SAN ANTONIO – A set of new fines for people who abandon animals in San Antonio has a much narrower scope than originally described.
Though it appears staff legal staff accurately described a key caveat during a Thursday council vote, at least two council members said they didn’t realize the fines they approved will not cover people who dump their own pets.
The City Council approved the following change to the city’s animal code in a 10-1 vote Thursday, including fines between $500 and $2,000.
Sec. 5-23. Abandonment.
(a) Abandonment of non-livestock and livestock animals, excluding uncaptured wild living creatures, is a violation of the Texas Penal Code and depending on the circumstances, is a class A misdemeanor, state jail felony, or a felony of the third degree.
(b) It shall be a violation of this Code for a person to intentionally, knowingly or recklessly abandon or release any animal anywhere in the city that has been trapped and within a person’s control and possession except if a person is trapping and releasing animals as authorized by any sections of this Chapter or by state law. A violation of this subsection is punishable as described in section 5-21.
Ordinance approved by San Antonio City Council on Sept. 11
The vote was originally scheduled for Sept. 4, but was delayed as part of an ongoing power struggle between Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones and council members over how policy proposals advance through City Hall.
Jones was also the only one to vote against it after three council members forced it back onto the Sept. 11 council agenda.
In a Sept. 3 interview with KSAT, ahead of the originally scheduled vote, Animal Care Services Director Jon Gary framed the proposal as a municipal alternative to existing state law.
“The ordinance that’s going to be going into effect — or hopefully going into effect — that’s going to put before council tomorrow will be, basically, ‘you can’t abandon any animal.’ Whether that be in a parking lot, bus stop, it doesn’t matter. You can’t abandon any animal here in San Antonio. There is a state statute that we currently use, but for — to rise to that state level where you’re talking about jail time and those kind of things, it typically requires that — that the animal — that some harm is done to the animal if it’s while it’s abandoned. Where this one, for at the municipal level, we will use for instances where we just catch people in the act of abandoning the animal. So, abandonment of itself will be — would be a municipal fine. We would still use the state statute in instances where there’s some egregious activity, you know.”
Jon Gary, ACS Director — Sept. 3 interview with KSAT 12 News
However, his explanation has since changed.
In a Friday interview with KSAT, Gary said the fines only apply if the animal has first been “trapped” and then released.
People who abandon their own pets would not be subject to the city fines, Gary said, but they could still be charged under existing state law.
Gary told council members that ACS receives approximately 400 complaints for animal abandonment each year. The agency, he said, is only able to successfully pursue in the neighborhood of a half-dozen cases in 2024.
On Sept. 3, Gary told KSAT that enforcing the state law was difficult when there hadn’t been harm to the animals.
“When it comes to that level, when you’re talking about jail time, the DA (district attorney) typically is gonna want something like that,” Gary said on Sept. 3. “Not to say they wouldn’t accept those cases, but it definitely becomes a lot harder to prosecute those type of cases, if the animal’s healthy.”
During Friday’s interview, he focused more on the difficulty of catching people.
“It’s something that we’ve always done,” Gary told KSAT on Friday. “Again, they’re rarely caught. And that’s — I think that’s the reason why there’s so few. But we’ll continue to do like we always have. We’ll enforce the state statute where it pertains, and then we’ll enforce our city ordinance where it pertains.”
Asked about the change in how he had described the ordinance, Gary said Friday that there had been a lot of interest since last week, which spurred conversations with the City Attorney’s Office about the the intent of the ordinance and how it was written.
“I will say through our conversations with the city attorney, and I’ll have to take responsibility for that, some of it was on me,” Gary said. “Some of the conversations that we had and (sic) misinterpretation. But I think we’re all under the understanding now that we understand what this means, that our ordinance is specific to trapping, and then we will continue to use the state statute for ones that are abandoned in other ways.”
The ordinance change came out of a proposal Marina Alderete Gavito submitted in March 2024 about the unlicensed trapping and release of birds after issues with peafowl in some Northwest Side neighborhoods.
“An unlicensed trailer came in and were throwing all the peacocks into the trailer. And, of course, it was screaming and broken wings and all this kind of stuff‚” the District 7 councilwoman said during the idea’s final appearance in front of the Public Safety Committee on April 15.
Gary has said he approached Alderete Gavito about widening the ordinance to include other animals.
During Thursday’s council meeting, city legal staff did appear to note the trapping requirement.
“Would using the word ‘trapped’ in this ordinance require that, for someone to be cited or convicted, they must have caught an animal with a physical trap?” Alderete Gavito asked Jose Niño of the City Attorney’s Office.
“That’s correct,” Niño said.
“Under state law, the act of abandonment — unreasonable abandonment — is against state law right now,“ Niño also told the councilwoman. “So, this is just an extra tool that basically, like you indicated, initially started with peafowl and the trapping of peafowl and then moving to another location within the city. So, the extra tool in here was the trapping aspect of it.”
However, not everyone appeared to realize the animal being trapped was a key element to be hit with the new fines.
KSAT also didn’t notice until Friday. Councilwoman Phyllis Viagran (D3) and Councilman Ric Galvan (D6) also said they had believed people abandoning their own pets could also be fined under the ordinance.
“I am surprised because now I can see where this doesn’t go far enough. But it’s still — to use his own words — a minimal step in the right direction,” said Viagran, who brought up concerns about people dropping “box of puppies” in her South Side district during Thursday’s discussion.
However, she also told KSAT, “I don’t feel misled. I feel like — and this is the issue — we all hear what we wanna hear to kind of get the issues, so I feel I misunderstood.”
She and Galvan both said they still supported the measure.
“I think that even though it was a bit narrower, I think it was worth passing because I think it still gives us something to build upon,” Galvan said.
District 1 Councilwoman Sukh Kaur told KSAT she thinks the ordinance’s substance “was what we were briefed on.”
“I don’t have the notes in front of me, but I’m comfortable with the ordinance as it was written,” she said.
District 10 Councilman Marc Whyte, who helped force the meeting with Alderete Gavito and Councilwoman Teri Castillo (D5), would not say directly whether he had believed the ordinance was expected to cover people dumping their own pets.
“My understanding was we were imposing the fines on animal abandonment as it set forth in the statute (the ordinance language),” Whyte said.
Alderete Gavito’s chief of staff texted KSAT a statement in response to questions about the councilwoman’s understanding of what the ordinance was anticipated to cover versus what it actually covers.
“As was made clear during my comments during yesterday’s Council meeting, this ordinance applies to the abandonment of trapped animals and also works in concert with State laws regarding the overall abandonment of animals.”
Councilwoman Marina Alderete Gavito (D7)
A spokeswoman for the mayor referred KSAT back to Jones’ Thursday statement in which she said she had voted against the ordinance “because it lacked the required due diligence and public engagement.”
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