Santa Fe animal shelter 'building back' after upheaval

Jan. 5—A wave of criticism of the Santa Fe Animal Shelter & Humane Society last year has quieted, but shelter policies have not changed — yet.

New board Chairwoman Sheila Vaughn, one of four people who resigned and then returned to the board following the August departure of former CEO Jack Hagerman , said she remains concerned about some existing policies.

"I'm just also very committed to creating something going forward that can last ... and that's a pretty complicated situation," Vaughn said. "It's taking time to do that."

The good news: The board has stabilized with what Vaughn called a "committed" group of seven members, in addition to interim CEO Caren Shiozaki, and has made progress toward hiring a new CEO. The board started interviewing candidates and hopes to have a new person in the nonprofit's top job in the spring.

The shelter's finances also have recovered from last year's upheaval.

Donations returned to their usual pace after a decline last spring and summer, and large end-of-year gifts have put the shelter in a "good place," said Pamela Weese Powell, the philanthropy director.

"I think there are still people, understandably, out there who are waiting to see what's going to happen with the shelter," Vaughn said. "They haven't written us off, but they have not yet come forward with their usual donations.

"I think that will change as they hear more good news and are aware of what's happening with the shelter," she added, noting the organization still surpassed its revenue goals last year.

"We are building back our support both in terms of volunteers and community goodwill as well as financially," she said.

Hagerman, hired as the CEO in November 2021, resigned in early August after volunteers, donors and some board members raised concerns about changes implemented under his leadership.

Many concerns centered on the halt of a trap-and-release program for spaying and neutering stray cats, which Hagerman said he wanted to continue but couldn't due to veterinary staff shortages.

Some area residents also opposed a policy of allowing wandering cats to remain in their neighborhoods, rather than capturing them and taking them to the shelter. Hagerman defended the practice, calling it a national best practice that gives cats a better chance of being reunited with their owners.

Vaughn wrote in an opinion piece published in The New Mexican in May that an overarching new model of care implemented at the shelter, called Capacity for Care, had "resulted in closed shelter doors and policies that discourage people from bringing animals to the shelter."

She wrote, "The long-term results of the policy implementation here in Santa Fe seem likely to lead to many stray dogs and cats being ignored, guardian-surrender animals taken elsewhere (hopefully taken elsewhere rather than being abandoned) and other rescue organizations being overwhelmed with animals because the Santa Fe shelter has made it difficult or impossible for people to bring them to the shelter."

The numbers-driven Capacity for Care model aims to address overcrowding of no-kill shelters across the country.

Several factors such as the number of animals taken in, the number of adoptions, the shelter's capacity and its staffing levels can be put into a formula, and "out comes numbers of, 'This is how many animals you can care for in a way that's both healthy for staff and the animals,' " Vaughn said.

Figuring out what to keep and what to scrap from the model has been complicated.

A task force of community members, shelter staff and board members is analyzing "exactly what was instituted, how it was implemented and what the outcome has been," Vaughn said.

She noted the Capacity for Care model isn't all bad but said it was implemented without community input and its effects "seemed to be very problematic."

Bobbi Heller, executive director of the nonprofit Felines & Friends New Mexico, said changes at the shelter have put "incredible pressure" on her Santa Fe-based cat rescue at a time when shelters are "all fighting to get a handle" on a spike in feral cats after spay and neuter services largely halted during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We basically feel like they're relying on us to handle all the cats," Heller said. "They have a fair number of dogs, but it's always the cats that are not filling up the cages."

As a "second chance organization," Felines & Friends formed to take on special cases from the Santa Fe animal shelter but is now taking in cats from people turned away by the much larger organization, she said.

"The numbers speak for themselves," Heller said.

The numbers of cats Felines & Friends took in more than doubled from 2022 to 2023; the organization had about 235 cats in its care last week.

The shelter's website listed over 100 dogs one day this week, but only seven cats available for adoption.

The shelter took in about 1,300 cats and 2,350 dogs in 2022 and performed more than 5,500 spay and neuter surgeries that year. Weese Powell did not provide numbers for 2023.

Vaughn said she is concerned about a decline in services for cats and a second task force has formed to focus on how to best serve cats.

Asked about the shelter's policy of directing people to return wandering cats to where they were found, Heller said, "The notion that a lot of these stray cats have homes to go to is totally flawed."

They are usually abandoned pets, she said, and leaving them to fend for themselves is really, really horrible and inhumane."

Vaughn, who described herself as a "crazy cat person," says she wishes the animal shelter "could have figured this out faster."

"But, very likely, it's not going to be about going back to previous policies. It's going to be [making] better ones; it's going to be about creating some hybrid policies that are protective of our animal population, our staff and our community," she said.

"It absolutely is a work in progress, but it is — there is progress."