08/20/2023
On Thursday I met with LV Councilwomen Olivia Diaz, Francis Allen-Palenske and a representative from Nancy Brune’s office. My objective was to discuss the City building a new shelter and TAF financial crisis. I let them know that regardless what transpires with TAF, the city needs another shelter.
Councilwoman Diaz agreed that the City has not been keeping up with animal services as the city has grown and both Allen-Palenske and her agreed that they see a future where there are more regional shelters around the Valley. I also suggested that maybe a city shelter downtown where animals are held for the three day hold and then the city operate a separate adoption center in Summerlin where animals could be transferred after the hold was up. This is because more strays are found downtown, yet adopters are more likely to come from the suburbs. They both thought that made sense.
I educated them about our campaign to grow the movement demanding the city build a new shelter. I showed them our petition flyer and the number of signatures we had collected, letting Councilwoman Diaz know that 110 of the people who have signed lived directly in her ward. I let them know we were running Facebook ads directed at city voters and that over 165 of you have volunteered to help out with the campaign. I told them we would be strategic, we would go door to door, make phones calls, place signs in yards and grow the movement so large they would not be able to ignore it.
In the end though, none of them were ready to commit to building a new shelter yet, they said they wanted to wait until the City’s audit of TAF was completed. I wasn’t expecting them to be ready to jump on board yet, it’s a process, but at least they are listening, thinking of other options and know how serious we are. They thought the audit would be done by the first week of September and I asked to be alerted when it was completed.
We then moved on to discussing TAF’s money issues. They concurred what we had seen on the news, that TAF could be in a situation where they can’t keep their doors open in the next few months. They also shared that the way the City contract was written with TAF, if the City no longer used the services of TAF, they would have to pay TAF a lot of money to continue to use the shelter. They were not sure exactly how much money that would be. Honestly, the city is not in a position to take over the shelter in the next month, they don’t have the staff, so the City having to pay off TAF is a moot point for now, but could become important in the future.
As the municipalities do not have the ability to run their own shelters now, it appears that they may have to give TAF additional funds to keep them open in the short term. I let the councilwomen know that if that is the case, the City should require concessions from TAF in exchange for more money and anyone that votes to give them more funds without concessions would be viewed negatively by the animal community. Here is a list of some of the concessions I recommended:
1. There should be no appointment required to turn in a stray.
2. Owner surrender appointments should be no more than one week.
3. A City employee should be placed in the position of acting CFO or CEO. If TAF wants more money the City needs to know it will be spent properly.
4. A representative from the City should be placed on their board.
5. A representative from one of their Paw Partners should be placed on their board.
6. Board meetings should be made public.
7. The rescue group A Home 4 Spot should be allowed to pull animals from the shelter again.
8. City employees should be allowed to perform unannounced inspections in any part of the facility.
If anyone has any other suggestions please forward them to me and I will get them to the council.
I apologize for the length of the post, but we have always believed in transparency and want to share with everyone the details of our efforts.
Bryce
No Kill Las Vegas, President
