09-07-16 Personnel and Finance - Laserfiche WebLink

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dangerous dogs in our society. There are many things we think could be streamlined, done more efficiently, and we'd like to get a committee together to reassess what it currently is. We plan to regularly attend Animal Care and Control Commission meetings because we want to start tightening that bond with them. We'll be training and supporting our officers in enforcing City, State, and Federal law. We've been working with the Humane Society of the United States, and they have expressed interest in bringing a training to South Bend. The man who would come here has done a training in Indianapolis, and it was great. The Police Department is interested in taking part in the training as well. Another goal of the SBACC is to strengthen the bond between the ACC and the Police Department. There are many ways the two (2) departments can work to help each other. We had one successful prosecution this year of a man who was harboring fighting dogs. Councilmember Voorde asked if there is any coordination of the groups that were at the Dog Days of Summer DTSB event over the weekend. Mr. Howard explained that there is coordination, it is the Animal Welfare Coalition. Mr. Howard plans on the department attending it more regularly. They are also trying to work closely with the local humane societies because we are all fighting the same battle, and we are all trying to attend the same trainings. Rather than sending people from each of our organizations to a different area for training, we want to try to bring some of the trainings here. We do have direct contacts with a majority of the agencies in the area, but we are always looking to expand that further. Committeemember Williams- Preston asked what the SBACC does in terms of stray cats. Mr. Howard explained that there is a local group called Meow Mission. If there is a resident who is having trouble with stray cats in the area, they can either start their own colony, or they can assist the residents to make sure those cats no longer congregate in the area. There are laws where if a stray cat is in your yard, we will pick it up. We are looking into possibly some other things the larger cities are doing. Ninety percent (90 %) of cats that come through a shelter are euthanized. We've gotten our numbers to around seventy percent (70 %) through working with the rescues in the area. Target Zero (0) is a program that strives to reduce that number to zero (0), but by doing that, we would be spaying or neutering and returning them back out into society, and they could still pose a nuisance. Committeemember Williams- Preston stated that she would like to learn more about that program, because she would like to share it with some of the neighborhood associations. Mr. Wilkerson suggested that interested people go to Target Zero's website to learn more about the program. 17