Houston, TX – The city of Houston is asking for YOUR INPUT on what priorities that you want the city to focus on.

According to the Plan Houston website: “In 2015, Houston’s City Council took the groundbreaking step of adopting the city’s first general plan, Plan Houston. The Plan describes a vision and goals for our community and identifies twelve core strategies that represent the City’s approach for achieving the vision.

The City of Houston is now actively working towards achieving the community goals laid out in Plan Houston. The next step is to understand the community’s interests so that policy makers can consider them as they develop City priorities for the next budget year. The City’s next fiscal year begins July 1, 2017.

You can share your thoughts on what the City should be focusing on by responding to a brief survey.“

I have reviewed the city’s current plan, and could find absolutely no mention of animal issues nor addressing Houston’s high kill sheltering issues. 

This needs to change.

I believe that animal lovers CARE DEEPLY about animal issues and I am asking you to tell the mayor and city council this.  This is YOUR opportunity to tell them what is a priority for you.

Please TELL the mayor and city council that you want them to work hard to end the barbaric killing of 80,000+ shelter pets every year in Houston. There is a solution to end shelter killing.  But the mayor must require his city employees work hard to implement the solution comprehensively.

On the Survey, there are no choices for “ending the killing of shelter pets” under Choice A, B or C, so you will have to type it in under “Other”.

Then, please explain your choice in Box #3.   If you need help writing a statement for Box #3, I have posted my statement below that you can copy and paste and edit as you wish.

CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE SURVEY

Then forward this blog to your animal loving friends and family and ask them to take the Survey as well.  We need ALL Houston animal lovers to speak for shelter pets!

My statement:

“There are 5 kill shelters located within Houston city limits: 1) BARC; 2) Houston SPCA; 3) Houston Humane Society; 4) CAP; and 5) Harris County animal control.

According to the Mayor’s Task Force report, these 5 shelters are killing approximately 80,000 pets every year. Some people believe the number is now closer to 100,000. However, there are now 200+ Open Admission shelters, serving 500+ cities and towns, who are saving 90% up to 100% of all animals entering their doors. Leadership in these shelters have comprehensively implemented a series of programs and services, called the No Kill model of sheltering which has effectively ended killing of healthy and treatable shelter pets.

I want the mayor and city council to focus on putting leadership in place at BARC who will comprehensively implement the same programs and services that have ended shelter killing around the country. BARC may be better than it was in years past, but BARC also killed more than 7,700 pets in 2015 alone. That simply is not good enough when there is a proven solution to end the killing.

Houston is a city of passionate animal lovers. We spend millions of dollars on our pets each year, and we spend millions of dollars to help homeless pets. Animal charities represent the largest growing sector of philanthropy.

If the mayor and city council made a concerted effort to end shelter killing at BARC, Houstonians would step up to help with their time and with their donations.

But, we need the mayor and city council to step up and put BARC on the right track.

As a Houston voter, who voted for Mayor Turner based on his responses to Houston Voters for Companion Animals Candidate Survey, I want him to keep his campaign promise when he said “Implementing a no-kill policy should be the ultimate goal for Houston’s animal control. As mayor, I will champion policies in pursuit of that goal” and when he said “I will work until they all have a forever home.“

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