Local rescues ask for City help, public support amid voucher funding issues

SAN ANGELO, Texas (Concho Valley Homepage) —Two local animal rescues are asking for the community’s help in convincing the City of San Angelo to provide funding for low-cost spay and neuter vouchers after rising expenses have made the initiative too costly to maintain consistently.

Critter Shack Rescue and Cassie’s Place Rescue are the two rescues behind the voucher initiative, which is designed to sell vouchers at a reduced cost that pet owners can redeem with local veterinarians to have their animal vaccinated and spayed or neutered. On top of their own partnership, the rescues also work with six area veterinary clinics to get discounts on surgeries and provide vouchers to even more people.

However, a steady increase in demand for the vouchers has jeopardized the operation.

“We started two years ago with 30 vouchers. Now, the demand has gotten close to 200 vouchers a month,” Sharon Halfmann, director of Critter Shack Rescue, said. “It’s becoming an increasingly expensive program for us and Cassie’s Place.”

According to Halfmann, each voucher sold costs the rescues $50 per animal. With an average monthly sale of 200 vouchers, the rescues have had to pay approximately $10,000 each month to keep the initiative running at its current capacity.

“That’s just become untenable,” Halfmann said. “We share the expenses, but you’re talking $4,000 to $5,000 for each of us per month. That’s climbing up toward $100,000 a year for our costs for this program, and that’s a lot of money.”

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Though Critter Shack and Cassie’s Place have requested the City’s help in paying for vouchers sold within San Angelo’s borders, they haven’t received any aid or confirmation of assistance thus far. Halfmann stated that the City has considered it a possibility in the past, however.

“I first mentioned it to City officials a couple of years ago, and they indicated that they were interested,” Halfmann said. “One of our volunteers went and made a presentation last summer, and they said that, if they helped — which they did not promise that they would — they would only help with the ones in the city limits.”

With demand and expenses on the rise, though, the rescues have come to an impasse — the program has become too costly to run each month, forcing them to not sell vouchers during May 2024. The program will be switched to a month-by-month basis after May as well, meaning that the hundreds of pet owners who buy vouchers each month to keep their animals in optimal health and in line with the City’s ordinances may be left wanting.

“For us to continue at this rate, we need some help from the City,” Halfmann said. “The vouchers benefit the city and its pets. The City of San Angelo also has a mandatory spay and neuter ordinance, so they help people to abide by that ordinance.”

With few options left to help salvage the voucher program’s current effectiveness, the rescues have turned to San Angelo’s citizens to help make their pleas heard.

“We’re just trying to let them know that it’s a much-in-demand program and that it’s something that’s benefitting the people and the pets in this county, and certainly in the city of San Angelo,” Halfmann said.

The rescues have taken to social media to help facilitate this public outreach effort, posting a notice to both of their Facebook accounts detailing the May cancellation, their request for the City’s assistance and their desire to see the public engage local government authorities about the issue.

“We would like people who live within city limits to call their City Council people and tell them, ‘Hey, this is a program we take advantage of all the time, and we would like to see it continue. It’s necessary, it’s good for the pets, it’s good for their owners and we would like to see the City support this program,'” Halfmann said.

With money running dry and a town full of pets, Critter Shack and Cassie’s Place have left the fate of one of their most influential initiatives in the hands of the citizens and the City. Though only time will tell what becomes of their pleas, the rescues aren’t content to let the voucher program’s current effectiveness go quietly into the night.

“We encourage them to, if they want this program to continue in the numbers that we’re selling vouchers at, encourage their City Council people to support this program, become a partner with Critter Shack and Cassie’s Place and help fund it in part so that we can continue to offer these vouchers,” Halfmann said.

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