way to do that and when
i talk like i said with other directors
where they had this type of a setup
where they're getting funding from city
and county et cetera
that
they said that they wish they hadn't
gone in they they would have liked to
stay separate so they can do more things
with it
as i said before
and and also different ways to go about
it and that's why i said why can't why
can't it be
have the county and the city
animal control under the jpa why does it
have to be
this i go to the city
and have the city and then just have the
city because then if we ever do absorb
the county acos would have to be part of
the city
and they don't want that or they might
not want that i should say
so that was my thinking is that there's
let's figure out another way to make the
same result
have you talked to the acos
about this
no okay i have not so this is the first
time they're hearing this
i mentioned to gino yesterday about it
because we had a good discussion my
office
um maybe it's come up in a conversation
once or twice but not
in this level no
so in all actuality you're talking about
two departments really two new
departments not just one two you have
the acos under
you as well and it the discussion would
have to be had with the city and county
about how that would be
how that would happen frankly
and so um you would be
still
factoring in to your budget
what it costs
each of those acos and i thought i heard
at one point the difficulty about doing
that almost immediately under when david
dalahan was here is because
the city aco
versus
what the
county acos pay is very different or
different i wouldn't say very different
but it's different
was that accurate
yes okay yeah i know i know that i know
that the pay is is different for them
but as far as me it
like i said it's i'm raising the wages
of my staff
so it i don't see it as a as a reason of
complication that we would just bring
them in as you're going to be making
this much
um starting off taking consideration
years of service and everything like
that implement some type of
of protocol that would bring them in on
that well some sort of wage um an
analysis of sorts that we do normally
right as we're raising
wages i try to say that a few times fast
that we're ways raising wages for others
you know there's some sort of of um
analysis that takes place and and you're
factoring in
regionally what others make that kind of
thing so you know i i have always felt
um it a bit disjointed that our acos
come from you know different
organizations and as much as i think
past
boards and the jpa have tried to
make
ordinances and such look the same it it
it's different and i i find it um
you know we get those morning and
evening updates and here
you know um
we're we're at cross purposes right it
doesn't feel like we are really working
at times
together to
keep animals out of the center
and keep them
safe and whatever at times
it it and even in presentation right
it
it it just feels differently and so i
have always been um
a fan of coordinating and collaborating
and and bringing in people as a team and
i think this would be the best way to do
it is have the aco that conversation
to see how we bring the acos into
the animal services center i think that
would be
really helpful in in my mind as in terms
of the mission and then you made mitch
mentioned that the mission has to change
right what
currently is the mission of the
animal services center and it would
require sort of a strategic planning
session in my mind if we're going to
move
out of
out of this that we we do that and and
that we understand sort of what the
mission is because it's it's different
yes um and also to add to that i
i forgot to mention the presentation
that in my previous place i worked at
davis county we had 14 different cities
that
i was over and almost all of them had
different ordinances
because some of them were just like it
is here some were
more livestock some had some more city
rural et cetera
and so i didn't have officers assigned
to specific areas it was officers
wherever they were at the time got the
call and they reported to it it was just
a matter of knowing where you were at
and
and then you had a cheat sheet of what
are the specific ordinance changes and
so they knew what ordinance numbers to
write what for citations if needed be or
even what the ordinances were and with
the city and the county those the two
mere so close anyways it would not be
difficult at all to
to be able to manage that for the acos
thank you clint um
and so talk further about the liberty
some liberties would go away and then
move into um
in terms of
the ability to manage intakes with
emergency only what what i mean
don't you do that to a certain extent
no i have the only way that i was able
to manage any type of intakes was during
the pandemic
where we said we need to limit the
animals coming in so there's less
exposure of people coming to the center
and also the staffing level we didn't
know what was going to happen you know
if staff got really ill
then
we need to have animals only the ones
that need to come in and under the
emergency basis
then i had collaboration on that
um but like with right now as you saw
our live release rate was 65 that's the
lowest that's almost ever been in august
and the reason is is because we have so
many animals coming in we're talking 30
40 animals a day
coming into the center
and are these animals that really needed
to come to the center and i asked that
question
because we're euthanizing animals more i
don't have the staff to even if i has
fully staffed we are not at that
capacity of care
the animals are not getting the quality
care that they that they
that they should get
so we need to euthanize more in order to
have the number down to get to that
quality of care
and that's why i would like that to be
in the jpa is if we get a certain number
of animals like let's just say i have 10
employees and with the 10 employees 100
animals can be cared for
so once we get to that 100 animals
our quality of care capacity of care is
going to drop when we go above it
and that's what we like to have the jpa
we could say we're at capacity
please officers impound emergencies only
injured sick aggressive
the ones that really have to come to the
center let's bring them in but the
others
let's not
and then once we get down below that
number then we can resume regular
impounding as before
so clint how with that comment that you
just made um that we understand because
of the pandemic and such
i often hear
commentary from
staff and the acos that it makes it
difficult because of the the laws right
that the state has that have you done
sort of an analysis of what laws
might we might be breaking um when
adding something like this because
obviously i'm not
i'm not um first on that it's not my job
to um right to know all of those things
i mean although i know some
i i would feel like if you're going to
put something like this i think there's
probably policies
from city and county but also the state
that we have to really look at and
understand before we make such a drastic
move in in this
to this specific area and it's a
fantastic point and definitely needs to
be addressed and looked at
for that okay all right thank you um
let's see
i took a bunch of medical
um the area the the critical needs um
would you say
that this is sort of top
like if you had to prioritize these
things i know this is sort of your pie
in the sky
um so to speak but if you had to
prioritize things it would be helpful to
know what those are almost immediately i
think i heard very specifically that
this has to happen
soon um is that accurate
i think number one priority is going to
be the salary increase for our staff
okay that's the number one and luckily
that can this first year so the half of
that percentage can be absorbed so we're
going to implement that as soon as we
can as soon as we can figure out an
equitable manner to
give increase to everybody
um once we figure that out then we will
be distributing that increase out
but this definitely a second
i mean we've already gotten quotes for
the cement we've already gotten quotes
for the new kennels
um and the ceiling fans and misting fans
were amounts that i gathered offline
or offline
online
off of online
so
those are those are pretty good hard
numbers there absolutely and this is
where your refer this right here you're
referring to what
has been the down under right no this is
where the where the the house was the
double wide it's the green it's the
green roof area right now okay okay got
it thank you thank you and then
as as the new center is being built
um
it appears like maybe
we got to get ready in terms of staffing
correct yes and so move back to the
slide so i can see in for folks that are
watching and
which slide do you want to go i'm sorry
the the um ft's for new positions i
would assume that's to help feel
um right as we build the new
the new center it you're saying this is
what we really need to
help
um
with that yes
yes so some of it some of it's more
urgent than others
like with the front office you see three
additional part-time because the goal
there is to use those part-time
positions for more off-sites
so we don't need those immediately for
the new center however the five
additional full-time employees for the
front we do need because we need we have
to house in both areas
for the new center and the existing
center
so small increase there and then the
kennels the five additional animal
caregivers
those of course are needed
as soon as possible we can have we can
have five additional kennel workers in
the existing kennel and then just
schedule them over
that's no problem at all so that is
definitely a need
but like the building maintenance
doesn't need to come until after the
building's completed or closer to
uh and the rescue coordinator isn't an
absolute need right now that can wait
until we get into the new center so
we're looking we're looking at the new
center will be done
they say in september of 2022
so anytime after in that next fiscal
year a year from now right so as we're
talking about budget and i see leanne
back there and mr sample is still here
uh mr enriquez is here we need to start
looking at that and what is the total
amount that we're so i guess i'm asking
you prioritize what you need for this
next fiscal year and we're starting to
talk about that
um
and it would be helpful to me right how
many
ftes part-time full-time with a total
number so that we can start
negotiating that and then the
conversations i think need to be had
between the city and county if it is
in fact
how we want to proceed
that is great thank you yes i'll get
that to you okay and so to radiate just
so we're on the same page prioritize the
things that we really need for the new
center coming up because i said like not
all eight full-timer for the kennels
needs to be done okay we'll get that i'm
not sure is i mean you tell me what you
think you need to ensure the care of the
animals and to try to maintain
right
retaining your folks staffing i think
the the salaries is a must i agree with
that so you would have to be working
with hr i'm assuming to assist in that
manner
and and
i don't see hr here today but i i would
imagine there's certain protocol and
such that needs to be followed because
you follow sort of
not sort of you follow right the the hr
policies that the city has
yes
um
uh it's it's a little bit looser for us
like again i don't there's there's not
an approval process i'm the approval
process
so i don't need to go to assistant city
manager or something like that i
basically sent a memo saying we need to
increase these to this amount
and it's completed by hr
got it okay good good
okay and then so
and then an amount
um for me would be helpful
and then i guess i feel like i'm at a
loss because i don't know how many
conversations have been had with county
manager
macias and the county i mean i hear sort
of the rumblings about
moot that they want to move completely
away and do their own thing
you started to see some of that i don't
know that that's accurate or not but um
i think we've been asking for some time
now
to have a joint meeting between us to
have this conversation
um you know transparently in front of
the public um
you know i i i talk some with um
chair
sanchez but i i i feel like
we really need to have a robust
conversation and and really put it out
there
agreed okay thank you
um and i think that's all my questions
for now um
chair
sanchez
and i do see
mr macias here and his hand is going up
so i'm not sure if he wants to come to
the podium and have the conversation if
you're allowing that chair or not till
the end i'm not i'm not sure what your
thought was about
um obtaining information from
county manager macias to include the
city no i if uh county management sees
would like to provide some input i'm
open to that i think uh you know my my
hope was is i know we would have some
high level conversations within i think
around what what clint and what the
future of the asmv was
um and you know i didn't i was hoping we
wouldn't go too far down the rabbit hole
um so to speak but i think it's still if
mr macias if you would like to provide
some input
okay so we'll
do what we sing at the end of this topic
or or at the end of the meeting
okay fair enough so we'll do that
um and i i have a
counselor for this i'll come back to
here in a second i had a couple of
questions and i think
mayor pro tem gun that i have had hit a
little bit on it what i would love to
see is
um
when we're looking at the priorities and
and timing of some of the staff you know
kind of what you're seeing or what you
would look at in terms of bringing them
on board or when you would look to bring
them on board
is one the second part is in terms of
the budget
i know you had indicated that some of
the staffing and the increases could be
um
encompassed within the current budget
within the current day of cmv budget but
so i'd be curious to understand overall
i guess a summary of
what would be the one-time capital
upgrades that we're looking at
versus
the recurring staffing increases that
we'd be looking at so overall what's the
impact to the budget and what are where
are we looking at those impacts
um but i think
you know
i think counselor flores had said this
which is i think overall i'd love to see
the ideas that you've brought forward
because
i think what we've had discussions in
the previous asmb board meetings we
we're struggling on the county side and
the city side in terms of staffing our
acos
and i know we're both both of our
organizations are looking to get those
filled
but in the meantime you know it
i could see a benefit in which
if you had if there was one organization
for
acos and say an example like you had
i'll call it the mvac based off of the
the
the nfv acronym you had there
um
i could see some you know potentially
where the i know there's things that
have to be worked out um and i know
you've hit some of those topics but i
think from a
execution and how we could serve the
community i could see some
potential for
that to be a good thing because in the
cases like this where you know if it's a
staffing level if you have hot spots in
the county the city wherever it may be
that would give some flexibility as to
where
you know you could flex
the staff to do that the other part is i
think is
is
and this may have been brought up as
well i think when we were talking on
those updates that we see
in the morning and the afternoons
with the education piece if
you know we're seeing cases and
sometimes some you know something's not
filled out properly or this wasn't done
or this and so it creates rework on both
you know for the asmv it creates rework
for
the uh county the city whatever it may
be which is really inefficient i think
and that's one of the things that i see
is there's a chance to make things a
little more efficient from that
perspective so i could see
you know i i'd love to see you know
having having the discussion i don't
know if it'll go there you know fully
but i'd be open to to i think everything
that you've brought up i just would like
to see is
what kind of funding requirements would
would
be needed from both the county and the
city
when we'd be looking at it and
you know so that way we can continue on
those discussions to see what are we
looking at and then the third the third
part would be
we had some high level disc our
ideas on the jpa and changes you'd like
to see so i'd like to get like maybe a
list of those
so that way we can maybe take a deeper
dive in that because i think as we're
talking here
the jpa is going to is is a big topic
that we really need to revisit and
understand
where we sit between the city and the
county and we can work together to make
sure we're
you know we're we're in agreement in the
end of everything that we're looking at
so
thank you
but i think i appreciated this
conversation i know counselor florida's
i think you have a couple more questions
so i'll just
finish my my
bit here with just a comment and that i
appreciated this conversation this this
review because i think it's it
touches on so many different topics that
we've been wanting to i think one your
vision
the jpa um you know so
it this has kind of given us a very good
jumping off point to kind of push us
into these discussions further so yes i
appreciate it mr thacker
council photos did you have additional
questions oh sorry then we'll come back
to you commissioner allen
yes uh thank you mr chair
so
clint you alluded to
rumblings that the city wants to take
over and i am not privy to that what i
have said personally
is that the city has done a lot for that
animal service center we have our tax
dollars going to it with uh the gold
bond money that was raised for the new
center that's tax dollars from uh from
residents in the city of las cruces
we own the land
uh we owned you know the new service
center is on city land the existing
centers on city land we
we own the buildings
and it looks like and i don't know all
the i don't have all the details as to
um
i mean you have your budget but
anyway you know we also do the city does
the payroll the city does uh the hr
services you know good bad or
indifferent the city does it and owns it
it literally and figuratively
so i just wanted to say that if there
was any rumbling in the past about
the city wanted to take over
it may have you may have heard it from
me
or you may have understood
just because it sounded like it seemed
like it would make more sense
um
but this is something that has to be
addressed and we have to have a full
board uh uh robust as as mayor pro tem
gandara has pointed out it has to be a
robust conversation everybody has to put
their cards on the table i'm sorry that
the macias just walked out right now
county manager
and i also want to see
uh in that discussion what we have to
keep in mind as as counselor aveda
stubby pointed out
there has to be a
equitable agreement
in other words
if if there's going to if that jpa is
going to be revamped or if it you know
just people because you're absolutely
correct about that
it can be dissolved unilaterally by
either party
at any time without just with proper
notice
um
so if the parties
now to that jpa agree to an equitable
uh distribution of costs and
responsibilities
there's no reason to say
no to that
but that those are the sorts of things
and i think the key word is equitable as
uh counselor beta stewbe pointed out
i in my humble opinion do not believe
it's been equitable
and um
and i and i
and
so i just want to i just wanted to add
that part i want to emphasize
um you know the equity or the
equitability
that uh hasn't really existed here too
for
and so i would like i'm glad you're back
county manager macias
i would like to see
the county because we
i mean even what you show
we contribute
the city contributes less than the
county
and
and i don't even know i'm not privy to
whether
the county pays up right away
all i know is that um
all these terms that we will revamp if
it's at all possible
uh clint because again i don't know
um
what the exact what the department of
finance would require but i but i have
to put you know i'm just speaking
bluntly
and maybe shooting myself in the foot
and not making myself very popular
but those are the concerns i've had and
but as as you've said your understanding
is that a
the jpa doesn't have to be dissolved
to have you
and
everybody at the service center do the
job that must be done
which you've delineated beautifully
and again i want to thank everybody who
has done
the work acos
administration everybody
who has really done a fantastic job
notwithstanding
all these issues we have thank you mr
chair
thank you council flores commissioner
ellens
glenn could you go back to the jc
okay remain separate from the city and
county
some liberties that would go away what
does that mean could you explain that
as we stated before there are it's like
the
salary increase that i like to do for my
staff
but the liberty of saying me the
executive director would like this to be
done and write a memo to hr and it's
done versus having to go through the
steps of going through
and getting the approval of the
assistant city manager if i was a member
of the city
i'd have to go through the assistant
city manager who would be my supervisor
they'd have to talk about it with hr
you'd have to go probably up to this to
the city manager
possibly city council because it's so
large
and then get approved
so it's just some
more liberties that i have
that the hoops that don't have to be
jumped through
if we were to remain a jpa
okay i
thought you meant that liberties
that the board
can exercise would go away
it's confusing clint and so is the um
other one
is that better
you still have to you say some liberties
that would go away no you you want more
liberties you want more autonomy i think
that's what you're asking for you're
asking for autonomy to keep it yes
yep
okay thank you yeah
also one quick thing is there is um
metaphor as there is a administrative
charge
that we do pay to the city
i believe it's seventy five thousand
leanne do you know off the top of your
head what it is
i think it's yeah close to a hundred
grand that we pay the city now in years
past the city has
forgiven that so we could meet budget
but we do pay that amount for services
rendered by the city why haven't we seen
it on our or or mr sapple
it's there okay then i haven't seen it
i'm sorry
okay we'll go uh mayor potemkandara and
then i think after that uh we'll let mr
macias go ahead and thank you mr chair
um thank you clint i i do want to ask in
terms of the priorities or to say out
loud
that
i feel really strongly as well that we
need to get that mobile unit going
we've promised that over the years it's
going to help i think
in relation to arts you know spay and
neuter that michael j all those things
that i think that that strap us from
really
um
getting the work done i think
collectively so in that priority list
where does that fall and what is the
amount of money that it's going to take
to get this off the ground because i
don't think i saw a price there was not
a price there and that was for a reason
if because the county has a
mobile clinic that they're
restocking and doing i know mary lou is
working really hard at getting it up and
going i don't know where they're at in
that process
but
i don't know if we want to duplicate
efforts and us get our own and spend
that money
or if that's something we can partner
with the county and help do through
those services and then you also have to
look at the staff
to do that again it's not it's not just
a matter of going and doing it
we are so
overwhelmed i wish i should have taken a
picture of our surgery hallway
every single day we have feral cats in
shelving that is waiting to go out and
sometimes they wait as long as two days
and we don't
the we don't want that the whole pro the
whole reason for the program is to save
lives and get them out as soon as
possible
so i don't even know if it would be
possible and and if we want we can have
dr hadden come up and talk but to be
able to
do one right now with our current
staffing level so some things have to
happen before
we step into that realm no absolutely
and i think that's why you presented
sort of the ftes and this process and
why
another thing i think we need to add to
the list in terms of
having this conversation with the county
right as much as we can i think the
public expects us to work together
coordinate collaborate um you know
trying to reduce um the use of
the amounts of money that it's it's
creating right if we can
corny and
and
concisely do this work if you will the
other thing is have you ever considered
capital outlay
funding from the state and what that
might look like
moving forward i don't see that
here and that would be a recommendation
that i have for you
moving forward
as you know there
at our state is pretty flush with money
um or will be and or it continues to be
and i think this is
something that
you should really consider that's a
great idea moving forward i think and
and then lastly um
um i mean it requires being put on on
our our list and such and or the
counties or both uh but it's those
conversations should be had um soon
clint
um so that we can get on the list
if we're not already so thank you uh-huh
that
that's it
thank you thank you very pro-time gander
county manager macias would you care to
chair sanchez
i was going to say if i could speak
before a
county manager just to answer some of
mayor pro tem
dunder does uh
questions on the discussions that took
place if you don't mind or
that that's fine mr nicus
okay so in in the past there was
discussions of the jpa being dissolved
and the city taking over
and
those were previous discussions in the
past and then just
when when i came into this position back
in november there was still some of
those things that were as as mayor pro
tem said
some some grumblings but uh or rumblings
that were taking place but still it was
unclear i thought it'd be best if
uh and mr thacker had tried to schedule
the work session to try to bring it up
to the board and see where the board
felt this was going before it went to a
joint meeting between the city and
county to start with the board and see
where the board felt if the jpa should
remain
or um any updates amendments and all
that would be a process there is a
process with all that um so so that's
where that's where it began and i thank
mr thacker for coming in and bringing
his plan it looks like a good long-term
plan i totally agree with the
consolidation of resources that can best
provide for this community i just want
to say there is some challenges with the
animal control as one they are
represented by the union and and two is
uh they're sworn by the police
department for any criminal activity so
those would be some discussions that
that could move forward but i think the
key point is
uh does the board want the jpa
to remain and
i think that's that's what the the whole
discussion is for for this board thank
you
thank you mr enriquez
mrs
good morning mr chairman and members of
the committee just a few observations i
won't take that long
i wanted to thank commissioner allens he
is the one that suggested that i be here
to listen to this discussion because
candidly we
haven't been part of
listening in to the discussions
so let me suggest one thing to you
to begin with
and i complement mr thacker and his
staff in terms of trying to visioning
out some of the needs
but
it is no different than going through a
budgeted budget hearing process
and we have already arrived both the
city and the county at what the budget
is for this given fiscal year
i'm going to suggest to you
that any time
and this is not in a derogatory manner
but any time that you are asked to
create
30 plus positions
when you're dealing
with departments within the city or
within the county
where you're basically telling your
departments we can't give you any
additional positions
then i think that part of the disconnect
is looking at the big picture and where
we're going to be
so let me suggest to you
that
the city and the county
moving very quickly
basically bring in
a management assessment team
that has that kind of expertise and the
operations
these kind of operations these kind of
joint operations
and that be
jointly funded by the city and the
county and i think that it can come in
at a reasonable rate because both the
city and the county have
done probably a substantial amount of
management assessments of individual
departments within both the city and the
county
a group that would be independent
answerable to this committee
to this board
and within a six-month period
come up with
recommendations in terms of not only how
to proceed but how to operate
because as you talk about
the need for more money you talk about
the expansion of the operations
there needs to be
just as importantly the discussion about
how you limit the number of animals that
are coming into the animal services
center
there needs to be a little bit more of a
robust discussion about how do you
utilize all of the different animal
advocacy groups in the community
something that comes to mind when we
talk about community outreach
why aren't we looking to contract some
of them
why aren't you looking to contract the
public relations firm and like
that's a broad category to basically do
some of your community outreach
because when you compare that cost to
the cost of five full-time employees
with all of the benefits and everything
else associated with it
you may find
more effective or financially effective
methods of communicating within the
public
i do want to
thank
commission uh councillor flores for at
least bringing up the topic of the jpa
that is that is the priority i agree
with mr enriquez
uh certainly the priority internally may
be related to
um
employees
and their compensation level
but from a much broader perspective
it is where are we going are we going to
maintain
this relationship or is it going to be
substantially changed i can guarantee
you and i don't mean this
disrespectfully
when i first came on as county manager
and it's almost four years ago
there were already these discussions
about how
city
and county
animal control were going to be merged
together
it was going to be under
there was a different process to it
but it was made very bluntly clear to me
that
the city was headed
toward dissolving the jpa
and eventually transitioning
after several years of the county
continuing to contribute millions of
dollars to the process
that we would the county would be then
charged per animal
i am
absolutely clear to you
that that was was communicated to me
that is why the county has been looking
at undertaking efforts to diminish the
number of animals being brought in
and because of all of the challenges
internally related to the care or the
euthanasia
of
animals
so i want to assure everybody neither
from the commission level
or management level at the county
have we ever been advocating
the abolishment of the jpa
to me it is a testimony of two
governmental entities being unable to
work with one another
when mr feely first was appointed
and we had our first conversation this
was one of the conversations
we should look to see what we need to do
to basically address
the animal population and animal
services
jointly and not separately
so if they're the modification of the
jpa yes it has to go to the department
of finance and administration but their
review of it
is solely to determine whether or not it
is
financially feasible
whether you have a method of funding
those changes whether it makes financial
sense
uh to accomplish the stated purpose of
the jpa
so i'm not saying that the department of
finance and administration just does a
cursory review their review is somewhat
limited and they are always looking to
say
does it make sense
and have the city and the county made
sure that they've covered their bases
properly so i don't see any kind of
effort
to modify the joint powers agreement as
being an impediment or even a long
delayed method of accomplishing
those modifications i do want
because i haven't heard any differently
from our commissioners
that we worked we continued to work
together but i think that all of these
issues that are now being presented
i think that it's good to have a little
bit more of an independent review and
process
and levels of recommendation because i
know that we can have joint powers or
excuse me join a joint meeting of the
city and the county
but to discuss what this
this broad array of different
priorities or to discuss concrete
proposals that are being made to you so
i tend to favor come in to a public
meeting with a tangible recommendation
in terms of how to proceed and to be
able to justify it to see the cost of it
and if there are any kind of
alternatives to that approach
and if there's any way to
assess what you currently have to make
it more effective so let me suggest you
that we that you at least
consider
because i certainly
we recently did a very comprehensive
review of our
community development and our permitting
process
we brought in a consultant to look at it
very critically
in terms of the
permitting process and the criticisms
that we received and the competition
with el paso related to santa teresa and
we have been implementing those very
concrete proposals
i find it a very effective approach and
would suggest that you consider that as
well i'm very happy to respond
to questions related to the county's
perspective we are
we are going to be utilizing our mobile
uh clinic
uh we certainly have plans we've already
done a review of it it's the the
vehicle is in very good shape it needs
very little modification to basically
get it operating
we have wanted to look at a test
pilot project down in chaparral to see
if we can kind of have the impact that
we'd like to see in terms of an
aggressive spay and neuter
program through the
mobile operation to make sure that we
can
justify or determine whether the
investment of financial investment in
that process shows us a return in terms
of the reduction of animals that are
being picked up by animal control so yes
there there are a lot of efforts but i
can assure you that there isn't hasn't
been the
[Music]
appropriate and extensive
dialogue
at the management level that needs to
occur
first
from my perspective before concrete
matters or recommendations are brought
to the
to the board or the respective council
and commission
thank you mr chairman
thank you mr macias
okay is there any other input before we
on the topic i know there's going to be
we'll have to continue on discussions
with the jpa i think that's the
the outcome of this discussion so
we'll have to
look at scheduling something whether
it's just with the staff or
we'll have some discussions on that
all right there's no other input at the
moment i'll uh
move on nope mr chair vice chairman
stevie thank you um mr chair and just
one thing to mention that i do think um
granted there's been a lot of changes
over the last apparently four years in
staffing and counselors and different
things and i do want to say that we have
to start a conversation somewhere and at
some point and at some time and i do
really want to say thank you to
everybody that's participating right now
from staff to council and to this board
for beginning those conversations in
very transparent ways it seems like
perhaps that wasn't always the case and
it was done in closed doors or in
stilted ways where nothing was ever able
to get done so though this is a tedious
process i do want to say thank you
because i think this is where we begin
and we can hold ourselves accountable to
start that process a little bit quicker
get a decision made one way or another
and that way we're not waiting another
four years before we decide what to do
again i think that's good for staff
that's good for the center and it's good
for us to be able to make the best
decisions we can while we're here so
thank you and thank you chair
mr chair if i
mayor pro-tem gandra thank you
um
so risk of sounding
um combative i appreciate the
conversation that um or the comments
from mr macias
but i sensed an anger or frustration
and so and i've known him a long time i
call him judge so
i hope that's not the case um but i'm
going to put that out there um
and and and frankly
it's disturbing to me that
and i've i've always have said um to
clint and others because i chaired this
a few years ago as well
and and so that i expect
for him to have these deep conversations
with the management of the prospective
right um county and city um moving
forward i don't think it should be a
shock to anybody that yes i think over
the years there have been transition
and and to be frank um
the animal services center does have a
a marketing team through wilson and
brinkley who it's a very small contract
that if you remember i asked to have
more money put into it because i think
it's essential
that we do in terms of how we market and
and and do
provide sort of the marketing and and
techniques and such something that i
feel clint and staff don't have um the
time
you know to do but frankly
um i do want to say and i'll have to say
this
clearly
the city
our constituents approved a geo bond a
quite
hefty geopond to
[Music]
actually design and build the the new
animal services center and somewhere
down the way we have to ask the county
to give us funding for that and not just
per animal but because we use the
facility
i know and frankly there's a lot of
issues and concerns i get the emails
every morning and every afternoon about
how the acos do their job or don't do
their job and then there's all this
discourse i think in terms of how do we
promote that and frankly you know i can
i'm in charge of clint as you all are
but not of the acos and i have a lot of
conversations with past managers current
managers i send things out not so much
because i feel it's our executive team
here you know to do some of that
um and so
i i don't know that i at the end of the
day i was promoting to abs
you know to move out of the jpa absolve
the jpa
um
and but i i think we need to coordinate
and collaborate i think we need to have
really transparent conversations i know
from the city standpoint we've developed
task force to hear and to have these
discussions and frankly at the beginning
before clint was um
hired there was a lot of discourse a lot
of discourse and now that clint is hired
i feel like a lot of that has resolved
uh through very transparent
conversations so i feel there's some
disconnect from you know the three the
the three entities um and and and we
gotta tighten that up and and i'm asking
clint to be the leader in making sure
that takes place
um
moving forward and so i want to be very
clear from the board's perspective the
recommendations that i see need to
happen so that this is timely moving
forward and i've asked for a work
session a joint work session i've asked
for clint to have those conversations
with
very clear conversations with the city
manager and the county about the acos
and what we do to be working more as a
team um and and and then that we have a
strategic a strategic plan um planning
session because it sounds like we have
to change our mission to a degree to see
this
um come to fruition um i'm not in um uh
i'm not in disagreement of looking at
the possibility of hiring a management
analyst
consultant if you will to look at how we
um
you know
how we look at the at
the work that our animals our animal
services center is doing how we can
tighten things up i don't think that's a
bad idea and like to hear from clint a
little more
but i want to come out of here with very
clear recommendations so clint knows
very specifically what his next steps
are i i don't i don't want to
sound wishy-washy and and sometimes i
think we do um and i'll i'll say that
from my perspective from my for my own
that i sound sometimes wishy-washy and
he leaves here maybe not sure of what to
do next but i i don't want there to be
because we're going to have a new
council
in november
god willing no but
there's an election so there could be
another another shake-up of who sits on
this board
thank you mr chair
thank you mayor protagon gandra
yes uh thank you mr chairman thank you
uh mayor proteg yes there might be a
change um
and uh
so that's that's a that's another issue
uh regarding uh continuity
um so what we need uh between now and
the end of december uh
clint is exactly what mayor putim asks
for
we need to call a well we as a boy or we
need to bring the two entities together
and we it would be a joint work session
that we would prioritize uh
in its we would prioritize totally
and it's it's really hard
and and i don't mean this
for any other reason except to you know
it is what it is
i personally sit on about 14
boards task forces
prcs
advisory board uh
uh liaison
uh you name i'm on minimally 14 and then
there's meetings that we have and we
have to be very careful when we have
meetings we meet with ifo
city manager pili once a month one on
one but he has an open door
and
we're free to go in and discuss things
all the time
and
well open door doesn't mean well in my
case i just barge in hi evo
um but um but we do set meetings and so
when one thing gets changed and i i said
it flippantly about having to change
that hair appointment but you have to
understand my hair was burned when they
did it last time and then i cut it up to
here at christmas time and it's grown
out my hair grows fast and that was
flippant i'm sorry but i do have other
things coming up like eye surgery
recovery and another other important
very important event in my life that i
can't share openly
so
if we set a meeting i beg you to please
make sure we have it because
we run ourselves ragged and when we had
zoom it was a little bit easier just to
okay you know flip over to the next
meeting and now we have to travel you
know across town and you know uh four
points here
so that would be my ask and my directive
or what we should do i would recommend
to the board i guess we're the ones that
have to call it is that
we call uh for a meeting between the two
parties to discuss the jpa
and um
and do that um as soon as it's
reasonable feasible with given all of
our
uh respective calendars
and demands
how do we go about that just by my
saying that mr chair or
do i get my magic wand out again or well
i think
my recommendation is that i i believe
the first step in my mind would be that
each of our
administrations could meet with each
other because i think if we have a work
session that comes up with the jpa
i think we need to understand what's the
outcome of that and without them
having at least some thought as to the
direction we're going to go the
direction of a presentation or of what
recommendations would be to the board i
i can't say i mean we can have
discussions all day and i think we'd go
back you know to have
those types of negotiations
in the open we can do that
but my concern is that if we don't have
at least
those initial preparation and discussion
and and maybe that's what we do maybe we
look in in october december or sorry
october november time frame to set
something up so that we have the time in
advance
for those conversations to happen
um you know i think that would just be i
think at the at the
you know pleasure of the board to
determine that that work session but i
think we should give time well so my
recommendation would be in november
well okay
i suppose we can do that in november
but
because you're saying
with all due respect mr uh chair
you're saying that
we can't meet until they meet
and then and and we can't direct them to
me we i mean i guess
i mean
we i mean i i can't
i personally cannot tell evil what to do
and i think you personally can't but we
as a board are we their bosses
no well i think uh councillor flores i
mean that's where you know you we have
the representatives from both the city
council and the commission so yes i
think
you as the as the council are mr paley's
boss yes but we're not a quorum here no
you're not a quorum but i mean if that's
what if that's the directive and the at
the pleasure of the council that you
would like mr pealey to invest or to
start having i believe mr pealey and and
his
staff would have those conversations i
think the same with mr macias if myself
commissioner allen's and the rest of the
commission were to ask mr macias to
engage in those discussions it's not a
resolution that would have to be passed
during a council or a
commission meeting i believe that's just
the directive that we would ask then
they would go and do that that's my
that's my belief but the reason i ask is
that they have the discussions in
advance so that
we have at least some sort of
um
background some foundation
in which we're going into a work session
uh to to go into versus coming in
completely fresh and not knowing where
the sides are coming from i just would
like to have that at least that would be
my what i'm seeing i think it would be
more productive in a manner like that
well it does seem as if it would be
productive uh
mr chair and i i totally respect that
perspective
but i don't want i want to be part of
that conversation i want this board to
be part of the conversation that mr
pealey and mr macias are having
i i think it's imperative and the reason
is because
i don't want
i don't want to get misinformation from
either mr pewee or mr macias and i don't
mean misinformation like they're lying
to us
but i want to make sure what transpires
in their conversations and i think that
we as a board deserve that
and that that's i would like a work
session where they come prepared with
whatever they need to present to us as a
board and we come prepared uh with full
knowledge as to what action we would
have to take regarding the jpa
and and so long as we get that uh down
then the rest would follow it
the rest would follow either way whether
you know we come to a uh
we're deadlocked or whether it's
resolved that we move forward with a new
jpa
and that's what i would propose if
and and and and i think it would be
expeditious i think it would we would
move along quite uh faster
instead of
uh setting a meeting in october and then
another one in november and then maybe
another one in december
and then the year is over and then the
clock is ticking in so far
as budgets go
i mean in december
we get called by the budget people
to start thinking of what we want for uh
2023 and by may the core or whatever the
quarterlies we get
it's already set in stone
so i'm just saying i'm just thinking
prospectively and just to make things
you know time uh just everything more
efficient and that
that's my humble opinion thank you mr
chair uh and i say commissioner ellens
and before i just want to make a comment
i know for example
one you know just this is just one
recent right the the mpo which is you
know we have a jpa between
the the the town of messiah the county
and the city of las cruces and one of
the things that was done was that they
created a
a committee
that worked together from each of the
representatives and then based off of
that then they came to present to
the policy committee or the policy board
and that way there were conversations
that were representatives and i don't
know that that was i think that worked
very well because there was you know
there wasn't just
there was a timeline set in which they
were working towards to get something
done and then they were able to come
back and request input in the meantime
from the board before we finally were
going to approve it but just as a
thought i don't know that i thought that
worked very well mr mayor
but mr chair just as a follow-up to what
you just said what kind of an issue was
it was it a dissolution of a whole
organization as it exists i mean this is
this is big time
this is really important it's not it's
not an issue about where we're going to
distribute buses or whatever i mean and
i'm not minimizing the importance of
your subcommittee i'm just saying this
is a different animal
no pun intended
commissioner
i wonder if the city manager would like
to weigh in on any of this
and i didn't and commissioner island the
only reason i mr please please go ahead
and i apologize mr pealey that i didn't
call on you the main reason i had not
was just because we had mr enriquez as
our
ex-official member on the on the
committee so i apologize mr pealey uh no
no problem uh mr chair i i'm just
popping in i know mr enriquez is very
capable i'm just was just coming in to
listen in as it
has been mentioned this is really
important
uh and so i appreciate the opportunity
just to share a few thoughts i don't
think i have anything profound to say
but um
a couple thoughts when i first came to
the city
this was one of the issues that were
brought to my attention and from my
understanding
is uh if this was the will of maybe the
board in general or the majority of the
board
to to move away from jpa and have this
organization under our city
entirely
and meeting with mr macias i
recognized that there was some
difference in opinion there
and so what i wanted to do is make sure
that we
we had from those that
that make the decisions uh
the the direction
and so from the staff perspective i mean
we get your direction
from you
and if
if you're asking us
if you're telling us that this is what
we want to do our job is to come forward
and tell you how we're going to do it
if you're asking us if this is something
we should do
then that is where we
we engage a third party consultant or
somebody to come and do that because i
wouldn't do that so in that regard i do
agree
uh with mr macias if that's if that's
what the board is asking but my
understanding that there's already a
sentiment to move
move in a different direction i'm not
entirely sure where that came from but
um
that's the that's the
that's the vibe i got when i first got
here and so i appreciate that it's on
the it's on the agenda now because
really what i wanted to hear i wanted i
wanted to hear if that was true
if the majority of the board felt that
way
then then it becomes staff's
responsibility to just see that it
happens
and we would give you the cost
associated with timelines
uh if
we're looking at doing that within this
the upcoming fiscal year
we're getting short on time
because of the budget the budget process
and so
if we're looking at
having a separation in july
as was mentioned by
councillors
budget season starts
you know here in a couple months
and so we'd have to start looking at
that
and so it would be
again i mean if we're looking to uh i
don't necessarily disagree with going
with a third-party
consultant but if we're gonna do that
that has to be done pretty pretty soon
um and again i was coming in to just
hear what what the sentiments of the
board was
um i just want to hear it straight from
your your mouths and maybe some of your
concerns
because at the end of the day if it's
not about money if it's not about
and it's just because it works better
even if that's just philosophically how
a board
decision
then then the discussion in my opinion
stops there
and we just figure out a way to do it
and so um i don't know if there's any
questions from from the staff side and
timelines or
or capacity and being able to do that
that i can answer from
from the board mr chair
thank you mr pealey are there any
commissioner allens and then i'll go to
mayor protegra
thank you for your comments
mr manager
whether we
meet
as a counselor flores suggests
first and foremost
or whether you as city manager and mr
macias county manager meet first to prep
us
i don't think either meeting is called
for until we
take up mr macias suggestion that we
bring in an outside consultant
to figure out
what's the best way to go and at that
point we can start having meetings
because
at least we would be
informed
on a on a factual independent basis
thank you commissioner ellen's mayor
protein gander thank you mr chair thank
you mr pilly i don't really have
questions or comments that for me it's
more about
um i think direction does need to come
from this board it's answering these
questions one do we dissolve if so what
does that look like and then we can move
into that person the
agency helping us move in that direction
or do we stay together and what does the
gpgp say
and what
and i think we're hearing from our
executive director and staff who work so
diligently today that said at one time i
thought yeah this would be a good idea
to do i'm not thinking that way anymore
he says we want to stay but these are
the parameters we'd like to work in and
i think we need to listen to that i
think as probably the longest standing
board member here
i do know that over the years we've had
a couple of transitions of
executive directors um
we landed clint and and and he's done a
tremendous job of bringing everybody
together um to have um conversations
about how best to operate the center um
and and he's saying today as as we've
been able it was a blessing probably
that we didn't work on to you know
quickly to change it to move into the
city is you know he's saying stay with
the jpa that that those are the
questions we have to ask ourselves and
answer today to give him direction
moving forward um and then i think
honestly um mr pealey
i think some of the discourse has been
and i mentioned this earlier is the acos
right there's there's
there that we are operating in different
um
well because of their job but also it
doesn't serve the center
in a lot of ways and
um
clint indicating our mission needs to
change because our mission is a certain
says something right and it's going to
be different if we sort of incorporate
these hills and hearing from mr which i
had heard
that our acos
operate you know there's a there's a
there's certain things that need to
happen prior to right there they're
under um
a contract
that that will need to be negotiated
right with the union
because they do certain um
lawful things or carry the law that so
we have to work through that but it's
not completely unheard of that other
municipalities or
do this and and so those are things
again
i feel we have to be very clear from
this board what we want
moving forward and i don't think
does the director know do we want to
keep the gpa do we want to dissolve it
i i don't i think we need to answer
those questions before we say yes we
want to hire this consultant to come in
and tell us what
is the best possible
or two or three options
okay thank you very much
commissioner
mr chairman so far this discussion has
been
primarily about process
i would suggest at this time that we
ask the public to speak out because i'm
sure
some of them want to talk about the
animals
commissioner airlines are we asking them
for general public input or are we
you're asking them to speak on
the jpm process and or the or mr mr
thacker's plan which started this whole
conversation and it's the agenda item
we're on
whatever they have to say let's hear it
whether it's about process or the
animals
mr pealey did you have anything else
before you if i if i may mr churches
before you turn the time over
if i can just maybe reiterate to uh
you know say man i made earlier
for me
i do believe that this is the this is
the board's
ultimate decision i know everybody
agrees with that
i apologize for missing the first part
of the discussion so i didn't hear what
was going on before and how he came to
this point but
what i really wanted to see happen from
this is that
that direction just like mayor protand
board member gandera mentioned
that we we get some clear direction
and in that regard
again if we're not looking to if we're
not asking the if question
um if it's if it's about how
then uh i don't think we need a third
party consultant to do that well i can
tell you how i mean we'll get with steph
and tell you how but if you're talking
about if if you're still
deciding as a board whether or not this
is a good move
then then i think the reasons for that
need to be brought up
because if it has to do with
some
quantifiable objective
reason or non
uh maybe
yes just objective reason if you're
talking about if you're thinking that
maybe this would be a money move
uh this will cost us less overall we'll
be more efficient overall we'll be able
to function better
then i think we can have a presentation
work session and maybe a third party
consultant is necessary to show that but
if if that's not what's in question
if it's just about what works better and
and i didn't didn't know that the
uh our director had it had that opinion
uh because if that's the case i i would
i would really take that opinion
seriously
and so if that's the case then um
then we can figure out the other issues
that were mentioned i mean if we have if
we stay
with the jpa but
we need to improve on certain areas
including aco
and how that's managed we can have that
conversation and we can be prepared for
that conversation as well in a future
workstation
or even in our meetings internally but
i i'm just hoping that we would get that
get to a point where as uh
board member gondora mentioned that we
can
we can really get some direction because
since i've been here i've been here for
about a year now uh mr chair and
i get i've gotten opinions from all over
the place i've gotten
uh you know
some some were telling me that we want
to move
out of the jpa others are saying that no
it's the city forcing us to do that and
i i just don't know and and i haven't
gotten a reason why but um if that can
come out that would be really helpful
for us today well mr peele i appreciate
that and i think that's a fair
assessment of the situation of whether i
think as the board i think that that's
where i'm at least
i don't know that we've answered that
question i think we're is that
i mean at least that's my assessment it
seems like we're
and maybe it's it's it
it's divided by the county and the city
and having two different things but i
don't know that there's a direct answer
yet on
do we want to move out of the gpa or
continue with the gpa and i think that
that's a fair i think as mr peely has
suggested i think that's a good
first place to start counselor flotis uh
thank you uh mr taran thank you mr
pealey i agree with everything that
everything he said is absolutely correct
uh because i was one of the counselors
that went in and said i think we need to
break away i mean yeah and he did hear
that for me for sure
from others my colleagues i don't know
other fellow counselors i don't know
it's not important but
so
i think right now it this is not an
action item mr chair so we can't vote on
it so this is what i propose
i propose that we hold a
a meeting as soon as possible
with this yes so that we can vote on
this
exclusively and as quickly as possible
to move forward to for the board to
entertain
uh the the uh re um
uh
well
well uh
the jpa the status of the jpa and if we
do that
uh
that would necessarily cover the
umbrella the whole thing about the jpa
whether uh we we change it or keep it or
whatever but i'm just saying to address
the status of the jpa and if we do that
then we can we can have a
further discussion
uh or
uh meet to vote on it we can't vote on
it today because what if it was an
action item then i would propose that we
vote on it and whether we whether we
support or not support
what uh clint has um
has presented to us and i'm sorry you
missed uh his presentation uh ifo
because he was very thorough about uh
why uh the revamping or redefining the
jpa
uh would work would make the running of
the
center more efficient all around in
every respect you know from the tnr
issue that we just you know
that we're dealing with right now
to uh the entire function of of the uh
center
so um
but everything he's given us and he made
it very clear that he does not want to
dissolve
the jpa he wants it redefined
so it's a question of moving on that to
make sure
and then of course i'm speaking also i'm
speaking primarily because of the fiscal
aspect you know it's coming up it's
right on our heels i don't know if we
can move that quickly but i think i
think we might be able to we need
72-hour notice to set another meeting
and we can look at uh
you know we can see what we can work out
between as soon as possible just to make
it expeditious and make sure that
we get this on the track because this
has been mulling i mean this is i mean
this has been kicked around since before
i was on city council and i'm going on
four years on this board and and it's
good that everything everybody put their
chips on the table everybody's uh
clear and open about perspectives or
cheese mess or whatever you want to call
it and
so i just that's what i would propose mr
chair
uh it would be your call as chair to
call the meeting
but i would say that we need that
72-hour notice minimally
um i know that
i know that the end of the month and the
beginning of a new week
most of us have
we do here on city council a lighter
calendar
i don't know about you all but
but that's what i would propose i don't
know how to
i don't know if i
i guess it's
it's emotion
no we wouldn't have a motion it would
just be something we'll talk about and
that that's what's saying so do a not a
poll to see where they're at i mean it
does yeah no that's fine i mean i don't
know if lynn heard me but i don't know
if lynn
would agree with uh having
a meeting and calling a meeting
and allowing the 72-hour notice is
required by the oma
i i uh counselor florida is i would look
at sometime the week of october 4th i
think if i would make a suggestion that
we i mean if thursdays will work well
for us october 7th i'll be out of town
sorry for the week and return on the
14th
you're out of town the first week of
october 5th through the 15th
tuesday through tuesday of the following
week
uh might i suggest um i know that we all
have very busy schedules so we can flush
out the um exact date um with our
respective admins as well to make sure
that everything coordinates but we can
aim for
as soon as possible with in regards to
everyone's schedule
that's great
thank you vice chair commissioner
what exactly is this meeting for the the
idea would be is that we have a vote to
determine whether we want to continue
with the gpa or
or move just to get direction from the
board as to where we want to where
that's going to go so this would be
direction to
management of the city and the county
because we don't have the authority to
terminate the jpa no correct it's just
providing it's just providing direction
on both of our respective managements on
where we're going to go
i think i'd like to talk to management
before this meeting
well i agree and i think that would be
part of at least my hope is is that
we'll have i think as mr pealey had
suggested then we can have some
discussion as to what the impacts could
be during
in either direction but
i agree with madam vice chair we'll
follow up after this meeting and
determine maybe
the best date for
the board to meet
could we then move on to public input i
i right now i think given the time i
don't know that if we're not going to be
deciding anything at the moment i i'm
going to forego public input
specifically on this discussion item
commissioner allen
okay
all right i think we've got direction on
that one um
we'll move on then unless there's no
unless some other uh input from the
board we'll move on to discussion item
5b the asmv's role
in the new city of las cruces trap
neuter release program
clint thacker
executive director animal service center
in seattle valley
um
basically we we have two minutes
to go over this really quick
again this is a conversation item this
is not an action item
this program or this budget was put
together just on behalf of the animal
task force subcommittee called the tnr
committee
because the city
wanted to have some information
regarding a budget
for the trap need a return program
that was approved via ordinance
so with the subcommittee members of the
public
also i'm on it and also
geno
the
city acl supervisor
sits on that subcommittee and this is
where we came out with the purchase of
traps and deterrents that would be
handled by animal control officers
to get into individuals that don't want
animals on or don't want these cats on
the in their property or on their
properties 9 200.
some outreach
by the ascmv
basic public service announcements
education materials and so forth
uh 40
a tnr coordinator that kind of ties in
with what we discussed in the big
picture for the ascmv
uh with the help line an office
assistant that's basically a position at
the ascmv for an office position
that can have that availability to
answer questions and
schedule and help
as needed is the 110 110 500.
the full surgeries
with the goal of 1500 surgeries 65 64.
each that is an accurate amount that we
have
for supplies and also for the
the surgeon to do that
and then that's 96 000
a 40 copayment if they're not receiving
any assistance so in other words if
somebody brings up
an animal that's that's in their comm in
their colony and they want it sterilized
it would be a four dollar copay if they
did not
qualify for any of the other programs
the funding allocation
[Music]
that's 33 000 dollars
looking for
for the rescues for public stay and
neuter
and then the crisis fund is a small
amount ten thousand dollars that is for
anything that
might be wrong with the community cat
um
that would be easily addressable it's
it's nearly impossible as you know to
treat a feral cat after it comes out of
anesthesia they they don't like to be
touched
so
if anything can be done in in a manner
that would be that's
less obtrusive for that
that's what that money is set aside for
and then we have trapper teams that
anybody that is unable to set traps
watch those traps
we have individuals that
would be able to rent the traps and help
out so that would be the ten thousand
dollars and then estimated study
for population would be around five
thousand for the grand total of three
hundred thirteen thousand seven hundred
dollars this is a information for you um
if you have questions i'd like to invite
kathy stark up to the front she's a
member of the subcommittee
for this she can address some of the
questions she's the one that developed
this and get some of the thinking
behind it
i'm not
uh it's gonna sound weird but i'm not
really sure why
this presentation was required to be
made to the board of the ascmv maybe so
you can see how it's going to impact
this is more for the city
for the city can see
in a city council meeting that they
wanted to know what a budget looked like
and so this is the amount
pretty much this is a heads up
to the board that this is could be some
more money being requested
so with the questions
i can help out or uh kathy can as well
oh she's not here how about
uh mr chairman if i mean yeah mayor
pro-tem gandalf please thank you um can
you scroll um to the beginning
okay um
i appreciate all the work that was put
into this we were asking for something
like this in terms of a budget that
could be presented to city council given
that we have instituted a new tnr
ordinance although
one of i think the the most important
thing in my mind is that research and
evaluator that's going to be looking and
collecting data
and and sifting through that data that
it isn't some staff person doing it all
due respect unless they have that
expertise and that that's
um
and so
for me that was
what needs to be a part of this because
you're going to need to have to answer
to
which you promised you would right in
terms of once this started we needed to
know essentially
what
how effective the program is and and i
don't see anything here as terms of data
evaluator uh the population estimate is
the is the one that that's at the end
for the five thousand dollars that's the
contract that's what was brought on and
jerry if you're here you can come up as
well but that was
brought in as the amount to have
somebody do that estimate
it's
the problem is it's nearly impossible to
estimate
population wise the impact that because
you have to know the population right in
order to
to get that
um
i understand but there's an evaluator
out of the university that does this
clint and i can put something together
and then the other question is how are
these estimates how did you come up with
these estimates
that's for jerry hi jerry hi jerry hi
uh animal task force
so in terms of the study we try to say
your name oh i did sorry jerry wheeler's
animal task force
so in terms of the study we did try and
approach dr romer
numerous times and we did not get a
response
so that was our first goal so after that
we tried to look at other programs and
see how much their
data collection cost and we based our
number on that so it might it's not a
finite you know it could change
but that's what we tried to do with that
number in terms of the other numbers we
again we collected information from both
clint and
animal control and
based on we have i have an extended
sheet here if somebody needs to see it
with the actual
working numbers of what
makes up the total and the columns
excuse me
so the
purchase of traps and deterrence
was based on the numbers that we
received from gino as to what amounts
they currently have and what they will
need
so sorry that's my phone okay
so
there are a number of categories in
their different size traps different for
and so forth and so on okay um i'm sorry
did you have another specific just very
specific where the amounts came from
yeah so that's that's what they came
from was numbers given to us by
clint and gino as to what
they currently needed and then we also
researched against other tnr programs
throughout the country in similar sized
cities municipalities
that's how we got to those numbers thank
you jerry so is this so
would some of this come from codes
animal codes um
yes
um budget or whatever is that whatever
the
first item for the purchase of traps and
deterrence it has says animal control
unit that would actually have to come
from animal control okay okay got it got
it the rest of them it says ascmv or it
says animal control
got you and then it and the tnr
coordinator is the same one that you had
clint from the pre that other slide yes
or the other presentation okay yes ma'am
okay
all right got you and and a lot of this
i'm trying to remember the
information so what is the same and
different
so that when i'm figuring
this
do you understand what i'm asking no no
ma'am so
between the two presentations you gave
me a present you gave us a presentation
right on the tnr program and and and i
think you ha and staffing and such
how much of it is the same and or
separate
the only simulation or simulator
similarity between the two the tnr
coordinator and i could also see
some of the helpline or office assistant
being rolled into one of those positions
so that's that's the only duplication
there as far as staff
got it okay all right thank you that
those are all my questions mr chair
thank you jerry and clint and the
task force the subcommittee of the task
force i know you put a lot of effort
into this thank you so so much
thank you mayor pro tem are there any
other questions
okay
thank you very much
now we're on to discussion item 5c the
dates for november and december board
meetings
thank you and i didn't have anything
written up for this i probably should
have gotten a calendar or something out
but we're running into an issue every
year where the fourth thursday runs into
november or i'm sorry thanksgiving and
also christmas so if we
we just need to have those dates set
when we like to change them
so we can have that next meeting on the
next
on the next agenda
okay so right now at least if i'm
looking at this right the the the
meeting in november yeah is thanksgiving
on november 25th yes and then in
december it's december 23rd
is what i see on my calendar
yes that is correct and i believe in the
pa i think we what we've done the last
couple of years i thought had been we
did it on the wednesday or
the week before the week before
i guess
so that would be in november that would
be the 18th
november 18th and then december would be
the 16th
wait the was on the wednesday before or
thursday before the thursday before just
a week earlier okay i
the only issue is i think
mayor pro tem as we have well i guess
depends on whether or not we have a
south central solid waste authority
meeting that's usually the
third thursday at 9 00 a.m
so
we can do wednesday if wednesday's
better for everybody as well
so that would be november 17th
and
december 15th
or you could do december 22nd
i don't know i'd almost for me
personally i'd almost prefer that we do
it the week before also
um in the case whatever plans
we may have for christmas holidays but i
don't know what is the rest of the board
is there does that november sorry
december 15th
and november 17th november 17th would
that work for our
meetings i don't have my calendar i'm
sorry
but um
did you say uh mr chair that it would be
the wednesday before on christmas eve or
the thursday before the week before
would be a thursday the 18th well there
would be it would be the wednesday
the week before so we would normally so
in november we would have been planned
for the 25th november 25th
and then we'd be looking at the
wednesday
prior which would be i guess if it helps
at all the third
wednesday of the month yes 17th
so december would also be would also be
the wednesday before the
yes counselor that's what uh so that
would be the 20th 15th 15th third on the
15th
okay
i think we're getting general nods and
we'll
so we're good okay we'll plan on that so
we'll have the next meeting or and in
october we'll have wednesday the 17th
oh no no well he no no we need to be on
the bottom of the agenda on the next
meetings agenda it will say next meeting
is november
the 17th yeah so
at the bottom of our agenda it says the
next meeting so we just wanted to have
it on there
okay
thank you
all right so now we're on to the public
input portion of the meeting so i invite
any members of the public that would
like to come speak please go ahead and
come on up
ms gilbert
thank you for being so patient
yes thank you i'm gene gilbert and i'd
like to preface my uh public input by
saying
that it's within the context of
my concern is about limited public
access
or appointment only
at the animal shelter and i want to
previous it by saying that
it's within the context of
not wanting to see a precedent set
or for this to be really prolonged
and they're talking about
covid
being an endemic
so it's something that we're going to
have to
learn to live with and so
if you can keep that in mind as i share
my
public comments and some of my concerns
have been
i want to say
[Music]
minimized or even alleviated now after
seeing
some of the presentations
so responding to input about a
limited public access policy and no walk
through
walkthroughs at the shelter uh clint had
said that people can get in almost right
away with an appointment to see an
animal
but the reliance on appointments only
especially if done in a
very prolonged manner is an exclusionary
practice
because it's based on the assumption
that everyone has equal
internet access to animals photos
and that all the adoptable pets
including the lost and found because
people are looking for animals that all
those photos are current and posted
and then the assumption that photos
alone are going to be enough for a
person to make a connection with an
animal
to therefore want to schedule an
appointment to go to the shelter
so animals are definitely missed or
passed up for all of these reasons
so limiting public access is costing
animals some animals their lives
okay and while appointment-based access
is is not a new practice
it is mostly done by private rescues
housing smaller numbers of animals
are the ones that do this and not your
public shelters that are funded by
taxpayer dollars that are funding 500 or
more animals who who depend
on public visibility in the community to
help them
best friends animal sanctuary alicat
allies
aspca were mentioned as ones that
support appointment only access policies
for shelters but we need to keep in mind
that they're speaking within the context
of their own privately run shelters
and their shelters aren't they these
people are not officials for municipal
government run shelters that are funded
by taxpayer dollars
and while associate while socialization
opportunities have increased for shelter
animals with volunteer dog walkers
once a week off-site events adoption
events and
manager weekly checks and other
activities that have been noted it's
still a very harsh environment for
animals and some of them do languish
there's no question about it so time is
of the essence for getting these animals
out
through adoption through foster through
transport and so on and so on and
limiting public access isn't going to
help the ticking clock and it negatively
impacts the welfare for shelter animals
and that's why i feel strongly that it
cannot be a prolonged policy
the governor's amended the health orders
related to covet and public gatherings
as we as we're noting right here in this
meeting and school openings and
restaurants and so on and so on
and and and this is being we're able to
mitigate the spread through
social distancing mask wearing and
proper sanitation and so the animal
services center can put that in into
place to allow some public access at a
minimum
limiting public access is changed from a
previous from our previous policies but
it is not a progressive change it's not
about flexibility and it's not about
creasing out increasing opportunities
for animals
the taxpayers are the eyes and the ears
of the shelter and the shelter should be
a very welcoming place and i have utmost
confidence in clint and his strong
leadership so it isn't anything about
that it's just that
we really have to think about uh
how this is going to be handled and that
it cannot be an indefinite policy
so i'm saying that the ascmv should at
the very least consider a block of hours
during the day for public access
uh and the rest for appointments which
would allow for the staffing shortages
that have been mentioned and it would be
a form of compromise going forward
thank you very much for your time
thank you miss gilbert
is there any other public input
good morning board members my name is
claire kapner
just for some of you i've been a
volunteer at the shelter for about 15
years i've also for about 12 years have
done the
adoptions at the farmer's market every
saturday morning
now
and this kind of goes along with what
gene just said
the shelter
at the farmer's market
i'm not doing them anymore as a
volunteer they only send staff
and now they're just changing the
schedule where they will only be at the
farmer's market every other week and
every other week they will be a petsmart
now it used to be we had usually three
adoptions every saturday one at the
farmers market which i always did one at
petsmart petco which was done by staff
and then a lot of
retail like
kia
used to do a
adoption event and i believe they also
paid for the adoptions
so and once some once a week a different
entity would sponsor an adoption
so um
anyway i don't also at the now at the
farmer's market
which is
used to be an opportunity for sheltered
dogs to get out
they only have foster animals at the
market which these animals are already
being socialized and they're already
in a home
and so the animals at the shelter are
not getting exposure at any of these
adoption events
very few
last week we had one at the
petsmart
and
some of them were shelter animals but a
lot of them again were
foster animals now it's okay to bring
fosters but we used to have
foster animals and shelter animals at
the market so i don't know why things
have changed also the volunteers that
used to volunteer with me at the market
they don't come anymore
there's nothing for them to do
so
i go down every saturday and i sit with
the cats
and i have a foster cat that i bring
down
so anyway i don't know why things have
changed maybe
clink can address that but
i think it's a big
it's a big change and i don't think it's
a good change
all right
thank you ms kaplan
mr bryce
frank bryce humane society southern
mexico this has been a very interesting
meeting and first of all i want to
appreciate
the uh interaction with the with the uh
group here uh it's different than what
we used to see you guys did a much
better job of interacting and
answering questions i've got three
little items here
the first one
pertains to what these two ladies just
said
if we're going to reduce this we need to
make some kind of a modification if we
can
where
maybe we could advertise that the
shelter is open
from one to four on saturday afternoon
for
general visits so you don't have all
this exposure that there
they may be worried about
i don't believe that
that really is a problem
that can't be fixed on a regular basis
i do think the public needs to get in
there not only to
hold the shelter accountable for what
they're doing the way it's run
but also to support it
to come back out so i went to the
shelter they had the nicest animals out
there i got this and go out and get your
animal
we need to
keep that constituency
the other one is that surrender animals
to the shelter
this does concern me even even greater
we get a lot of calls from people who
have an animal they took it to the
shelter
so we want to turn it in no you can't
turn it in call
hsn m call cast meow call this and they
put all of that responsibility on the
person and i don't i don't
doubt that that responsibility should be
shared that's true but they're already
there
the problem is
most of us in the field are also already
well
booked with animals
just myself i'm fostering 16 animals
that don't even go to the shelter to
start with
when they call me
we don't have any room either
i would like to see the
shelter set up some kind of a
little short
thing where they say
give us an animal
we'll call the people that are designed
to take it that may have the room they
take that responsibility because if
nobody takes it the shelter has to get
it anyway
and that's what they generally say
that they'll take it if nobody else
wants it well that makes us all look bad
even though we're doing the best we can
because we're full
maybe we could change that
and i do want to say thanks to the
shelter
for what i think is the tremendous job
they're doing on tnr
we've been taking cats in on a regular
basis the more cats we get spay neutered
the healthier they'll be in the long run
and we will have less kittens to
reproduce more cats
they're doing a really
a great job of getting them in it's a
little loose in a way
but it seems to be working
quite well and every time i take cats
out there i see lots of other cat folks
that are taking care of their cats
and if we can keep that up that's a
really good thing
thank
you you mr bryce
is there any other remaining public
input
okay we'll move on to chair and board
comments
are there any comments from the board
okay
all right well then uh can i get a
motion and a second to adjourn
so move second
all right moved by counselor flores
seconded by vice chair bates duvey so at
uh
12 23 p.m we'll call this meeting
adjourned
thank you
you