Criticize Boks for the Right Reasons

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Boks is being roundly criticized for things I think he should not.

Part of Boks’ job is PR, hobnobbing, building relationships with partners, Council, City staff, and reporters, thereby raising LAAS’ profile. Being GM does not mean you spend every hour in the kennels. The Chief of Police does not spend every hour in precinct stations. We'd think he would be nuts to do so when he should be trying to create a consensus community, building a better command structure, better relationships with Council, or improving the IT capability of the department. It is up to the operations GM to be in constant contact with shelter management. This is Knaan's job now even if Boks was never there before.

Operations are not everything.Cheerleading the way to No-Kill is essential. I think public education regarding the realities of pet overpopulation and writing a pro-Ed, pro-LAAS blog certainly are valuable uses of his time. I do not think writing an 11 page Fact vs. Rumor self-defense post is a misuse of time, especially when your job is on the line. I do not feel defending yourself from any accusation is objectionable. I ought to know, I was writing almost daily rebuttals to attacks against Boks, LAAS and me.

I do not think having a Match.com account objectionable, but maybe denying having had one is. I do not think sending risqué emails or worse is objectionable in itself. I do not think writing sermons should be verboten; in fact, if you can do it, you must, it is a moral obligation.I do not agree that having newly named programs is only a semantic/marketing joke if they work better than before they had names. Of course it is objectionable if you say you have a program and it does not exist.I do think that using the words No-Kill in the same breathe as LAAS is objectionable, as it appears to be a very distant goal and a conceptual mirage the way things are going now.

Boks has provided no reason to have confidence that LAAS will ever be No-Kill; he has provided no success, no plan, no apology, no explanation of where we are, and he tells lies like having taken a Giant Leaps towards No-Kill when the euth rate is static.

Everything short of cannibalism is acceptable to me if real progress towards saving animals' lives is happening.

Bringing the kill rate down, bringing the disease rate down and hiring eight new vets is critical. That this is not happening is the only reason to criticize Boks. The only reason. That is his job, his contract, his commitment.

In fact, I think each month we should publish the euthanasia and live save raw numbers and the euth and live save rates as a constant measure of his success or lack thereof. We need to list any new vet hired each month. We should list what new kennels have come on line. We should ask for each month's first day kill numbers. And, we should continually demand a plan.
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree that PR is important to help save animals. If that PR is not saving more animals, it's not effective. He needs to concentrate on programs that are effective at saving lives. Just saying "we're going to be nokill!" and "were saving puppies!" does not make you nokill. He needs to actually do the work, then he can brag about it.

I think he should be doing his "truth vs rumor" reports. Of course they should be honest. I feel some of his reports were honest, some were not. He can't say that the death rate is lower when it's actually higher. He can't say he never sent lewd photos when he did. He can't say he never had anything to do with the support blogs when he most certainly did. Lying is wrong. If he lies about one thing, how can he expect anyone to believe anything he says.

I don't think having a match.com page is objectionable. It does show poor judgement to have a singles page when you are not single. He was in a "committed" relationship with his NY girlfriend at the time. A few of us met her when she came to LA. It also shows poor character to lie in a singles ad. He lied about his physical appearance and a few other things. Once a liar, always a liar.

I don't have a problem with him renaming programs, if it helps save animals. If he's doing it to just make it seem like he's creating new programs and doing a "great" job, that is not acceptable. I don't have a problem with him doing anything IF it saves animals. A lot of the PR he did was for his own image, only.

Currently he is holding animals longer than before. In most cases, it's not to help the animal. It's to help his numbers. If a big old brown pitbull hasn't been adopted in a month, why keep it six more months then kill it?

I agree with the rest of what you wrote.

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