‘We don’t want our taxpayer dollars and donations spent on killing animals, but truly, instead, to help them’
By Amira Van Leeuwen
KYLE — After receiving a presentation on the benefits of Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) last Tuesday, Kyle City Council unanimously voted for staff to bring forward a resolution in support at the next city council meeting for a vote.
TNR is a method of humanely trapping “community cats” (unowned, free-roaming cats) to be spayed/neutered, vaccinated and then returned to their outdoor environments. During surgery, the tip of their left ear is clipped, indicating that they are fixed and vaccinated.
Sharri Boyett, Hays County’s animal advocacy advisor, spoke in support of the method during citizens comments and requested council to take a “proactive approach” by using TNR.
“I’m here tonight in support of no-kill programs and best humane ethical practices in the management of community cats,” Boyett said. “It’s essential for Kyle to support [the] TNR program as a preventive solution. It is the only known, humane, effective, proven method to proactively manage and prevent further growth and reproduction of community cat populations.”
“It’s time for the Kyle city shelter policies and practices to reflect the moral and ethical standard we share as Americans, that we don’t want our taxpayer dollars and donations spent on killing animals, but truly, instead, to help them,” Boyett added. “We don’t want more of the same. We want change.”
Council member Yvonne Flores-Cale wondered if it would be more beneficial to provide vouchers for families with cats and have them spayed or neutered instead of doing TNR and which options would be the most cost-effective for the city.
Christie Banduch, San Marcos Regional Animal Shelter manager, advocated for the cost-effectiveness of TNR.
“There’s a lot of grant money available out there for these kinds of programs, so this is something that can be largely funded through grant opportunities,” Banduch said. “Spay-neuter is expensive, but it’s also much more expensive to keep these animals long-term at the shelter.”
She noted that if the program can get funding, then the shelter can participate.
“Animal control officers are already trapping cats, the public is trapping cats, so these cats are coming in already,” the shelter manager said. “This gives us an outlet for these cats and it gives us a really good opportunity to educate the public as well and get their buy-in as we go.”
Mayor Travis Mitchell thought TNR would be a “small, cheap experiment” and favored trying it.
“If we try to take the more humane approach and go through a Trap-Neuter-Return policy, we could see where we stand a year from now, but I can just see how there could be a lot of benefits plus a certain humanity to reducing the amount of cats that are killed without necessarily reducing the population,” Mitchell said.
However, Mitchell was unsure who would be responsible for developing budget amendments.
“Right now, all I can see is that the only significant budgetary impact that we’re currently having, which the public needs to understand when you talk about taxpayer money, is that our budget for animal control as it relates to [the] San Marcos Regional Animal Shelter has quadrupled or tripled or whatever it is,” Mitchell said. “It’s a significant increase in order to house all the animals that we are sending San Marcos, and Hays County is trying to adopt a new policy that might diminish that impact.”
Council members Flores-Cale and Miguel Zuniga were concerned about the length of turnaround time for this process. In short, the program would need volunteers.
“It’s time-consuming to get those animals at the shelter,” animal control officer Briana Geddes said. “Since we are working with San Marcos, it’s an hour turnaround [to]get down to San Marcos and come back just to drop off an animal and then we would be doing reverse direction, picking those animals up at San Marcos and going to the location and releasing them.”
“There’s so many volunteers who are chomping at the bit to help with this,” Banduch added. “We just have to be able to let them do it.”
Flores-Cale asked Banduch what TNR would recommend for cats when they “put them back out when the weather gets below freezing” and was under the impression that the city would be getting more cats.
Banduch clarified that with TNR, no additional cats would be put back in Kyle’s jurisdiction.
“These are cats that already exist in your jurisdiction,” Banduch said. “We are just leaving those cats where they’re at and eliminating their ability to breed. So we’re not increasing your population; we’re actually going to decrease the population over time if this is done in a strategic and targeted way, which is what we want to do.”
Flores-Cale was in favor of working with TNR, but wanted to see a cost analysis of the program and the policy.
“I just want to make sure it makes sense for the city and for our staff and for our residents,” Flores-Cale said. “I can’t just sit here and take other people’s words for it. I have a responsibility; I have to do my due diligence and since that information was not in the backup, I don’t know what that information is, so I can’t, with a clear mind, vote yes for this.”
The next city council meeting will be held at 5:30 p.m. on Jan. 17 at city hall, located at 100 W. Center St. in Kyle.
