INDIANAPOLIS — Changes are coming to the Indianapolis Animal Care Services (IACS). The shelter says Saturday, its hours will adjust to better serve the animals in their care and the community, but some volunteers disagree with the change.
Monday, the city-county council made an important vote that volunteers hope will bring change.
"We've all sent them over the last couple of days a lot of emails," Lauren Wyatt, a former volunteer with IACS said.
Lauren has spent countless hours at the IACS, but recently, that all changed.
"Last year, volunteers put in over 30,000 hours, and so volunteers have already started to leave. A lot of them just feel demoralized by the changes that they've seen," Wyatt said.
Lauren said the final straw for many volunteers was the change in hours.
"We used to be able to be there until 9:30 p.m. but now we have to be out the door by 7 pm," Wyatt said.
The decision was made under the leadership of interim director Kelly Diamond.
"The biggest issue is that we cannot have volunteers on site without a manager." Colleen Walker, Public Information Officer with IACS said.
IACS will be open daily from noon to 7. Colleen said this will help them better manage adoptions, reclaims, and rescue transfers, enhance public accessibility and improve team efficiency and safety.
"There have been incidents in the past after hours. I think there was one recently where there was a volunteer bit and there was no staff member on site. So, we want to make sure that that does not happen," Walker said.
"We have over 200 dogs. About 100 get to go out a second time with volunteers. A lot of these dogs only get to go out 15 minutes a day with staff. So, if volunteers aren't able to take them out a second time, we're going to see a high increase in stress levels," Wyatt said.
Monday night at the city-county council meeting, councilors voted on proposal 5, which would make Kelly Diamond the permanent deputy director of IACS. Volunteers hoped the council would delay Diamond's appointment to allow them to speak on the proposal.
"Now the committee sent that with a do pass recommendation with a vote 7-0. However, the committee would like to continue to hear more discussion on this. I would like to send a motion to send it back to committee to be heard this month in community affairs committee," Councilor Ali Brown, District 10 said.
A sigh of relief for volunteers.
"There's no harm in pausing this and hearing from the public," Wyatt said.
But with changes ahead, IACS hopes volunteers will see the bigger picture.
"There are a lot of moving parts in our shelter, so eventually, we are hoping to work towards, maybe expanding that. It's not dead. It's not set in stone. This is always going to be what it is, however, it is what it is right now, for liability purposes. We want to make sure that there is going to be a manager on site, if there's going to be a volunteer here," Walker said.
Again, the new IACS hours will start Saturday, February 8 from noon to 7 p.m. Volunteers will share their thoughts with the community affairs committee on February 19.
