A proposal to fine people caught dumping unwanted pets and other animals will get a council vote after all.
Councilwoman Teri Castillo (D5), Councilwoman Marina Alderete Gavito (D7), and Councilman Marc Whyte (D10) filed a three-signature memo on Friday morning to force a city council vote creating fines between $500 and $2,000 for people caught abandoning animals in the city.
The three councilmembers asked staff to add the item to the council’s Sept. 11 agenda, a week after it was supposed to be up for a vote.
Alderete Gavito is the author of a council consideration request (CCR) that prompted Thursday’s proposal. The same trio of councilmembers forced another meeting three weeks ago over what they saw as San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones overreaching her authority to change how council policy proposals move forward.
That battle appears to be ongoing.
“This is a public safety issue we’ve been working on for a year and a half. It has been fully vetted through the Council’s established process and is now ready for final action,” the council members said in a joint news release. “Despite the Mayor’s attempt to obstruct our legislative process, this policy will move forward. Animal abandonment threatens both residents and animals, and the City should act promptly to adopt this critical protection.”
The animal abandonment proposal was supposed to be up for a vote at Thursday’s council meeting, but City Manager Erik Walsh withdrew it the night before. A city hall insider, though, said Jones was behind the move because the proposal stemmed from a council consideration request (CCR) that was filed during the previous council term.
The councilmembers also laid the responsibility at Jones’ feet in their memo.
“This is the exact item that was removed from the Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025, A-Session agenda by staff at the request of Mayor Jones,” the memo said.
Jones has butted heads with councilmembers over her attempts to unilaterally change how councilmembers’ policy proposals move ahead in the CCR process.
CCRs are one of the primary ways that councilmembers can suggest and promote policy changes in the city. However, the process is often lengthy, with multiple committee meetings before an idea goes up for a vote.
Although she appeared to back off at least some of her changes after the Aug. 13 council meeting forced by the same councilmembers, Jones appears to be following through with her insistence that any CCRs that “did not get across the finish line” before she and the new council members took office in June.
The mayor repeatedly refused to answer reporters’ questions during Thursday’s meeting, but a spokesperson for her office emailed KSAT a statement on Thursday night after the story was originally posted.
Though the statement did not admit Jones’ involvement, it did confirm the reasoning behind the withdrawal.
“Item 11 was pulled from the City Council agenda yesterday evening by the City staff, as the expired CCR had not been reviewed by the Governance Committee. As has been communicated, expired CCRs from the previous council may be resubmitted, and the Governance Committee will decide on how best to move forward once received.”
Spokesperson for Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones — Sep. 4, 2025
The same spokesperson emailed a statement from the mayor Friday afternoon in response to the council members’ memo.
“I appreciate the council members’ advocacy for this legislation, but it is still important to remember that we are a new council and there are several members who did not have an opportunity to review the ordinance. Following the CCR process, all items must be reviewed by the new governance committee and this ordinance did not go through the new committee. These council members are skipping an important step in the legislative process. I believe that our new council has the responsibility to review proposals that did not complete the legislative process in the previous session.”
Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones
Peacocks, puppies, ponies and pests
Though the proposal would cover all animals, not just dogs or cats, its origins were much more exotic: peafowl.
Alderete Gavito’s Northwest Side district includes the Glen Oaks and Dreamhill Estates neighborhoods, where peacocks and peahens roam in colorful flocks.
In March 2024, the District 7 councilwoman filed a CCR that asked to make San Antonio a bird sanctuary where unlicensed people would be fined for relocating birds.
“Working through that CCR, we recognized that we needed to do something because we had some instances where people were trapping and relocating the peafowl to other locations,” ACS Director Jon Gary told KSAT earlier this week. “I think some were dumped in Woodlawn Park, which was one of the locations that some got relocated to.”
The proposal was reviewed in three Public Safety Committee meetings. It appeared to have been expanded after the most recent Public Safety Committee meeting in April, when the committee voted to send the proposed code changes to the city council for a vote.
“And, as I was working with our team, I realized that we don’t really even have an abandonment ordinance for any animal in San Antonio, which, for a municipality our size, is kind of uncommon,” Gary said.
“So, I started — what we ended up doing was approaching the councilwoman and saying, ‘Let’s not just make this about peafowl. We can actually address abandonment for all animals.“
Though abandoning animals is already against state law, Gary said enforcing that when there is no harm to the animal can be difficult.
The proposed municipal fines councilmembers were expected to consider would be between $500 and $2,000 for a first offense, between $1,000 and $2,000 for a second offense and $2,000 for a third offense and beyond. An ACS spokeswoman said those fines would be per animal.
Those figures put the fines on par with those for ear cropping, failing to report hitting an animal with a car or violating dangerous dog requirements.
“Whether that be in a parking lot, bus stop, it doesn’t matter,” Gary said. “You can’t abandon any animal here in San Antonio.”
The previous city council also approved higher fines in December for dog bites and other repeat infractions.
At the Animal Defense League (ADL) of Texas, abandoned animals can be a problem, despite posted signs that say leaving them alone is against the law.
On Sunday, six Chihuahua-mix puppies were left in a box at a donation station in the parking lot of a Northeast Side campus.
Staff found the approximately eight-week-old puppies “very hungry and extremely thirsty,” said ADL of Texas Director of Marketing and Development Felicia Nino.
“They could have just easily crawled out and been walking around the parking lot and possibly, you know, gone onto Nacogdoches (Road),” Nino said, while holding one of the dogs named “Zebra.”
ACS said it has found other types of abandoned animals, such as a pony left tied up at a baseball field in 2019.
Residents could unwittingly find themselves in violation of the ordinance, which would also cover wild animals caught in live-release traps.
ACS recommends contacting licensed professionals or Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation to help with the relocation of any trapped animals.
Gary said officers would also use their discretion when enforcing the fines.
Read the full three-signature memo below
Clerks Time Stamped Memo by sheath
Read also
