.
Can you believe this? Mayeda says she is just getting started changing the County shelter system. From a story today in the LA Times by Carla Hall:
Coming into a shelter system "like this and trying to make change is like trying to change direction of the Titanic -- or an aircraft carrier," said Mayeda, who has been at the helm of the department for 6 1/2 years. "Change doesn't happen overnight. I can put out great new policies -- and that's the first step -- but then the next step is getting everyone to buy into them."
During the last fiscal year, which ended in June, the county system took in 85,975 animals, roughly a third more than the city of Los Angeles. That number includes cats, dogs, rabbits, snakes -- even livestock. In the same year, the county euthanized 16,989 dogs, 26,384 cats and 9,429 other animals.
With a 38.5% save rate, how long is it going to take just to match LAAS, let alone San Francisco, Philly or Reno?
.
Honest to God, I had no idea she'd been there that long.
ReplyDeleteOf course it does tell you all you need to know about the Board fo Supervisors. If you look at the Fujioka "report" on the death of Zephyr, which doesn't satisfactorily explain ANYTHING,
(available here: http://lacdacc.blogspot.com/2008/02/folded-dirty-laundry.html)
they're still letting her get away with PLANNING to have proper medication protocols, PLANNING to get maintenance on the HVAC at Carson (which is going to cost 35K, even though Marcia says it works perfectly), and for-god's-sake PLANNING to get industrial-capacity washers and dryers.
How long is it supposed to take her to notice that a County animal shelter isn't a condo? How long does old Marcia need to be on the job before she knows what the laundry load is like?
Exactly how much contempt do our Supervsiors hold us in? How much longer are we supposed to swallow this and pay their salaries - for nothing in return except dead dogs, dead cats, dead rabbits, etc. etc. etc.
County has more people, more area to cover. They take in 85,000 animals vs LA City's 56,000 animals. I think Mayeda has a tougher job. If you think the employees at City are bad, you should check out County. Here in LA Greenwalt and Stuckey had a problem getting the employees to do as instructed. They'd send memos saying for instance "do not instantly kill kittens, call fosters and rescue first." Employees still didn't do it. Diliberto then instituted a policy where the employees had to sign the memos they received so they couldn't say "I didn't get the memo." They still didn't do as instructed. Employees in City refuse to medicate, refuse to predicate euth animals, refuse to keep all cages clean. That's a big problem in both shelters. Unionized employees are difficult to direct. They know t hey don't have to do anything. It takes a good manager to motivate the employees to do as instructed. That's where Mayeda and Boks both fail.
ReplyDeleteDue respect to Commenter #2 but after more than six years either you can do your job or you can't. Either you have put in place procedures to weed out bad employees or you haven't. After more than six years Mayeda shouldn't be "planning" anymore, she should have achieved something other than pocketing over 1.1 million dollars in our tax money.
ReplyDeleteBut after more than six years it's still just excuses, and blame-shifting, and recycling lies that have already been debunked, such as "After dogs soil blankets our procedure is to fold the blankets and place them on the ground -- in the rain..."
Honestly, read the report. Zephyr's death was both unavoidable and an outside rescuer's fault. Apparently even though this puppy was in LACDACC custody the whole time, they have zero responsibility for her death.
It's seven pages of insulting our intelligence. And it's co-authored by the Director of the department being reported upon. And wouldn't you know, it turns out that no one at LACDACC did anything wrong! What are the odds?
No one is saying being Director of LACDACC is a picnic. But once you accept the job, and the $170,000 a year, you either DO the job or you should be fired. No third option where lives are at stake.
You all seem to forget that the departments are not animal welfare agencies providing universal health care to every animal in southern California. They are still animal control agencies running dog pounds to serve the citizens and tax-payers, not unwanted dogs and feral cats.
ReplyDeleteNobody with a lick of common sense supports or even cares about what you animal rights wackos are blabbing on and on about, year after year, decade after decade, regardless of who the general managers are. The normal people who live in the real world just want these animals off the streets.
Have a nice day!
I think "JOE" has just provided us with the best reason why these no kill programs won't work. People don't care. Joe is probably busy worrying how to feed his family, not the dog. This is the reality that needs to be dealt with and there is probably one thing Joe understands - the law. Force Joe, don't ask him, he's not that kinda guy.
ReplyDeleteSorry to disagree with Commenter #5 but what "Joe" wants is to continue to get paid by either the County or the City. Normal civilians who really don't care about animals are not going to the trouble of reading and posting comments on Ed Muzika's blog. But people with a cushy job to protect -- why they're some of Ed M.'s most devoted readers.
ReplyDelete"Joe," I will again point out that while it's understandable, given where you work, that you would assume every citizen of greater Los Angeles is a moron, (I hear they actually put that in the city/county orientation paperwork now) we who read this blog are not stupid.
We know who you are, we know what you want. We also know how nervous you get when someone starts to look like they're coming after your phoney job, and your big paycheck. We know how it makes you cry when it looks like someone may ask you to DO your job.
But you're not fooling ANYONE here. So take your bag of crap and ooze bag home on your own slime trail. No one's buying.
Just because someone disagrees with these comments they automatically become the dreaded AC employee. "Joe" represents a greatly amount of the general public. If he didn't the public would be swarming to the shelters to rescue the puppies and kittens and we would not be having these discussions. Wise up, the public in general does not care and doesn't understand why we do. Until we accept that, we can't expect to develop effective programs for those fools like "Joe".
ReplyDeleteNo doubt what #7 says about the public in general is true.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, if you don't care about a subject how likely are you to spend time in the middle of the day finding a blog on the subject you don't care about and then posting comments about blog entries on the subject you don't care about?
I don't care about video games. But I don't spend one second of my day trying to track down blogs on the subject and not only insulting the participants, but undercutting the reasons the blog exists.
That amount of energy is expended by people who care about a subject, not by people who don't. And County and City employees, some of them, care just as passionately about discrediting us as "wackos" as we do about a puppy dying. You should be aware of that by now.
Part of our problem is we let ourselves be BSed. We take what people say at face value. We're slow to catch on that things aren't right because we don't analyze the situation with any clarity. We don't ask hard questions about WHY Boks does this, instead of that, why Mayeda hides things instead of fixing them, and why people we vote and pay for don't seem to care about the things that mean everything to us.
You are fooling yourself if you don't think the people we oppose arem't consistently assessing what will get to us, how to manipulate us, how to make us feel that we're elitist for caring if a puppy dies.
Being an idealist does not require that you be naive.