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Palo Alto reaffirmed on Monday its commitment to stick with Pets In Need as the city's animal service provider even as some City Council members urged a broad reevaluation of the rocky partnership.
The council voted 6-1, with council member Greg Tanaka dissenting, to approve a term sheet with Pets In Need for a new five-year deal, an outcome that was all but predetermined by its vote in June.
But in a surprising twist that caught both city staff and Pets In Need executives off guard, three council members proposed Monday that the city reevaluate whether the Palo Alto shelter really needs to provide adoption services.
The idea was championed by council member Vicki Veenker, who earlier in the day toured the Milpitas facility of Humane Society Silicon Valley with council member Pat Burt. Both said they came away impressed — so much so that they began to question whether Palo Alto would be better off outsourcing adoption services to another organization.
Veenker noted that the situation has changed since 2016, when Mountain View's departure from the long-standing partnership in the East Bayshore Road shelter left Palo Alto with a $400,000 budget hole and prompted a debate over the future of animal services. Palo Alto then chose to partner with Pets In Need, a Redwood City-based nonprofit with a reputation as a "no-kill" shelter.
The partnership launched in 2019 but turned sour two years later, as Pets In Need accused the city of reneging on its commitment to improve the shelter and found itself on the defensive after seven puppies died inside a Pets In Need van while being transported from Central Valley. It hit rock bottom November 2021, when the nonprofit invoked a clause in the agreement allowing it to terminate its partnership within a year.
The divorce never materialized, as the Pets In Needs' executive director resigned and new leadership vowed to work with Palo Alto on a fresh deal. The two sides have since signed several short-term extensions while working on a fresh five-year deal. Meanwhile, Pets In Need has been dealing with conflicts between its Palo Alto and Redwood City factions and fending off allegations of increase euthanasia at the shelter — claims that its leaders have vehemently denied.
The deal that the council voted to approve Monday generally follows the terms that it had already endorsed in June. Under those terms, the city's annual payment to Pets In Need would go up from $773,580 to $1.37 million and the city would commit to at least $2.5 million in capital improvements to the shelter.
While Veenker supported the new contract, she also proposed that the city concurrently begin evaluating what types of services the local animal shelter should be offering. She described the current shelter as a "cramped, rundown and outdated physical plant."
"What should we duplicate and what should we not? It depends on dollars, it depends on our responsibility to our residents and it depends on our residents' preferences. All of that I think should be looked at," Veenker said.
Burt agreed and suggested that residents can fairly easily go to another nearby shelter such as Pets In Need's adoption facility in Redwood City or the Humane Society Silicon Valley for adoption services.
"Should we be doing adoptive services? Are we best at that?" Burt asked.
The tenor of the discussion appeared to surprise both City Manager Ed Shikada and Pets In Need's Chief Executive Officer Laura Toller Gardner, who earlier in the evening said that the nonprofit is enthusiastic about moving ahead with the deal and charting a positive course forward. But her enthusiasm appeared to wane after both Veenker and Burt suggest that adoption may not be part of the shelter's long-term future.
Toller Gardner called the existing system a "great hybrid" because it allows Pets In Need to move animals back and forth between its two shelters to meet the needs of the communities and the animals.
"Not being able to do that would be a significant hinderance honestly and it would need to be something we'd need to look at very seriously to understand the impacts of that — not only to Palo Alto but to our 60-year legacy in Redwood City and all our donors, volunteers and supporters there," Toller Gardner said.
Removing adoption services from the Palo Alto shelter would make it run counter to shelter best practices, she said. It also might discourage some residents from adopting.
"The travel, the inability to do that in their community actually might be a barrier to adoption," she said.
Shikada and Kristen O'Kane, director of the Community Services Department, both observed that the idea of reevaluating adoption services would run counter to the direction that the council had previously given.
"I do think we're potentially changing the scope in ways that make it no longer attractive for them to be a partner," Shikada said of Pets In Need. "I'd caution against doing that at this point, in entering into a multi-year agreement."
One thing that the council had little appetite for revisiting is the idea of allowing Pets In Need to implement a "trap/neuter/return" (TNR) policy for feral cats. Much like in past meetings, council members heard from a crowd of animal advocates arguing that such a policy is the most effective and humane way of controlling the feral cat population. They also heard from conservationists and members of the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society who strongly oppose TNR and claim that released cats pose a danger to birds and other sensitive wildlife.
Wendy Eilers, who took part in a campaign by Stanford University to reduce the feral cat population on campus, was among the proponents of TNR, which she called "the only proven humane cat to reduce the population of homeless cats in our communities."
The council's decision to ban TNR will only result in "more breeding cats, more kittens for whom there are no homes and more suffering," she said.
"You cannot have a policy that's humane and reflective of best animal control practices that does not permit the return to colony of feral cats," Eilers said. "A ban on return-to-colony means the killing of animals at the shelter."
Rani Fischer, a volunteer at the Audubon Society, argued against TNR and claimed that feral cats hunt birds and other species.
"TNR is especially harmful to wildlife that live and breed on the ground," she said. "They are preyed upon by feral cats, from baby rabbits to ducklings, to burrowing owls and endangered species, including the salt-marsh harvest mouse and the ridgeway rail."
Much like in the past, the council sided with the Audubon Society and agreed to maintain the current ban on TNR. However, its term sheet includes language calling for Pets In Need and the city to "work together to develop a transparent and humane feral cat program reflective of municipal best practices and the impact on public health and wildlife, and that maintains the current practice where PIN does not release feral cats or cause them to be released."
Toller Gardner said Pets In Need hopes that it can work with the city and community advocates to "come up with something that is positive for birds, for wildlife and for community cats,"
"Because we all ultimately want the same thing. We want there to be many fewer community cats," Toller Gardner said.
While most of the public comments pertained to TNR, Animal Control Officer Jeannette Washington focused on the broader issue of whether Pets In Need is a good fit for the city and whether the new contract is a good deal. She suggested that Pets In Need, as a rescue organization, isn't well suited to handling all the functions of a municipal shelter and lamented that the city did not further explore the idea of bringing back an in-house model for animal services.
"The currently proposed contract asks for more money and less services," Washington said.
Tanaka also wasn't thrilled about the new deal and cited the growing cost of the Pets In Need contract. He also indicated that he'd be willing to consider eliminating some local services, including adoption, and outsourcing them. Palo Alto can, for example, do what Mountain View did and explore a partnership with Silicon Valley Animal Control Authority, which has a shelter in San Clara. Local residents would be willing to make that trip for adoption, he said.
"It's not like they have to go to Timbuktu or all the way to San Francisco," Tanaka said.
The council's vote to approve the term sheet Monday sets the stage for staff to draft a new five-year contract, which will return to the council for formal approval later this year.
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