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In 2023, the San Antonio Animal Care Services, or ACS, created a strategic plan to improve their performance across all areas in the organization. According to their performance update, with the implementation of a strategic plan and City Council investments, ACS has been able to improve across all areas over the past two years.
ACS recently opened two new fully operational spay/neater clinics on the East and West Sides with a total of 21 new staff positions to run the clinic.
The West Side clinic opened in March 2025, and the East Side clinic opened in July of 2025. For the fiscal year of 2025 they conducted a total of 1,789 spay/neuter surgeries.
For this 2026 fiscal year their target is to conduct 6,000 surgeries.
Combined, the clinics have six contract veterinarians who conduct the spay/neuter surgeries. The clinics are open Tuesday through Thursday and are currently averaging around 20 surgeries a day. They are completely booked through the end of February; however, they recently recruited a veterinarian that will be available to conduct surgeries on Saturdays beginning in January.
Director Jon Gary said they increased funding for community spay/neuter partners in fiscal years 2024 and 2025. This increase allowed them to conduct over 39,000 spay/neuter surgeries in San Antonio during the fiscal year 2025, an increase from the previous year's 33,000.
“We believe we're going to easily hit our goal, the 41,459 [for the fiscal year 2026] as long as we can keep veterinarians,” Gary said. “Veterinarians are always going to be the biggest struggle. Nationally, there's a veterinarian shortage. So as long as we can keep those contract veterinarians, we're in a good position to hit our goal this year.”
All new positions in the public safety sector have been hired. The department hired 22 new first response officers, with a total of 50 officers at ACS. This has led to an increase in their critical call response rate which include instances involving dangerous bites, or sick or injured animals. The critical call response rate in fiscal year 2023 was 44%, and this current fiscal year it is at 96.2%.
ACS saw an 8.7% increase in adoptions compared to fiscal year 2024. They credit this increase to their large-scale adoption events, frequent smaller events, and their improved marketing team.
“Our new marketing team that was created over the last fiscal year has just done a tremendous job,” Gary said. “Hopefully all of you've seen the difference in the social media and the other marketing that we've done with that team.”
The social media team featured 70-80 pets per month, and 88% of the pets featured found a positive placement. Their goal for this fiscal year is to increase pet features to one hundred per month on their social media.
ACS has also had a 15% increase with returning lost pets to their owners compared to fiscal year 2024. They recognized that a high volume of owned pets are entering their campus, making their community outreach all the more important to return pets to their owners.
“We actually just met with Petco Love. One thing we did find out in that meeting, though, is that we're doing better than most people in the country,” Gary said. “We are higher than the average, so we're doing a really good job in our return to the owner. It is something that we're very proud of.”
San Antonio City Council recently approved the construction of a new $15 million veterinary hospital on the West Side to help with the demands ACS is facing and help them continue improving their performance.
