We hope you will join us on September 28, 2010, 8:30am to 5:30pm at the Westin Austin at the Domain for a No Kill Workshop featuring inspirational and informational talks by the nation’s preeminent no kill experts:

1. Bonney Brown, Executive Director of the Nevada Humane Society
   Adoptions/Marketing
2. Susanne Kogut, Executive Director of the Charlottesville SPCA
   Expanding your foster program
3. Mike Fry, Executive Director of Animal Ark of Minnesota
   TNR and community cats
4. Nathan Winograd, Executive Director of the No Kill Advocacy Center
   Inspirational no-kill stories
5. Dr. Ellen Jefferson, Executive Director of Austin Pets Alive!
   Nuts & Bolts of Adoptions: Off-site, on-line & more
6. Michael Mountain, Co-Founder and Past President of Best Friends Animal Society
   Fundraising for animal welfare
7. Dr. Linda Wolf, Veterinarian and Expert Behaviorist
   Temperament testing for dogs
8. Mitch Schneider, Director of the Washoe County Animal Services
   Increasing returns to owners

The 150 early bird tickets sold out in 5 days. Another 140 spots will be available at the full price of $35.

Discounted room rental rate at the Westin Austin at the Domain is $129 per night.

Lunch will be provided and you have the choice of a vegetarian or vegan lunch.

Register Here

(Tickets are non-refundable and non-transferable.)

Email conference@nokillaustin.org for questions about the event.

This workshop is hosted by the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, the James J. Wolf Family Foundation for Animals, the Animal Ark of Minnesota, Animal Wise Radio, FixAustin.org, and the No Kill Advocacy Center.

Supporters include the Alamo Area Partners for Animal Welfare, Austin Pets Alive!, the Animal Defense League, the Austin No Kill Coalition, the Central Texas Animal Alliance, Love-a-Bull, No Kill Houston, the San Antonio Area Foundation, Town Lake Animal Center, and the Williamson County Regional Animal Shelter.

The City of Austin has hired an executive recruiter to help them hire the new director at TLAC. The recruiter is going to meet with the public (information below) this Thursday afternoon to hear what the public wants in a new director before coming up with a “profile” (job description).

This is an important step in the hiring of a new shelter director as the recruiter will likely not be familiar with the no kill movement or the other directors who have made no kill communities.

Once they have a “profile” written, the City will recruit nationally for a director. After they’ve narrowed the list of potential candidates down to just a few, they will bring all of the candidates to Austin for public meetings, where the public will get a chance to ask questions and provide feedback. They expect to have someone in that position in early Fall.

Here are the details from the City:

On behalf of Assistant City Manager, Bert Lumbreras, we invite you to a special public Stakeholder meeting hosted by the City of Austin Human Resources Department, to meet with Heidi Voorhees, the Voorhees Associate, LLC, Consultant contracted by the City of Austin. We are in the process of recruiting for the Chief Animal Services Officer position and Ms. Voorhees will lead this recruitment.

As part of the recruitment process, we will develop a recruitment profile to be used in a national search to attract candidates to apply for the position. Your input is important to us.

When: Thursday, July 15, 2010
3:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Where: Town Lake Animal Shelter
Austin/Travis County HHSD
1156 W. Cesar Chavez
Austin, TX 78703

You may RSVP by calling (512) 974-3310, or you may email yolanda.valdez@ci.austin.tx.us. If you will be unable to attend this Stakeholder Meeting, you may contact Heidi Voorhees to give her your input at 847-580-4246, or email her at: HVoorhees@voorheesassociates.com no later than July19, 2010.

We’re so excited to announce that a no kill conference will be held in Austin on September 28th (registration info to come in about a week):

Please join us for an inspiring daylong course on how to achieve a no-kill community. Leading experts in shelter management and shelter medicine will describe how to shift from a traditional shelter to an adoption guarantee shelter, keep the dogs and cats in the shelter medically and behaviorally healthy and happy, and get them adopted quickly through marketing and promotion.

Yesterday, the City hosted an Austin’s Citizen Input Meeting at the City Convention Center regarding the upcoming city budget.  We are pleased to report that no animal services budget cuts are on the table at this time. Additionally, they stated that the cost of the Implementation Plan has been included in next year’s budget. If you remember back to last year, initial budget cuts included a $200,000 decrease in spay and neuter funding.

The City has not announced any additional Citizen Input Meetings regarding the budget. However, you can complete an online survey for the city. This exercise includes voting on proposed budget cuts and other unmet initiatives. Click on Prioritize Unmet Service Demands and Service Reductions within the “Give Us Your Feedback” section.

Here is the link to the City website: http://www.cityofaustin.org/citymgr/budget_input.htm

Additionally, there is a place on the right side of the Prioritize Unmet Service Demands and Service Reduction web page to “contact the City”. Please click on this link and send an email to the city and tell them to fully fund all animal services budgets and to fully fund the Implementation Plan To Improve Live Outcomes and Reduce Intake at Townlake Animal Center.

While no cuts are planned at this time, we know that the budget building process is fluid. We should not take anything for granted.

Please contact others in the animal welfare community and ask them to complete the online survey including sending an email to the city via this feedback process.

At the Animal Advisory Committee meeting last night, two representatives from the City’s HR department were there to explain the process for hiring a new shelter director.

Right now, they are hiring an executive recruiter.  Once the recruiter is hired, they will have a public forum to get community input on the kind of shelter director we want.  They will then write a “profile” for the position and will start recruiting nationally.

The recruiter and the City will conduct interviews, check references, etc. and narrow the candidate list down to a few candidates.

They will then host another public forum with the candidates and give the public a chance to ask questions and give input.

After that, they will make an offer to one of the candidates.  They hope to have the director position filled in early fall.

We will let you know when we get more information.

The city is creating the following task forces, as part of the no kill plan. They have set up planning kick-off meetings for Austinites to come out and help develop more detailed plans:

Public Awareness Task Force Meeting April 15, 2010 @ 6:00 pm
Pit-Bull Task Force Meeting April 28, 2010 @ 6:00 pm
Rescue Group Task Force Meeting April 29, 2010 @ 6:00 pm

All meetings will be held at the Learning Research Center, 2800 Spirit of Texas, Auditorium

View Larger Map

The City is putting together a long-range comprehensive plan for Austin’s future and wants to hear from you. They have an online survey with which they are taking citizen input until TODAY, March 31st, 2010:

http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/compplan/survey.htm

We want to suggest any and all ideas that well help reinforce Austin’s reputation of being the most pet friendly city in the US and to promote anything and everything that helps us reach No Kill status. Remember this effort is to guide Austin for the next 25 years in creating policies and planning to make Austin an even better place to live. This is our opportunity for citizens to provide valuable input about animal welfare issues.

Here are some ideas, but you very well could have other suggestions for the city. The important thing is to tell the city we need to keep working toward No Kill and building upon Austin’s reputation as the most pet friendly city.

1. Enhance the adoption center at Town Lake including more parking for the TLAC area. (following the move the new shelter)

2. Create an adoption facility in NW Austin (since the new animal service center will be located in SE Austin—long drive from NW Austin)

3. Create more dog parks throughout the city

4. Designate small city parks for the Community Cat program

5. Create recreational opportunities for pets and owners like agility runs for dogs

6. Use current city property for adoption sites and pet programs

7. Create a world class Cat Park that would attract Austin residents and visitors from around the country. This would be a “destination” that could increase tourism, provide safe haven for our community cats, and promote outreach and education about cats—like no other facility in the country

We did it.  Council voted 7-0 today for the no kill plan.  Huge thanks are due to Mayor Pro Tem Mike Martinez and Council Member Laura Morrison for their leadership to get us to this point.  And Council members who are all supportive of making Austin no kill are also to be commended.

You’ve likely already seen news coverage of today’s vote, but just in case, here are some links:

• KXAN
• KVUE
• Statesman

If you’d like to see the meeting (it was so great!), you can watch it online:
http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/channel6/

You have to click the tab “City Council”
Then click on the “Video” link (far right) for the City Council meeting on March 11th.

You’ll see the meeting broken out into the different items on the right. The no kill plan was item 21. Click on that item to just see that part.

And some more great news: APA’s rescue coordinators went to TLAC tonight to evaluate the pets on tonight’s euth list.  But tonight, there was no euth list.

Of course, we can’t become a no-kill community overnight (it’s not like TLAC was just choosing to kill pets all of these years).  The no kill plan will build new programs and enhance existing programs that will get us to no kill in 18-24 months and it’s going to take a lot of hard work.

But we love the symbol that TLAC management has shown our community after the historic vote today – that good changes are coming.  We are so appreciative of TLAC’s management and City Staff for all of the hard work they’ve put into the no kill plan with the AAC.  Let’s support them now – Please tell your friends that there are some great pets at TLAC who are waiting to be adopted!

Thank you so much for all of the letters, joining the Coalition, and coming out to the meetings. The community played such an important part of this plan coming to fruition. YOU are what made this happen.

Dear No Kill Coalition,
We have finally come to zero hour in our quest to make Austin a No Kill City. On Thursday, March 11th, at 10am at City Hall, City Council will vote to implement a Plan for many improvements to our City’s Animal Services and the community.

This plan will allow us to save all of the healthy and treatable animals that are currently dying at Town Lake Animal Center.

We need you to:

1. Join the No Kill Coalition
2. Send a letter to City Council
3. Attend the meeting on March 11th (And even better – stand up and speak during Citizen’s Communication and tell the Council Members and Mayor that you believe Austin should be No Kill as fast as possible.)

In your letter, or if you speak at the meeting on Thursday, we hope you will:

• Tell them that the lives of pets in Austin are not disposable and you support their decision to make Austin No Kill.
• Encourage them to embrace Austin as a national leader in saving lives.
• Remind them that nonprofits like Austin Pets Alive! are here with plans to help.

To save the rest of the lives, we need YOU to join us on Thursday, in person or via email prior to the meeting, to stand up and tell City Council that you are ready for Austin to finally stop killing pets NOW.

This is our one opportunity to stop the cycle and make Austin’s shelter safe for animals once and for all. The thousands of nameless Austin animals thank you for supporting No Kill.

Thank you to KXAN for the story on the vote.

Great news!  Today, the Health and Human Services subcommittee (which consists of Mayor Pro Tem Mike Martinez, and Council members Laura Morrison and Randi Shade) voted unanimously to move forward with the Animal Advisory Commission’s (AAC) recommendations.

City Staff presented their plan to Council today, which did not contain 3 items from the AAC plan:

1. Outsourcing of the adoptions program to a nonprofit like Austin Pets Alive!
2. Moratorium on killing pets when cages are empty
3. Maintaining full use of the existing TLAC facility when Animal Services moves to their new location in East Austin, at least until we have reached and maintained no kill status

The Council subcommittee voted to add those 3 items back into City Staff’s plan.

There will be another meeting, this Thursday, March 4th at 3pm, to finish putting together the plan which will then go to the full Council for a vote later this month.

The meeting will take place at One Texas Center, 505 Barton Springs Road, 3rd Floor Conference Room 325.

Thank you for all of your help!  We still need people to join the Coalition and let the whole Council and Mayor Lee Leffingwell know that the community supports no kill.