A policy proposal that would raise fines for owners of loose dogs, give the city more authority to spay or neuter loose dogs they pick up, and provide residents who report loose dogs more confidentiality has moved forward in the San Antonio City Council.
District 7 Councilmember Marina Alderete Gavito authored the proposed policy after a spate of dog maulings in San Antonio, including one that killed the 81-year-old man Ramon Najera and left his wife seriously injured last year.
That proposal will now move to the city council’s Public Safety Committee to be further fleshed out after being approved by the council’s Governance Committee on Wednesday.
Alderete Gavito said when she came into office last year, addressing loose and dangerous dogs was a top priority.
“As good neighbors, we cannot risk loose dogs causing harm to children playing nearby or older adults,” she said.
City Manager Erik Walsh said there were a number of reasons the city had not already addressed the issue of roaming dogs more forcefully in the past.
“We wanted to give everybody a chance. Nobody wanted to spay and neuter dogs. We moved from civil citations to criminal citations. We have staffing issues. I mean it’s been a combination,” he said. "And I think the point of the conversations that the councilwoman [Alderete Gavito] had in advance of the actual drafting of the [policy] was, ‘we should be doing better.’”
Texas State Senator José Menéndez attended Wednesday’s council committee meeting to speak in favor of the policy.
He said he pushed the Texas legislature to pass a bill in the last legislative session that would have required animal authorities like ACS to investigate a report of a dangerous dog without needing a sworn witness statement to protect residents from possible retaliation. But after Governor Greg Abbott vetoed it, he began talking to Alderete Gavito.
“I remember saying, ‘I hate the fact that we may have to wait till next [legislative] session,’” Menéndez said. “‘Could you check with the city attorney’s office, check with the [city] manager’s office, to see if there’s anything the city could do without having to wait for the state. And that’s why we’re here today.”
The three key areas of the proposed policy are imposing higher fines, accepting pseudonyms for reporting residents, and requiring mandatory sterilization of dogs.
Current fines for having a loose dog are $100 for the first offense, $200 for the second offense, and $300 for the third offense. The proposed policy doesn’t specify how much the larger fines would be, and instead gives city staff and council members the responsibility to develop them as they consider the proposal.
Alderete Gavito seeks to implement the use of pseudonyms for residents who report their neighbors for having dangerous dogs to protect their identities. Menéndez said fear of retaliation contributed to the death of Najera and the maiming of his wife last year.
“For years, neighbors had feared the dog, but were afraid to report it out of fear of retaliation from the dog owner, who not only was gang affiliated but had already threatened them if anybody reported him,” he said.
Assistant City Manager David McCary, who oversees ACS among other city departments, said ACS technically already has the ability to use pseudonyms, but doesn’t.
“So we’ll be experiencing that and following up,” McCary said.
Animal Care Services’ current sterilization policy is to issue pet owners a sterilization agreement if their animal is found loose or has bitten someone, and they then have 30 days to get the animal spayed or neutered or they’ll be fined.
McCary said the percentage of pet owners who abide by the sterilization agreement is very low, and that ACS doesn’t have the resources or capacity to follow up with all of those owners to ensure the sterilizations take place; the fines for failing to sterilize often go uncollected for long periods of time too.
The new policy could allow ACS to conduct the sterilization itself without needing the owner to act or give consent.
Walsh said part of how to address this issue will be figuring out ACS’ priorities for sterilizing different animals since funding is strained. ACS already conducts 40,000 free and low cost sterilizations per year.
District 6 Councilmember Melissa Cabello Havrda said the city council needed to put its money where its mouth is on ACS for things like this latest policy proposal to have an impact.
“Going back to how we as a council can support ACS I think is very important, and I’m of course including the dollars behind it to be able to do that,” she said. “We’re in budget season, so.”
District 8 Councilmember Manny Pelaez said he supported the policy proposal, but that there would still need to be more work to address the root cause of roaming and dangerous dogs.
“I think that nobody in this room will be surprised that there is a direct relationship, a straight line you can draw, from poverty to problems with pet ownership,” Pelaez said. “What happens to owners happens to their pets, and poverty is a tremendous burden to families.”
He said ACS needs to do more in their education efforts to get pet owners to keep their dogs restrained and on their own properties.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg said the time of leniency for pet owners needed to end.
“This is a public safety issue, and I think one that is far too urgent for us to continue to give people the benefit of the doubt, especially when we have people mauled and killed in our own streets,” he said.
The council's Public Safety Committee will take up the policy after the July break.
