Item 12: The long-awaited conclusion to the Pick-a-Pet Problem!
This is over a year in the making. It first came up last February, and then again in November, and then the second time in November, when it got kicked back to the Animal Services Committee.
Here’s what the animal experts want:
- Pet stores shouldn’t get pets from puppy mills, only from shelters or non-profits. Breeders can sell directly to individuals.
- Mandatory microchipping for all animals over 4 months
- Dogs would get sterilized the 2nd time they’re picked by the shelter.
- Trap-Neuter-Release for cats, or TNR. If a cat gets picked up, you check for a microchip or other traceable ID. If there’s no id, you spay or neuter the cat and return it to wherever they were picked up. If they have ID, they’re held for three days so that the owner can re-claim them.
The idea with that last one is that cats are really unhappy in animal shelters, and it’s terrible for their health, and only 2% of cats are reclaimed. Usually, if you return the cat to wherever you picked it up, it’ll find its way home.
In the past meetings, all of these points were contentious. Gleason in particular was uncomfortable with every bullet item above, although he wasn’t alone. The puppy mills were debated at length last February, and the microchipping/TNR/sterilization were debated this past November. The idea is that hopefully during the Animal Services Committee meetings Jane Hughson, Alyssa Garza and Mark Gleason all reached consensus on those issues, and now the full council can vote.
So here we are!
Mark starts off: I now can support this bill! Here’s the changes that make me okay with it:
- We’ll ban sourcing selling puppies from puppy mills, but we’ve got this Canine Care Certification from Perdue University that will help connect ethical breeders to pet stores.
- We’ve got a 5 day hold for cats now, even if they don’t have traceable ID, to give owners a chance to reclaim their pet
- Your dog won’t get sterilized until the 3rd pick up by the animal shelter
- Pet stores will have a year to get into compliance before the ordinance goes into effect.
Jane Hughson says firmly, “The Canine Care Certification thing isn’t actually in the ordinance.”
Mark: “I know, but we can look into it in the future.”
Alyssa says, “I thought at the last committee meeting, we walked back the 5 day holds for cats?”
Jane agrees. She thought the TNR superceded it. Plus, the logistics of spaying and neutering mean that cats end up held for 2-3 days anyway, before being returned to their neighborhoods.
The animal guy says community cats will be TNR’d, and household cats will be held for five days.
Mark Gleason asks, “How can you tell the difference?”
The animal guy admits it’s murky sometimes, but you do your best. Thankfully, they don’t go down the path of going in circles on the murkiness of distinguishing house cats from community cats again, like they did in November.
Mark feels very strongly that any cat that isn’t a known community cat should be held for five days. He fundamentally doesn’t like the part where a housecat gets returned to its neighborhood.
Alyssa and Jane both support shortening the five days, per the experts’ advice, but they also agree not to pick this battle. In other words, let’s pass something, and see how much this helps. If in six months, we need to take further action to reduce the number of cats in shelters, let’s do it then.
I think this is good governance. Let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the good. Don’t hold up a lot of important changes over this. Implement what we can, and then the experts can build a case for reducing the cat stray-holds if the shelters are still overburdened.
Matthew Mendoza brings up sterilizing dogs on the second impoundment instead of the third. Last year, Mark Gleason had changed it to three.
They discuss some of the exemptions – old dogs, specialty dogs – and they discuss how the shelter is understanding about times of crisis or fireworks, and how the shelter will pay for fence materials to repair your fence, and that kind of thing.
The vote: should the shelter spay/neuter occur the second time your dog is picked up?
Yes: Everyone but Mark Gleason
No: Mark Gleason
And then finally! We have a vote on the entire animal ordinance. I’m pretty sure this is what they end up voting on:
- No pets from puppy mills, only from shelters or non-profits. Breeders can sell directly to individuals.
- Mandatory microchipping for all animals over 4 months
- Dogs get sterilized the 2nd time they’re picked by the shelter.
- TNR for community cats. 5 day stray-hold for any cat that isn’t clearly a community cat.
- One year delay for pet stores to get into compliance, before the ordinance goes into effect.
And here’s how it goes:
The vote on the whole animal bill:
Yes: It’s unanimous.
Hooray! No more puppies from puppy mill animals in San Marcos (starting in 2024)! Other good changes to reduce overcrowding in shelters!
…
Fundamentally, this is a nerve-wracking topic. I love my pets with all my heart. No matter what is implemented, the animal shelter staff is going to have to use their best judgment, and it’s scary that you just have to trust that they have the best interests of animals at heart.
There’s an analogy to be made with policing. No matter what is implemented, police officers are going to be placed in situations where they have to make judgment calls. The breakdown around police is that there is widespread disagreement on whether police officers keep the best interests of all community members at heart, or if they show bias against some. They have not earned the trust of the entire community.
The two situations are quite different, but the uneasiness around trusting someone’s judgment in unsupervised situations is parallel.
…
Item 16: The city is still filling a few last vacancies on various boards and commissions.
I want to note one comment from Alyssa. First, you need some background: it happens sometimes that a vacancy is for a partial term. So when these appointments are being made, Council sometimes has to decide who gets appointed to a full term and who gets appointed to a partial term.
This happened on Tuesday, and Alyssa asked if this would be fully communicated to the person that got the shorter term. She was told it would be.
Alyssa then said something like, “Because I do not want another incident like the one that happened recently with Zach Sambrano on P&Z.”
So using my context clues, here’s what it sounds like happened: back in 2021, Zach Sambrano was appointed to P&Z, but he wasn’t told that he’d been given a partial term. So he planned on re-applying for another term in 2024.
But then, surprise! He discovers that he’s no longer on P&Z and they’ve appointed a new commissioner to his spot!
The problem is that this happens to Zach Sambrano and not William Agnew. (Nothing against William Agnew; I just wanted an example of someone who promotes the status quo.) This may have been truly accidental. But no one double-checked with Zach when he failed to submit an application, they way they would have done with someone over 60 who is presumed to maybe need an extra hand with technology.
This is how the status quo perpetuates itself – lots of soft decisions that all seem to tip in favor of the status quo. Individually, every instance has plausible deniability. No one can say with certainty that Zach wasn’t reminded to re-apply because of his outgroup status. But there is a pattern of behavior that all seems to tip towards preserving the status quo. The effect is that outsiders are shut out, and insiders reap extra benefits.
The San Marxist 