Animal Services Commission

 

The AHA report raised the issue of governance at the shelter due to the numerous problems outlined in their report (More about the AHA process here.) They provided several options for improving the shelter ranging from additional staff to having a private group take over the operations.

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As part of the discussion the option of creating a County Commission with oversight authority over the Animals Services Dept (ASD) was presented. This was included in a Board Presentation in February 2016. Based on the presentation, the Board directed the ASD to do the following:

1. Seek input from stakeholders on models of governance.

2. Have staff research a potential advisory committee and return to the Board at a later date.

Because the Board did not provide a deadline, ASD has only just started this process  almost 8 months later even though they were due to present a progress report on the AHA process at the 10/4/2016 Board Meeting. The progress consisted of preparing a Survey Monkey, getting limited review from the Oversight Team on it, and sending it out to a limited group of rescues and the shelter volunteers.  They mentioned the survey in the 10/4 board letter but didn't say how many people it was sent to or how many people responded. They did not present any results.

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The  10/4 Board presentation was a summary of what the County considered to be the successes of the AHA process. Many of the people who attended were expecting a proposal about the AS Commission. They had gathered over 700 signatures on a change.org petition supporting this and 8 out the 10 public commenters supported this idea. Several Supervisors (Carbajal, Adam, Lavagnino) were critical of AS management for not finalizing the MOUs for rescues present at the various shelters (ASAP, BUNS, CAPA) and also the SBC Animal Care Foundation, a fundraising organization started by County managers to collect donations to support the shelters.  Two of the rescues were surprised to learn at this meeting that the County was considering giving them leases for their spaces at the SB shelter as this had never been proposed to them. 

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The Supervisors were also critical of how little progress had been made on the governance issue. The commenters pointed out various negative aspects of the shelter  and AHA process as follows:

1. If the Board could not get ASD to be responsive, what chance do the stakeholders have?

2. Why hasn't ASD implemented the AHA Report recommendation to extend shelter hours to improve public viewing hours and adoption rates and decrease the time of confinement in the dog kennels (minimum of 16 hrs on weekends)? SLO and Ventura County Shelters have already done this, showing that the Union MOUs used as an excuse by manager Jan Glick for not extending the hours is probably not valid.

3. The high cost to care for an adoptable dog from SB City in the SB Shelter of about $4000 per dog. (City contract is $320,000 this year, SB delivers about 200 dogs to shelter, about 60-70% are strays that are picked up by their owners right away. 

4. How the very department that caused the problems at the shelter were given extensive resources and 4 additional staff positions  as a reward. They have spent about $100K on AHA projects and an additional $100K on staff time for all of the AHA Oversight Team and subcommittee meetings starting in July 2015. 

5. Discussion of the Commission and request to establish a definite time that this would be brought back to the Board. A comment letter was submitted in support of the Commission to review shelter practices. See full proposal here.

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After the meeting the public health department posted a summary of the presentation on Edhat but did not mention any of the public feedback on the meeting. The video of the meeting is here.

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The County CEO Mona Miyasato got the Director of Public Health Dr. Wada to agree to bring back the governance issue to the board in April 2017. At that point there will not be enough to get a Commission established in time to take over then the Oversight Team disbands in June of 2017. 

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