Seeking to steady the city's relationship with its animal services provider after two years of tension and acrimony, the Palo Alto City Council sent a clear message on Monday, June 12, to Pets In Need: Stay.

By a unanimous vote, the council directed staff to negotiate a new lease with the Redwood City-based nonprofit, which took over operation of Palo Alto's aged animal shelter in January 2019. In doing so, council members rejected the other option on the table: reverting to the in-house model that had been in place for decades before the nonprofit came in.

Both options had their flaws. Going back to the in-staff model would require, among other things, adding eight full-time positions for operating the animal shelter. It would also entail keeping the shelter closed every other Friday to accommodate the city's 9/80 work schedule, which grants employees every other Friday off. Moreover, it would necessitate yet another dramatic pivot for an animal operation that has already been in flux for much of the past decade.

Yet sticking with Pets In Need brings its own problems. To remain in the city, the nonprofit is demanding annual payments of $1.37 million (with escalation for future years), a sharp increase from the current level of $703,000 per year. It is also reducing some of its services. After-hours veterinary care will no longer be available, and animal-cruelty investigations would only be undertaken by the medical director's discretion. And it would commit the city to spending $2.5 million for shelter improvements, with the top priority given to an area for new cats and small animals,

The city would also be renewing its vows with an organization that has been, at best, an awkward partner. The relationship took a huge hit in August 2021, when seven puppies died inside a hot van while being transported by Pets In Need from Central Valley to the Peninsula. Palo Alto police subsequently cited the three employees who were transporting the animals for animal cruelty (all three avoided trials after being accepted into a court diversion program).

Puppygate, as the crisis is referred to internally, also created fissures between Pets In Need staff. Shortly after the incident, a group of employees signed an anonymous petition that accused senior management of a coverup and that claimed that the incident showed "blatant disregard for sentient life." The nonprofit's executive director, Al Mollica, resigned from the organizations shortly after he notified the city that the organization planned to terminate its contract for animal services within a year, as the contract allowed.

As his employees faced misdemeanor charges, Mollica accused the city of breaching its duty by not funding the various improvements to the shelter that it was contractually required to make. The letter stated that its "egregious failure" to renovate existing kennels has "caused injury to both dogs and staff."

Since his departure in November 2021, Pets In Need has gone through numerous leadership changes, with board member Valerie McCarthy and finance director Teri Dunwoody each taking a turn as interim executive directors before the nonprofit hired Laura Toller Gardner this spring to serve as its new chief executive officer.

Gardner made the case for retaining Pets In Need at the Monday meeting and lauded the nonprofit's renewed focus on mobile care.

She said her vision for the future of sheltering calls for going to the places where people are having challenges and "help the community help themselves and their animals.

"Ideally, we don't want animals to need to be in shelters at all," Gardner told the council.

What reverting to an in-house model would entail

For some city employees, the preferred vision for the future of sheltering is one that doesn't involve Pets In Need at all. Several animal control officers cited the high staff turnover that Pets In Need has been experiencing since it took over the city's undersized shelter on East Bayshore Road.

Jeannette Washington, a Palo Alto animal control officer who has been with the city for more than 20 years, said Pets In Need struggles to meet the needs of the three municipalities served by the shelter: Palo Alto, Los Altos and Los Altos Hills.

"They do not have the knowledge, policies or staff to adequately provide all the necessary services needed by our community," Washington said.

She lamented some of the changes proposed by Pets In Need, including lack of off-hours animal care and limited medical care investigations.

"These are crucial services to keep animals and our community safe and are considered best practices, leaving Palo Alto behind other shelters in the Bay Area," Washington said.

Kadri Corrollo, who is also an animal control officer, said that the nonprofit has been drastically high staff turnover.

"Over the last four years, PIN has drastically reduced the services available to public, including spay and neuter and proposed even more reductions," Corollo said. "Additionally, PIN has extremely high staff turnover which creates issues due to staff being untrained, unknowledgeable of policies and procedures and low job performance."

Yet the council showed little appetite for returning to the in-house model. With subdued enthusiasm, council members agreed to pursue a fresh deal with Pets In Need, though they also directed staff to include a provision for terminating the deal and to explore reducing the duration of the year from five years to three. The council is scheduled to review the new contract in August. Meanwhile, the existing contract, which has been extended numerous times to facilitate the current negotiations, is now set to expire on Sept. 30.

Council member Vicki Veenker said both of the city's options "fall short of what would be ideal" but threw her support behind sticking with Pets In Need.

"Given the reduction in hours and personnel under the current city plan, which could evolve, I just don't feel that now is the time to bring it back in-house," Veenker said. "I'm concerned about how quickly we can move to ensure a good transition."

Vice Mayor Greer Stone agreed. He called reverting to an in-house model an "interesting idea," but one that is not worth pursuing further.

"I don't see the need to continue down this rabbit hole and invest more time and resources in flushing this out more," Stone said.

While some current staff raised concerns about the leadership shuffle, Council member Ed Lauing didn't see that as necessarily bad, particularly in light of its struggles in August 2021.

"There's a new management team there and that's a good thing," Lauing said. "Because there were problem and the organization has righted itself."

Council members agreed that regardless of who runs the shelter, the facility needs to be improved. Karen Holman, who served on the City Council at the time when council members signed their first deal with Pets In Need, said the facility is ripe for expansion because of its location on a large city parcel next to the Municipal Service Center.

She also made a pitch for keeping the nonprofit in charge of the shelter, arguing that Pet In Need would be better suited than the city at providing the necessary staff and operating for longer hours. She cited a 2015 audit of animal services that included among its conclusions: "There is no ideal place in the government structure for animal services function,"

There was one area, however, in which Pets In Need did not prevail. The nonprofit had repeatedly lobbied the city to allow it to adopt a "trap, neuter and release" policy for feral cats, which it argued is a best practice in animal welfare. The proposal generated opposition from local conservationists and bird advocates who argued that releasing neutered cats in environmentally sensitive areas could create dangerous conditions for both the cats and their potential prey. The council specified Monday that it will not allow "trap, neuter and release."

KC Hetterly, intern at Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society, was among those who spoke out against the policy Monday. She said that domestic cat predation is one of top threats for birds. Releasing cats outdoors, she noted, is just as harmful to the cats themselves. She said she has seen many cats with fighting scars or diseases.

"As a cat lover myself, I can't imagine supporting the suffering," Hetterly said. "I'm surprised that so many self-professed cat lovers promote and enable an ineffective program that abandons cats to a shorter life full of suffering."