Animal advocates have long been frustrated by the city’s inability to spend money on improving shelters, while the city spends tens of millions of dollars on real estate purchases and partnerships in recreational facilities. (Photo from City of Henderson)
The City of Henderson Animal Shelter is ill-equipped for its mission. It causes burnout and fatigue among an understaffed workforce and misuses public money by killing healthy feral cats, a 260-page analysis commissioned by the city shows.
The most serious deficiency identified in the reportdrawn up by Citygate, a California local government consultancy, is the “extreme lack of kennel caregivers.”
“It is not possible for a shelter as large as the City of Henderson to function properly with only two Kennel Attendants working each day, as is currently the case,” the report said. “The extreme lack of staff in the kennel and other areas in turn contributes to problems… including with disease control, a lack of customer service in adoption areas and the lack of availability of the current manager to perform higher level duties because she is busy with other, lower tasks.”
The current one reported in January the shelter is understaffed and underfunded.
Councilwoman Carrie Cox says former Assistant City Manager Jim McIntyre, who left earlier this year, has found funding to address the report’s priorities.
“It was Danielle Harney’s (shelter director) choice as to what to spend that money on and what the greatest needs were,” Cox said during an interview.
The city has addressed the staff shortage by adding an animal control officer to help clean the kennels, which may not be the best use of an animal control officer’s time and talents, Cox says.
“I would prefer if they weren’t cleaning the cages,” Cox said. “But that is 100% up to Director Harney.”
Harney did not respond to requests for comment.
Councilwoman Monica Larson, who will replace Councilman Dan Shaw, called the report’s findings “extremely concerning. The animal shelter staff does its utmost with the resources made available.”
Larson said she is hopeful the city will reallocate funding to meet the shelter’s needs. She could not immediately identify a funding source for redistribution.
Measure
The Citygate analysis measures Henderson’s policies against guidelines from organizations such as the Association of Shelter Veterinarians and the National Animal Care and Control Association.
Henderson’s reliance on volunteers to deliver standard services leaves a gap in other areas, the report says, noting that “the number of volunteers varies widely from day to day, and there were times during Citygate’s observations when there were no volunteers in were an adoption area while the shelter was open to the public and there was only one volunteer to help clean the cat cage in the morning which had a major impact on operations.”
The report identifies a number of areas that require improvement to increase efficiency, meet best practice standards or improve operations.
“If HACC is to address many of the issues raised, additional staff will be needed – either to implement a recommendation, or to provide the administrator with the capacity needed to implement a recommendation directly,” said the report.
The outdated facility does not have the “necessary animal housing, has too small dog houses, does not have enough double-sided cat houses, does not have enough storage space, does not have multipurpose space, does not have enough office space, and was designed without an appropriate workflow.”
Animal advocates have long been frustrated by the city’s inability to spend money on improving shelters, while the city spends tens of millions of dollars on real estate purchases and partnerships in recreational facilities.
The shelter’s front desk staff “performs time-consuming administrative tasks that became redundant” when the city installed software designed to perform those tasks, the report says, while existing policies lack the details to ensure they are in place be implemented correctly.
Cox says she was initially against spending city money on a report, but says hearing the findings from independent experts gives credibility to making changes that residents and volunteers have long called for.
From no kill to low kill
For years, the Henderson Shelter has portrayed itself as a no-kill shelter, meaning it has ultimately released 90% or more of the animals in its care. Today, the shelter’s website states it is a low-kill facility, meaning it no longer meets the no-kill standard.
The report suggests that Henderson’s formula for calculating positive outcomes (the number of live releases) is artificially inflated by the shelter’s failure to count animals that die or go missing while in confiscation.
Henderson reports that 10% of animals in her care were euthanized in 2022, the last year of data the city provided for the analysis, but that the 2.5% that died while in the shelter’s care is not included.
Citygate’s analysis shows that the shelter’s reporting on “animal statistics could be improved to align with best practices and increase the accuracy of the number of live releases reported.”
The consultant notes that a large portion of the deaths at the shelter in general, and not at the Henderson shelter specifically, may be the result of a failure to properly disinfect and isolate animals with fatal, contagious diseases.
TNR showdown
Henderson is the only community in Southern Nevada that has that prohibits the capture, neutering, vaccination and release (TNR) of feral cats in volunteer cared colonies.
The city council will consider approval on Tuesday long awaited a one-year pilot program that will allow for TNVR, as well as colony maintenance, which is currently prohibited. The program would be implemented with the help of the Community Cat Coalition of Clark County, which is credited by Best Friends Animal Society with reducing the cat population in the city of Las Vegas by 30% within five years of establishing a community cat program. to the Henderson agenda.
“Based on national averages, Henderson has approximately 30,000 domestic cats and potentially an even greater number of community cats,” says the information accompanying the city’s agenda item. “Henderson residents who find community cats generally cannot find resources. Unless they choose to have the cat confined and possibly euthanized, it will be left alone to continue breeding.”
“Cats entering traditional animal shelters have only three possible outcomes: being adopted, reunited with an owner, or killed,” the Citygate report says, adding that the national euthanasia rate for cats is as high as 70%. “Without a TNVR program, unsocialized feral cats that cannot adapt to life in a human home and have no traditional ‘owners’ to claim them are almost always euthanized.”
Harney, the shelter’s director, has long been a fierce opponent of TNR.
Henderson’s current policy of admitting and euthanizing feral cats is not in line with best practice across the country, the Citygate report found.
The National Animal Care and Control Association (NACA) says euthanizing healthy feral cats “does not meet the generally accepted objectives of community animal management and conservation programs and as such is and should be avoided a misuse of time and public resources.”
The resolution does not say what would happen to colony cats if the pilot program did not become permanent after a year.
The city did not respond to the Current’s requests for comment on the report.
Henderson considers itself a “first class” community. But volunteers say the outdated animal shelter is nothing to crow about.
“Our shelter is understaffed, in complete disrepair and poses a safety risk not only to our employees but also to our animals,” said former volunteer Scott McIntyre. told The April 2023 council addition of volunteers created the equivalent of 10 full-time staff members over the past year — a savings to the city of $675,000, he said.
“If you truly want to be America’s premier community, you need to focus on the things people care about, including making Henderson a safer city for animals, whether they’re in the shelter or otherwise,” volunteer Laura Guimond said to the council in 2023. , citing “tremendous amounts of money have been spent on things that don’t really make a big difference,” such as $42 million (half of the funding) for the Dollar Loan Center Arena, a minor league sports facility with limited access to the public, and $32 million for land at the site of the former Fiesta Casino for another indoor sports facility.
“Imagine what that money, or even a fraction of it, could have done to improve the lives of homeless animals in Henderson,” Guimond told the council.
The city spends about $2 million a year on the shelter, including $1 million for full-time employees, an amount that has remained unchanged over the past eight years.
Henderson has spent $21 million on maintaining its parks by 2022, including more than 20 for dogs.
