SAN ANGELO, Texas — A San Angelo Animal Shelter Advisory Committee meeting was canceled Thursday after two shelter volunteers failed to attend and quorum was not reached.
The meeting, which was to include community members, representatives from City government, staff from the shelter and animal rescue as well as a veterinarian, was to feature an agenda including monthly and annual performance, community-supported sheltering and safety issues including a growing stray dog population across the city.
“Two individuals were unable to report to the meeting today,” Assistant Director of Neighborhood and Family Services Morgan Chegwidden said. “Usually if somebody does have a conflict and communicates it ahead of time, then we want to get that out to the public quickly so we’re not wasting anybody’s time. That certainly wasn’t the intention today… It’s just today is just one of those things, where there was a lot of demands on people’s time and we couldn’t even call the meeting to order to be able to do the business of the day.”
Public outcry regarding the stray dog population in San Angelo has been growing on social media in recent months, including a Facebook group dedicated to discussion of animal services issues and reporting stray sightings and dog packs.
“We certainly hear the outcries about concerns for public safety,” Chegwidden said. “We have four Animal Services officers that are staffed around the clock to respond to calls and what we’re finding is it’s simply not enough. That with the increased demand for calls, with the current staffing that we’ve had for better than a decade, it’s simply not enough to provide the services that San Angeloans need.”
Chegwidden said requests for additional officers have been denied because of lack of funding from the City.
“We did communicate a request to City Council during budget preparation for two additional officers. That could not be considered at this time. There was no funding available for it. But we do still think that that’s the solution… As our city has grown, we’ve not funded increases to staffing to really support field operations in that way.”
Several attendees of the event expressed a strong desire to reschedule as soon as possible.
“It’s something that the team will certainly consider and try to get on the schedule pretty quickly,” Chegwidden said.
