The new director of Austin’s Town Lake Animal Center is committed to keeping Austin a “no-kill” city. Abigail Smith, formerly of the Ithaca New York SPCA, took the helm at TLAC this week and said her first priority is to simply understand where things stand at the shelter.
“I need to take a look at our programs, look at customer service and adoptions, medicine; look at our foster care program and volunteer program,” Smith said. “Just look at the overall operations of the shelter to understand where we might be able to work together to achieve capacity building and efficiency that we really need.”
City Council approved a no-kill implementation plan almost a year ago and since then, the adoption and euthanasia rates at the shelter have been the focus of intense community scrutiny. Austin met the no-kill rate for the first time last month. A no-kill rate means 90 percent of animals were saved, as it is unavoidable that some will be too ill or too dangerous to save, which a 10 percent margin allows for.
