We had an amazing turn out for our first Oak Cliff Animal Initiative Town Hall meeting. On a beautiful sunny spring day in the middle of a Saturday afternoon, we had a room full of neighbors (about 50) from many different neighborhoods, our city councilman Scott Griggs joined us, and unexpectedly, we even had a news crew – crazy!
Before we get into the meeting summary, we want to give a big thank you the community of people that made the meeting possible. To Candace and Steve Bossay for helping organize and set up the meeting location. Thank you to the Winnetka Heights Neighborhood Association for sponsoring the rental cost of the meeting room. A big thanks to Russ Aikman for being our AV expert and for acting as our facilitator to make sure that we stayed ontime with our agenda and to make sure we kept within our goal to run a positive, constructive, conversation. Thanks to Dr May for attending the meeting and being our expert on hand for any vet related questions. Thanks to our pals at RepoCon for giving us a sweet deal on printing 2,000 spay and neuter flyers. Thank you to Scott Griggs for participating in a community conversation about the safety and quality of life issues facing District 1 residents. Thank you to District 1 Animal Commissioner Chris Watts for his voice as both a neighbor and an official working with Dallas Animal Services (DAS), Dallas Companion Animal Project (DCAP) and the Animal Commission. Thanks to the media for taking interest and covering our grass roots initiative to help solve the animals issues facing our neighborhood. Thanks to all the groups and individuals that work tirelessly every day in our neighborhood to help animals. Thanks to all the neighbors and community stake holders that took time out of their weekend to come together to solve neighborhood animal issues. Lastly, thanks to Tasha for motivating me every day to keep at this collaboration until we reach our goal to address and solve the animal issues for our amazing, eclectic, diverse, beloved Oak Cliff neighborhoods. It truly takes a village….
Onto the meeting summary, there were several goals of the meeting:
- To address the neighborhoods’ concerns and questions through an informational conversation about animal laws and resources
- Identify issues and questions for the community to put forward to City leadership
- Connect passionate animal advocates with each other
- To influence and shape the animal culture in our city through neighbors, neighborhood stakeholders, and tax payers advocating for appropriate budgets for Dallas Animal Services (DAS), improved best practices at DAS, and by demanding our City leaders address the safety and quality of life issues in our neighborhood.
The meeting was structured using the top seven (7) most talked about neighborhood animal issues. We discussed the issues through the lenses of: prevention, intervention, and enforcement. In order to change the animal culture in our city, we advocate for Animal Services to follow the Police Department model where 80% of time is dedicated to prevention and intervention and the last 20% of time is dedicated to enforcement. This model is a more proactive future looking scenario. In this ideal scenario, DAS and the community can most effectively solve the animal issues together. In this model, owners and the community are educated and motivated to comply with the law. Our seven (7) topics were:
- Spay and neuter laws and resources
- Loose, dangerous, feral and hard to catch dogs
- Ordinances and baseline ownership
- Return to owner
- Abuse, neglect, cruelty and fighting
- Puppy mills, parking lot puppies, backyard breeders
- Neighborhood cats
From this discussion, action items for the community were determined and questions for our City leadership were collected. Below is a summary of the action items and questions.
ACTIONS FOR THE NEIGHBORHOODS:
ADVOCATE:
- Please attend budget Town Hall Meetings and give animal issues a voice. The upcoming town hall budget meetings will influence the final DAS budget.
- Important Town Hall Budget Meetings: Multiple Town Hall Budget Meetings are currently being planned between August 12th-29th. Specific dates and times are set by your council person.
- Traditionally, Scott Griggs set the start time between 6:00 and 6:30 pm. As soon as we hear specific dates we will share, please plan on attending at least one if not all.
- Please advocate for the City to restore the DAS budget to pre 2008 levels.
- Please advocate for a DAS budget to be in line with similarly sized cities. Dallas is the 9th largest city in the US. North Texas is one of the fastest growing areas in the country. Dallas’ Animal Services budget is currently not growing at a pace that keeps up with the needs and basic safety expectations of the citizens.
- Please advocate for DAS field services to adopt modern best practices for their field services training and policies.
- Please advocate additional budget specifically allocated for an initiative to improvement best practices and training. Budget will be needed to write new policy and procedures and to roll out the new policy and procedures.
- Advocate for the creation of a staff position for an “Animal Services Neighborhood Liaison”
- Advocate for the City of Dallas and Dallas Animal Services to understand the value of a collaborative volunteer workforce. Following the Police Department model where 80% of time is dedicated to intervention and prevention and the last 20% of time is dedicated to enforcement requires budget for community level involvement, education, and organization.
- Advocate for DAS and DCAP to move from a culture where lowering euthanasia rates is the top measure of success to a more balanced approach where safety and quality of life and working towards a city wide spay and neuter culture are measured indicators of success. Lower euthanasia rates are a result of that long term plan, but not the top priority.
- Advocate for your Neighborhood Association to include animal issues in quality of life and safety discussions
- Advocate for your Crime Watch Committees to include animal issues in quality of life and safety discussion.
- Advocate for your National Night Out to include animal safety information and spay, neuter, and low cost vaccination resource information
- Advocate at a State level for abuse and neglect laws that do not require an animal to continue to suffer in order to make a case for prosecution.
- Urge your community to get involved at any level – every skillset and personality is needed to solve this problem.
ORGANIZE & MOBILIZE
- Report, report, report via 311 and the 311 app to create statistics to support a need for additional Animal Services resources in our neighborhoods.
- Talk to your Crime Watch and Neighborhood Associations about having a guest speaker to talk about how neighborhoods can work with the City to help solve animal issues
- Volunteer
- Work with Chris Watts and Gypsy Dog Ops to help organize your neighborhood or block
- Help distribute: Spay and Neuter Flyers & Animal Laws Flyers
- Help a neighborhood animal by fostering
- Be a resource that can make phone calls and contact rescue groups when someone finds a dog and can not foster the dog.
- Using existing collateral and programs, speak at: schools, churches, and community events about how to safely interact with dogs, how to be a responsible pet owner, and how to promote a spay and neuter culture
- Share animal resources, educational information, and opportunities to advocate through social media – on FB, Nextdoor etc.
- Involve community resources – schools, churches, recreation centers, boy scouts, girl scouts etc.
- Work with Feral Friends to take care of neighborhood kitties.
QUESTIONS FOR CITY LEADERSHIP:
QUESTIONS FOR DALLAS ANIMAL SERVICES
Rapid Response
- Please explain and set an expectation for how the Rapid Response number and system works.
- Please address known issues:
- Phone number routed back to 311
- No one answered the number
- 311 referred callers to rapid response – rapid response didn’t answer and or referred callers to 311 – This was during the normal 9am – 5pm rapid response hours
Rescue Adoption Process
- Please help explain how individuals that find loose dogs can hold a dog, rather than turn it into the shelter, during the 72 hours hold period. Please explain the process that allows for the dog or cat to be properly registered with the shelter encase its owners are looking for it.
- Please explain how rescue individuals and well as rescue groups can use the DAS programs (spay, neuter, vaccinations, microchips etc) to help rescue animals stay out of the shelter (not owned animals) and go straight into a foster situation (with or without a rescue groups assistance). For example:
- If you find a dog and want to put it through the system and rescue it as a rescue or as an individual – individual will adopt, foster, and then find the forever home, can you keep the dog at home during the waiting period?
- Is there a discounted fee for services?
- Etc. etc.
- If you find a dog and want to put it through the system and rescue it as a rescue or as an individual – individual will adopt, foster, and then find the forever home, can you keep the dog at home during the waiting period?
How and when to use the DAS lost animal email /Tony
- Please explain how and when to use the lost dog email address at DAS
- Please add the email address to the DAS website under Pet Services / Lost Pets (or create somewhere intuitive)
- Please provide the email address
Loose Dogs
- What should the public expect when DAS is called more than once and more than one report is made on a repeat offender loose owned dog?
- What is the process for getting repeat offenders in compliance? (for loose dogs, spay & neuter etc)
- Do you need any additional tools to make the law have teeth?
- Is a change in law needed to help DAS’ ability to get offenders into compliance?
Neighborhood Liaison
- Based on the current identified issues with: the 311 system, general communication gaps, the difficulty identifying areas with high concentrations of loose dogs, challenges track community trends, and the lack of a system to cascade information between the city and the neighborhood, the neighborhood would like to request the creation of a staff position for a neighborhood liaison. This position would be similar to the Police Department NPO (Neighborhood Police Officer).
- Please set our expectation for a timeline for DAS to consider this proposed position and what DAS would need to support this idea.
QUESTIONS FOR DCAP
- Please provide information on Animal Alert and Pet Watch groups for neighborhoods
QUESTIONS FOR THE CITY ATTORNEY’S OFFICE
- Please explain why DAS is not yet able to utilize the new law allowing ACOs to write tickets without seeing the offense. Our community feels this will be a very important tool to get the city’s loose dog issue under control and to get owners into compliance with the law.
- Please set the expectation for when this tool might be rolled out to ACOs.
QUESTIONS WE CAN ANSWER TODAY
- Please provide a step by step process for what to do when a dog is found.
- Click here for a link to step by step process for what to do when you find a dog
SUMMARY
The animal issues that plague our neighborhood would be considered extraordinary circumstances in most other Dallas neighborhoods, but we have come to know these conditions as ordinary. These extreme issues are part of our daily lives and they are affecting our safety and quality of life as well as the quality of life of the dogs and cats.
This meeting was a powerful first step towards bring together our concerns, ideas, volunteers, and city resources to make our neighborhood the best it can be. This neighborhood is known for its thought leadership; we like to think out of the box and take care of our people and animals. Let’s make sure our City’s leadership understands our issues and is motivated to work with us to solve this for all Oak Cliff. Please use your voice and advocate for both animal issues and an improved safety and quality of life for all of us.
WHAT’S NEXT?
If you agree with the premise of this post, share it with likeminded neighbors – there is strength in numbers. Next, forward this link your City Councilman, the City Manager, the Head of Code Compliance, the Mayor, the Mayor’s chief of staff, and the Mayor’s liaison on animal issues and let them know that you agree and support this initiative. Include your name and address. Please cc Chris Watts and Gypsy Dog Ops to let us know too.
Please email:
District 1 Councilman: Griggs Scott (scott.griggs@dallascityhall.com)
City Manager AC Gonzalez: – (I haven’t been able to dig up his email – send it to me if you know it)
Head of Code Compliance Jimmy Martin (this person is over the DAS budget since DAS is under Code Compliance): (jimmy.martin@dallascityhall.com)
The Mayor’s Liaison on Animal Issues: Mary Spencer (mary@petopia4paws.com)
The Mayor’s Chief of Staff: Adam McGough (adam.mcGough@dallascityhall.com)
Animal Services Division Manager Jody Jones(jody.jones@dallascityhall.com) Jody Jones
Please cc:
District 1 Animal Commissioner: Chris Watts (paperfish@sbcglobal.net)
Gypsy Dog Ops (doglady@gypsydogops.com)
Here is a list you can copy and paste into an email (you may have to change the “;” to “,” depending on your browser: scott.griggs@dallascityhall.com; jimmy.martin@dallascityhall.com; mary@petopia4paws.com; adam.mcGough@dallascityhall.com; jody.jones@dallascityhall.com; paperfish@sbcglobal.net; doglady@gypsydogops.com
It only takes 5-10 minutes to send an email to let the City know that these issues are of serious concerns for taxpayers. The impact of those 10 minutes will change neighborhoods and a city forever. Please, use your voice.
We will be sending out an update on how to volunteer to help distribute the “Free Spay And Neuter 75208” flyers in the next week or so. Please continue to follow our efforts through the Gypsy Dog Ops facebook page and through our website. Thank YOU for caring.
