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Garland animal shelter reports high live-release rate, highlights outreach; longtime staff member leaves
Summary
Animal Services staff reported March–April intake and outcome data, described community outreach and fundraising events, and noted that a long-serving staff member, Christie, is leaving the shelter.
Justin Craft, the City of Garland animal services manager, gave the committee a summary of shelter operations and community outreach for March and April and highlighted volunteer and partner activity as the department prepares a broader Chapter 22 revision this summer.
Craft said the shelter had 1,318 visitors in the two-month period. Calls for service totaled 3,328, with about 1,500 calls for stray animals. The live-release rate for March and April was 98.47 percent, he said. Owners reclaimed 160 animals and the shelter recorded 247 adoptions and 363 animals transferred to rescue partners. The department reported 32 cruelty calls in that period, one animal seizure, one dog designated dangerous, and sterilization totals of 87 (TNR-related) and 111 in-house community-cat sterilizations.
The shelter’s community-outreach work included participation in a regional “mega adoption” event in Dallas that resulted in 13 adoptions; a downtown adoption event (“puppy party”) that produced seven adoptions and raised $473 from a lemonade stand; a kitten-care academy with about 30 attendees; recurring community cat free spay/neuter days in partnership with Operation Kindness; spring “Gram-a Bonanza” outreach celebrating the shelter’s opening (about 300 attendees, a vaccine clinic that saw 77 pets, and a pet-food pantry that served 194 people and 303 pets); and photography and fundraising partnerships. Volunteers and a realtor partner, Purple Tea Properties, were cited for sponsoring adoption fees and transport assistance. Craft also described a microchip reunion coordinated with a volunteer transport network that returned a trapped cat to its owner.
Committee members publicly thanked “Christie” for her work; the committee chair described it as Christie’s last meeting and noted her role in several outreach accomplishments. Committee members praised the expansion of outreach and volunteer programs, and several asked staff to continue providing trend data and historical comparisons in future reports.
The department will include these performance measures and historical trends in future presentations to the committee and said it can deliver month-by-month trend tables on adoptions, rescues, reclaims and other performance measures on request.
For transparency, Craft and outreach staff emphasized that some event tallies and fundraising totals were distinct: the puppy-party lemonade stand raised $473; at the Gram-a Bonanza another lemonade stand raised $665.
Looking ahead, staff said an internal, summer-long revision of Chapter 22 of the city code will align ordinance language with current operations and fee schedules.
Members directed staff to continue regular reporting of these measures; no formal binding direction beyond continued reporting was recorded.
