LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — The City of Las Vegas may break away from The Animal Foundation in 2025, opting to build and possibly run its own animal shelter.
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The unprecedented move comes in the wake of an ongoing crisis at The Animal Foundation due to overcrowding, understaffing, and alleged mismanagement.
The Animal Foundation's shortcomings became even more evident in the Fall when a disease outbreak caused the shelter to temporarily close and stop taking in dogs with no back-up plan.
The shelter still hasn't fully recovered from that, prompting Wednesday's presentation to the City Council on what might come next to better serve Las Vegas' animal population.
Animal advocates say the way The Animal Foundation is running now is a huge burden on local rescues and a disservice to our community.
One advocate told the council, "The amount of dumped dogs tied to poles, hit by cars, abandoned in dog parks or being given away on Craigslist, unfixed, to anyone that offers, is concerning and disturbing. Rescues are scrambling every day to help. The sad part is innocent animals are suffering because of it."
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She was talking about the impact of The Animal Foundation's appointment-only system for strays, lost pets, and owner-surrenders that often leaves the public waiting for weeks and owners at risk for never finding their lost dogs.
As red flags continue to fly over The Animal Foundation's limits, the started discussing alternatives about who might take over the current shelter contract when it expires in 2025.
"And the second item we were asked to look at is what would it take or what would it cost for the city to stand up its own municipal shelter," explained City Manager Jorge Cervantes.
Henderson operates its own shelter.
For the last 12 years, the City of Las Vegas, Clark County and North Las Vegas have all contracted with The Animal Foundation as the only shelter for all three jurisdictions, making it the largest open-intake animal shelter in the U.S.
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Through the city alone, about 12,000 animals come into The Animal Foundation each year, many in need of emergency veterinary care.
"Low compensation for shelter staff has been an issue," Department of Public Safety Administrator Rudy Tovar told the council. Tovar oversees the city's Animal Protection Services.
"You cannot have more animals than you can care for," Tovar added.
As 13 Investigates has reported, that's been the case at The Animal Foundation for years.
"Even though they have the largest physical holding capacity, they still have to take into account their capacity for care," Tovar said. "So, you may have 535 kennels but you many not have enough staff to ensure that you can provide service to the animals that you're caring for in a humane manner, because you don't want to kennel animals and just leave them there basically indefinitely for 10, 15, 20 days. It's not really--in fact--it's kind of cruel."
The city owns land right across the street to the north of The Animal Foundation with about 3.3 available acres to develop.
Public Works presented a detailed plan complete with kennels, open spaces for the public to interact with adoptable animals, and all the other services currently in place at The Animal Foundation.
"The problem with The Animal Foundation is we have no control, our contracts don't allow us to have any say-so, we don't have anyone on the board, and so we're in a crisis right now," said Ward 2 Councilwoman Victoria Seaman.
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The shelter's problems are no secret. How to solve them seems elusive.
"We just have a lack of resources in general here for animals," said Christy Stevens of Hearts Alive Village.
Stevens spoke to us last month about the epidemic of pet dumping stemming from The Animal Foundation's struggle to rebound from the October disease outbreak.
"We need more access points for animals," Stevens said. "This also will allow us to have contingency plans for emergencies. We had nothing to turn to when that outbreak happened. It was shut! We were done! And our government could not help us."
Councilwoman Seaman has pushed the city to look at how it might do things differently, including contracting with a different organization or opening its own facility.
City Manager Cervantes told the council that hard construction costs for a new shelter would be about $35 million.
The city has been paying an average of $2.375 million per year over the 12 years they've been part of the regional contract.
"In addition to the construction costs, there's the ongoing operational costs and that's staffing, the food, the medication, paying for the veterinarians. We estimate that cost to be about $6 million."
That includes heavy reliance on volunteers, and would be partially offset by income from adoption fees.
"The safety of our animals, I believe, is top of mind for the mayor and the entire council, no doubt about it," said Councilwoman Olivia Diaz, whose ward contains The Animal Foundation. "But we are also fiscal stewards of taxpayer dollars."
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Not if you look at Badlands, the defunct golf course next to the upscale Queensridge community.
The city has spent millions on lawyers, and lost tens of millions of taxpayer dollars in court in a losing battle over the illegal taking of a developer's private land.
And it's a fight they continue to fund despite being in the hole now for more than $100 million.
The cost of building and running an animal shelter pales in comparison.
But Councilwoman Diaz says there's more to it.
"The reality is, we're local government. And we're supposed to be the ones taking care of sewers and taking care of roads and taking care of infrastructure, but the social service aspect is a stretch sometimes when we get involved, and we're not necessarily the best suited or the most knowledgeable to conduct those services."
The council did not vote today on the proposal to build a new shelter.
Both the city and county are preparing to audit The Animal Foundation, looking at finances and operations.
Mayor Carolyn Goodman called for both an immediate solution and asked staff for a five-year plan to address what she called an exponential crisis for the city's animals.
