Special Task Force Hears Complaints About Fort Worth Shelter
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SOUTHEAST FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) – A special task force will listen to complaints from animal lovers tonight about conditions at Fort Worth's animal shelter. The meeting takes place at the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens Center.
"We are doing very well. We can always do better. I'm sure that the task force will find plenty of room for improvement," said Assistant City Manager, Fernando Costa.
The shelter takes in nearly 1,400 animals a month. The city formed a special task force after animal rights groups complained about overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, staff workloads and other issues. All are open for task for scrutiny.
"We want to look at a wide range of animal shelter operations," said Costa.
There are several areas Fort Worth recognized need improvement from the start.
For starters, the shelter isn't big enough and even a planned expansion won't help much.
"Still we could use much bigger facilities. We need the best equipment we can get to serve the animals that are taken to the animal shelter," said Costa. "We need to do as much as we can on adoptions."
But the city is also using the meetings to make some noise about its successes, such as having 90 percent of the animals taken in leaving the shelter alive, a survival rate that's increased sixty percent in less than a decade.
"It's unprecedented; very unusual for a shelter animal to have such a high live release rate," according to Costa.
The public was welcome to attend the meeting.
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