Ledes from the Land of Enchantment

Las Cruces City Council Extends Deadline for Adoption of TNR Policy

LAS CRUCES — The city missed a deadline to enact a formal “trap-neuter-return” policy for its free-roaming feral and unowned cat population, prompting the city council to extend the deadline at its meeting Tuesday after a discussion, in the confusion over how a budget for the city program should be allocated and where the responsibilities of the program lie.

Deputy City Manager Eric Enriquez claimed that the postponement was not the result of a lack of hard work. He claimed the city animal control staff, animal shelter and members of the city’s TNR subcommittee are simply “out of time.”

“Because we missed the deadline the first time, we want to reach out to the city council and ask for an extension so we can regroup and get this plan in order with the resources needed,” Enriquez said.

But Clint Thacker, director of the Animal Services Center of the Mesilla Valley, seemed to disagree, telling the council that more work has been done in the past three weeks than at any time since TNR was enacted by regulation.

In August, Las Cruces City Council approved the return of trap castrators, or TNR, as part of its revised Animal Care Ordinance. The ordinance establishes the definition of community cats, defines where they can be released after surgeries or traps, creates a four-strike policy for repeat confiscated cats, and encourages registration of community cat handlers.

TNR is said to be a more humane strategy for reducing the city’s free-roaming cat population than euthanasia.

The regulation also requires that the Council, by a separate resolution “within 120 days of the regulation being passed,” adopt a specific TNR policy to include things like public education components, compliance requirements for community cats and their handlers, provided informative resources and best practices for caring for community cats will be available.

A feral cat dives into an irrigation ditch in Las Cruces on Thursday, December 16, 2021.

By decree, the deadline for the directive was December 14th. The council’s extension, passed 6-0 on Jan. 18, creates a new June 14 deadline.

Mayor Ken Miyagishima was absent from Tuesday’s meeting.

In a December interview, ASCMV executive director Clint Thacker told Sun News the shelter, which is jointly funded by the city and county of Doña Ana, has verbally agreed to perform the surgeries and other services for the alien cats.

The shelter appreciated being able to perform community cat surgeries while maintaining the same level of service to animals and pets at the shelter. That reasoning was based on the amount of cats being taken in by the city’s animal welfare agency at the time, Thacker said.

After the ordinance was passed, Thacker said it went into effect earlier than the shelter had planned. The ASCMV was informed on Aug. 20, Thacker reminded the newspaper, TNR would go into effect just seven days later.

“So we’re just trying to stay put and do our best until we’ve got everything set up, which we thought we had three months to do,” Thacker told The Sun News.

The biggest problem, however, was that the intake of cats requiring surgery far exceeded the shelter’s initial estimates. Coupled with a shortage of veterinarians, the shelter soon found itself unable to keep up with demand.

“Intake just skyrocketed,” Thacker told councillors.

In response, the ASCMV suspended the public portion of the program in November, meaning members of the public could no longer donate captured community cats to the shelter. People can still call Animal Control or a local rescue organization to take captive cats to surgeries.

ASCMV Director Clint Thacker

The public part is “a very small number,” but it helped, Thacker said.

The lack of a budget was a problem. While Thacker acknowledged that a budget might not have an impact on increasing the number of veterinarians working for the ASCMV, an earlier budget could have allocated the resources to produce training materials and hire a TNR coordinator, he told the newspaper .

But Thacker also expressed a lack of guidance on how much money should be allocated to animal control versus ASCMV to run the program. He wondered if animal control should be responsible for education, for example.

Thacker also told the council it wasn’t clear whether the TNR subcommittee of the city’s Animal Care Task Force should put together a budget or write the policy.

“It came down to it, if we don’t do it or if they don’t do it, then who will?” said Thacker. “And we’ve tried to meet that 120-day period.”

District 6 councilwoman Yvonne Flores angered Thacker and Enriquez about the lack of progress in developing the TNR program.

Las Cruces Councilwoman Yvonne Flores listens to public comments during a meeting on July 19, 2021.

“Let’s say we vote for the June extension. What steps are being taken and by whom and how and … just the details and the technical details?” Flores said. “We don’t want to go down between now and June and not really develop anything and then find that we’re unprepared again.

“It still seems to me that this should have progressed,” Flores said.

With the extension, Enriquez Flores assured that the TNR policy and budget motions would be completed by June 14, if not sooner as draft policies are forthcoming. But increasing the number of vets available for surgeries is beyond his control, he said.

District 4 Councilwoman Johana Bencomo asked Thacker why concerns about the schedule and staffing were not submitted to the council in August.

“We wanted (the regulation) to be passed. So we didn’t want to get up and say, ‘Hey, but let’s look at this,'” Thacker said. He also said there was confusion about the process for submitting concerns and needs.

Michael McDevitt is a city and county government reporter for Sun News. He can be reached at 575-202-3205, [email protected], or @MikeMcDTweets on Twitter.

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