{"id":512677,"date":"2026-01-13T07:57:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T07:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/512677\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T07:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T07:57:09","slug":"jacksonville-councilmember-pushing-to-shorten-time-for-city-animal-shelter-to-hold-strays-action-news-jax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/512677\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacksonville councilmember pushing to shorten time for city animal shelter to hold strays \u2013 Action News Jax"},"content":{"rendered":"

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Jacksonville city councilmember Raul Arias, who represents the Southside, is responding to concerns over a push he\u2019s making to shorten the time for the city\u2019s animal shelter to hold stray animals before they\u2019re put up for adoption.<\/a><\/p>\n

Arias\u2019 bill<\/a> would change the requirements for the city\u2019s Animal Care and Protective Services (ACPS) shelter to hold animals for three days, instead of six, before they can be adopted. Some local pet owners and animal advocates are worried that the change could cause missing pets, whose owners are searching for them, to be adopted into another home.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want our city shelter to run properly and animals to be protected,\u201d said Vickie Nelson, who runs a Jacksonville-based Facebook group that helps reunite lost pets with their owners.<\/p>\n

Nelson is a pet owner herself, and said she often sees owners spend up to a week searching for their missing dogs and cats. She doesn\u2019t think that three days will be enough for those owners to find their pets before they\u2019re up for adoption, or, in some cases, before they even know their pet is at ACPS.<\/p>\n

\u201cCurrently, it\u2019s taking people 5 or 6 days to connect those dots,\u201d Nelson said, \u201cyou can\u2019t call the shelter, they don\u2019t have a phone number. If you email, chances are they\u2019re not going to get back in a timely manner at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that ACPS doesn\u2019t have a direct phone number. The city of Jacksonville\u2019s primary phone number, (904) 630-2489, is used as a way to reach the shelter instead. But shelter communications and marketing is something that Michael Bricker, chief of ACPS, told us he is looking to change as its stray animal hold time possibly changes.<\/p>\n

>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to decrease the amount of animals that are in our shelter, and increase the amount of animals that are with loving homes,\u201d Bricker said.<\/p>\n

Both Bricker and councilmember Arias told Action News Jax that overcrowding inside the shelter is the primary driver of the effort to shorten the animal stray hold time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s just not enough room,\u201d Arias said, \u201cno matter how much we always fund [ACPS], they have the same overlying issue, which is, capacity at the shelters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bricker told us he\u2019s in support of the shortening of the animal stray hold time, both to help ease crowding and as a way to speed up the adoption process. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re just sitting there waiting. And that\u2019s what leads to overcrowding,\u201d said Bricker, \u201cunfortunately, we only have a 12% return to owner rate. So out of the 100% of the dogs that come to us every year, only 12% actually get returned to their owner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Local animal advocates are sharing concerns about other parts of Arias\u2019 bill, too, namely the parts that would cut back on rules for keeping animals, mainly dogs, outdoors. One of the changes would eliminate the minimum shelter requirements for dogs kept outside to have three walls, a steady floor, and a roof. Another change eliminates the maximum weight and thickness requirements for chains used to tether dogs outside.<\/p>\n

Bricker claims taking away those requirements will make it easier for animal control to rescue dogs from dangerous situations, particularly in cases of animal cruelty.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs long as [dogs] do have those three sides, a roof, and a floor [to the shelter], there\u2019s nothing we can really do about it. Even if that dog isn\u2019t as protected as we would like,\u201d Bricker said.<\/p>\n

Nelson, however, feels that losing those requirements will make living conditions worse for dogs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it needs to be very black and white and specific, because, if not, we\u2019re going to have criminal defense attorneys getting everybody in Jacksonville off of charges for neglect, which doesn\u2019t really help the dogs in the end,\u201d Nelson said.<\/p>\n

Arias is holding a public meeting to talk about his bill tomorrow afternoon, starting at 2:30 PM, inside City Hall. <\/p>\n

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Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Jacksonville city councilmember Raul Arias, who represents the Southside, is responding to concerns over a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":512678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5136],"tags":[5229,76541,13816,167760,68233,17998,1066,46583,61251,3188,723,229109,7310,229110,425,167757,36012,82822,13818,28496,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,229111],"class_list":{"0":"post-512677","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ax_news","10":"tag-ben_becker","11":"tag-bricker","12":"tag-city_hall","13":"tag-duval","14":"tag-facebook","15":"tag-finn","16":"tag-finn_carlin","17":"tag-fl","18":"tag-florida","19":"tag-jackson_van_carlin","20":"tag-jacksonville","21":"tag-jacksonville_animal_and_protective_services","22":"tag-local","23":"tag-michael_bricker","24":"tag-nelson","25":"tag-raul_arias","26":"tag-taneka","27":"tag-tanika_hughes","28":"tag-united-states","29":"tag-united-states-of-america","30":"tag-unitedstates","31":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","32":"tag-us","33":"tag-usa","34":"tag-vicky_nelson"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115886728381422782","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}