Pets in Need to take over operating animal shelter
Palo Alto’s city-run animal shelter, which saw reduced hours and services over the past year, has been outsourced to a new operator in a move expected to save the city hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
The City Council on Monday night unanimously approved a fiveyear contract allowing Redwood City-based nonprofit Pets in Need to take over. The organization’s board of directors still needs to approve the deal at its December meeting.
Under the agreement, Palo Alto will spend $3.4 million over three years, primarily to renovate the shelter located in the Baylands Conservation Area, near the city’s Municipal Services Center on Bayshore Road.
The council authorized spending $800,000 from an infrastructure reserve fund to immediately begin remodeling and expanding the shelter’s medical suite, install an office/classroom at the front of the site and repair kennels. The city still needs to find roughly $2 million to pay for 16 new kennels, according to a report.
Staff estimates the agreement will save the city roughly $500,000 a year. However, the city will lose $100,000 in annual revenue after it stops leasing a 13,500-squarefoot portion of the shelter site to Honda to allow Pets in Need to build an office/ classroom.
The nonprofit, which is expected to take over shelter operations in mid-January, plans to expand services and space for pets.
Because of a staff shortage, the shelter reduced its hours of operation this year, particularly for spay and neuter services.
Pets in Need will discontinue the city’s practice of allowing owners to euthanize pets with untreatable illnesses. It euthanizes animals at its own discretion.
Pets in Need will oversee the equivalent of 6.5 full-time shelter staff, and four animal control officers will continue operating within the police department.
At the end of the contract, it is anticipated that the city and nonprofit will sign a longer-term partnership with the goal of building a new shelter and sharing costs.
A new shelter is expected to cost $20 million and Pets in Need hopes to collect $6 million to $8.8 million through fundraising. As part of the existing contract, the city agrees to jointly explore the feasibility of public financing to fund half of the cost.
The city began seeking a way to reduce shelter costs in May 2012, after losing a contract to provide animal services to the city of Mountain View for roughly $500,000 a year. Palo Alto’s shelter, built in 1972, is outdated and doesn’t meet modern standards for animal care, according to an April 2015 city audit. The city since 2003 has spent upward of $1.7 million on critical repairs. Paradise residents and Camp Fire survivors Kitty and Mike Smith, from left, and their family take in Christmas in the Park’s tree-lighting ceremony on November 23.