The City of Pampa commissioners held their bi-monthly meeting earlier this week, starting off with a public comment from PAWS (Pampa Animal Welfare Society) Director Faustina Curry.
“PAWS was started in 2010 out of a group meeting about what was happening at the animal shelter here in Pampa. Richard Morris talked me into being in charge of the group. We got our 501c3 in 2010 from the IRS and we started out with $240 in our budget. This last year, we spent $270,000 on vet bills for city and low-income animals. We started out trying to reduce the euthanasia rate that was at the shelter at the time, which was 95%. So that’s how we got started. Over the years, we have managed to get the euthanasia rate down to 10%. The last two years have been extremely hard. Everybody is full across the country. There are way too many dogs and way too many cats everywhere. Although we are still keeping the rate down, it’s still higher than we want it to be. It really is a people problem. People come in and dump their animals at the shelter or dump them out in the county, just anywhere. When you talk to them, they just don’t care. I understand some of it is economics, but a lot of it is they just don’t understand what they’re doing or they’re not getting them spayed or neutered. A lot of cities have spay and neuter ordinances, but I don’t know if Pampa will ever get that or not. We’ve had more puppies this year than I can remember.”
“The shelter and PAWS has a really unique relationship. We from the beginning have had this wonderful thing where the city managers have helped us where we all work together to try to take care of the animals. One of the things I first learned is when you have animals in close proximity to one another and they are unvaccinated, you end up having disease. I was on the commission for 12 years, but I never really went to the shelter and saw how it was. It had no heating or air conditioning, it had a bathroom where the door was half broken, it was just a disaster. That’s one of the things PAWS did because what happened was they started getting animals in every day at the shelter and they would just drag them across the lot and put them down. But they started dying in the shelter. They would be brought in and two days later, they were dead. Finally we gathered enough money and we found out that an antivirus that had gotten down into the cracks of two kennels they had and it was killing the animals. So we started campaigning and Richard Morris helped us to try to get us a new shelter built. We went to every group and did everything to get that bond election passed which it did. That’s why we have that wonderful new shelter which is about 13 years old now. From that we started trying to vaccinate the animals. By the end of this year, PAWS will have spent $20,000 on vaccines. We vaccinate every animal that walks in the shelter door. It gets a parvo/distemper vaccine, Bordetella vaccine which protects against kennel cough, and then when Dr. G. comes in every other Thursday to help us with health certificates and animals that are going to rescue, we give rabies vaccines. That $20,000 actually doesn’t include the rabies vaccine. All those diseases go rampant-one dog gets it, then half of them do. We get a lot of these vaccines from the Zoetis Shelter Program, which is a Pfizer company. Dr. Easley helped us with that, then Dr. Gordzelik took over and he’s over the overseer of the program where we get all of our vaccines and medicines from at a tremendously low cost.”
“We also take care of all the medical of any shelter animals that walk through the door. If a dog walks in and has skin issues, ear issues, has a fractured leg, or lacerations, or disease, we treat them. We take them to Gray County Vet and the shelter staff helps tremendously with that. It doesn’t matter what it is unless it is something that will not enhance their life to be adopted. You wouldn’t believe the neglect we see-the dogs that have been nearly starved to death. We also run a low-income emergency medical program. Most of those animals would be dumped in the shelter and the shelter would’ve euthanised them, but when we started this, it also helped the landfill because the landfill had to process all these animals in the landfill. I remember that distinctly when we first started it. There are a lot of low-income people here in Pampa who have nobody and are on a fixed social security program. If you’ve taken your animal to the vet recently, it costs $68 to walk through the door and then any of the money for medicines, X-rays or anything else, people just can’t do it. If someone can’t get their animal emergency help, what happens? The animal usually dies a terrible death at the house or it comes to the shelter and is put down. We kept seeing this need so we help people with emergencies for their pets. For a lot of people, their animal is their only companion. If you’ve ever done Meals on Wheels, you’ll see that.”
“We keep animals a lot longer than they were ever probably assigned to be kept at the shelter. We work hard trying to get them out. We used to try to send out at least 1,000 to 1,200 a year to rescue. That is almost impossible anymore because the rescues are all full. Most rescues require that they all have vaccines and are spayed or neutered. We have to pay for licenses and our car insurances just went from $3,000 to $6,000 for next year. We pay for all that.”
“We’re having to put down more dogs, and it’s really a hard thing. If you’ve ever walked into a shelter and you look at the staff who take care of those animals along with the volunteers who feed them, clean them, take them outside and play with them, and when you say, ‘we have to put down animals today,’ it’s hard. Alex and I and the staff sit down and talk about who we can put down. Which dog is not adoptable, won’t go to rescue, is aggressive, but it is really difficult. The poor staff is then assigned to go get the dog, take it down to the EU room, walk it down there, and put it down. These are God’s creatures and they know that something is wrong. By the time they get to the EU room, they are shaking and are afraid. They can feel it. I didn’t ever know what putting down the dogs meant, but now I do and I hate that day.”
“We also do a low-income spay and neuter program. In Pampa, we do about 800 animals a year. Some people can pay a little bit, but if not, we spay and neuter anyway because we don’t need any more puppies.”
“We run a food pantry. We saw a need and we try to take care of it. I don’t know how many pounds of food we go through a week. When we need it, we go out and buy it or people donate it. We give out 2-gallon bags of food. We have people who walk or ride up on bikes with backpacks, and we make the decision that we are looking out for the dog or cat and we don’t question why they’re there.”
“The shelter takes wild animals, like birds, baby raccoons, possums and they go to Southwest Wildlife. We have volunteers who come in all the time and they sit with the animals, socialize with them because unsocialized animals don’t get adopted or go to rescue. If the shelter staff needs something, we try to get it. We bring in food, we buy office supplies, we buy bedding, we buy brooms and dustmops, we buy stuff for the cat rooms. We raised the money to build the big top over the play yards for protection. We do Christmas with Santa Claus where you can bring your pet for pictures with Santa. We do the Bark ‘n Splash that helps tremendously. We do a Dip and Chip at the shelter where we set up big tubs of dip for the dogs and we chip them if they want that. One thing we’re doing now is working on getting a grant to get all animals chipped at the shelter so people don’t have to pay.”
“You’re all more than welcome to visit us. The City and PAWS have worked together really well and our budget this year is $300,000, but we raise money through grants and Panhandle Gives. The Panhandle Gives is by the Amarillo Area Foundation where we get some extra money from however much we raise, and our goal this year is $40,000. And don’t forget the Shrimp Boil in February!”
Next on the agenda was to hold a public hearing regarding the substandard structure located at 2306 Navajo, with Code Enforcer Jeff Kennedy making remarks.
“This one was pretty bad. My first two and a half years with the City, I did not even know there was a house there because it just looked like a vacant lot with evergreens growing everywhere. It wasn’t until a couple of them started dying out, and I realized there was a house there. We started working it and we got a hold of Tim Darling who owns the house and brought it to his attention. At this point right now, he has taken most of the evergreens down and I believe Wendell’s Roofing is now in the process of going to take the whole roof off and replace it. Mr. Darling has already started replacing windows in it. If it wasn’t going to be fixed, we were going to condemn it and take it down. But he can show you what he has done and what he plans to do.”
“I’ve been here since Saturday and in that time I’ve cut back a lot of those evergreens where the roofers can access it and get a roof on that,” Tim Darling said. “I’ve got a couple of windows fixed. I plan to keep working on it and get it scraped down and put some paint on it. I’ve got a short timeline to get it painted with winter coming, so it may have to wait until spring. I plan to turn it either into a rental property or sell it.”
With no further remarks, the hearing was closed and the commission agreed to take no action on the structure to allow Mr. Darling more time to get the house repaired and up to code.
Next on the agenda was to consider approving the minutes of the October 27, 2025 regular commission meeting, which was approved.
Next was to consider on first reading Ordinance No. 1827, amending the revenues and appropriations for the support of the City of Pampa for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2024 and ending September 30, 2025, which was approved.
Next was to consider approving an Interlocal Agreement between the City of Pampa and Potter County for participation in the Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority Catalytic Converter Grant Program and authorize the Mayor to execute all necessary documents, which was approved.
The commission then went into an executive session.
After the session and the commission reconvened, they continued with the next item, adopting Resolution No. R25-027, casting the City of Pampa’s votes for the Board of Directors of the Gray County Appraisal District, which was approved.
Last on the agenda was to consider approving on first reading Ordinance No. 1828, providing a method of acquiring a going concern that is a service provider to the general public through eminent domain and establishing a procedure for determining compensation, which was approved.
With no further items on the agenda, the meeting was adjourned.
