A recent city audit found gaps in how San Antonio Animal Care Services documents dangerous- and aggressive-dog cases, including missing records tied to inspections, resident affidavits and parts of investigations — issues that audit committee members said raise public safety concerns.
The audit found ACS was not consistently documenting some of the checks and follow-ups required under the city’s dangerous- and aggressive-dog process. Once a dog is designated, its owner has 30 days to meet specific safety requirements, including a license, warning signs and a secure enclosure. Auditors found ACS did not consistently document whether those 30-day checks — or later annual inspections — happened.
“I mean, what’s the point of putting these rules in place if then we don’t follow up and ensure that things are going better?” audit committee member Marc Whyte said.
ACS Director Jon Gary said the issue was documentation, not whether staff were doing the work.
“In reality, it’s not that we weren’t working it and we weren’t communicating it, it’s we weren’t documenting it,” Gary said.
Asked what is being done now to make sure documentation is kept, Gary said ACS is addressing the issue through policy changes and a new checks-and-balances system.
“We address it through policy, and then we create a checks-and-balances system. So now there’s a checklist that says, OK, we did all of these things when they’re done,” Gary said. “We can now hold our staff accountable because it’s now written out into a policy.”
The audit also focused on affidavits from residents, which are required for ACS to launch an investigation into a potentially dangerous or aggressive dog. Auditors found ACS was not tracking the affidavits it received, warning that the lack of tracking could lead to animals going undesignated.
Gary said affidavits were coming in through multiple channels, creating challenges for consistent recordkeeping.
“That was another area that was very challenging because we were getting affidavits from various different places, whether it be someone walks in the door and fills one out, people would meld them in,” Gary said.
Gary said ACS has since implemented a tracking system.
“We actually have a tracker where every affidavit that comes in, it’s logged into that tracker, no matter which way it comes from,” he said.
Questions remain about whether the policy changes will improve follow-up tracking, whether additional staff will be needed to keep up with caseloads, and whether council members will receive better documentation on how future cases are handled.