.
I agree with Boks 100% here. Council is being short-sighted.The mission of animal services is to save as many lives as possible and you can't do that by bankrupting rescure groups. To vote for manditory spay/neuter to decrease inpounds to decrese deaths and then vote to increase fees is stupid. Sounds like a Rosendahl idea.
Boks blames city council for making rescue groups pay for animals
Angeles Department of Animal Services director Boks sent an email to New Hope rescue partners with attachments including changes to the New Hope program. The biggest change is that rescuers will have to pay the same fees to rescue animals not on the list as adopters do.
Boks blame the city council for charging rescuers full fees for animals on the New Hope list. "Additionally, the City Council and the CAO recently expressed concern in regards to the huge increase in the amount of waived fees incurred by the Department in the past year, chiefly related to the New Hope Program."
The City Council is about to pass a mandatory spay and neuter law to help reduce animals coming into the shelters. But according to Boks, they are not happy that rescue groups are getting animals free because it means the Department of Animal Control brings in less money. Charging rescue groups full price for animals not on the New Hope list will mean less animals will get rescued. So they will end up with more animals in the shelter, not less. And if rescue groups can't afford to rescue so many animals because they have to pay full price, they will be killed.
Does the City Council know they are getting the blame for this? They seem to really support helping animals in the shelters so it is weird that they are now forcing animal control to make rescue groups pay full price.
Email and let them know and perhaps they will back down. (Districts 1 through 15 in order) The other person being blamed is the CAO City Administrative Officer Karen Sisson. Email her using this form: http://www.lacity.org/cao/cao_comments.htm
councilmemberreyes@lacity.org
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8 comments:
I agree with City Council. Boks did the same thing in Arizona and New York. Animals were free to rescue groups. This did not cause the number of animals taken in by rescuers to increase. Therefore, it was not an effective program. The same thing happened here. The Dept lost revenue and did not increase adoptions to rescue groups.
Of course rescue groups want the animals free. Money is money. I think they should pay for animals not on the green or red lists. If they don't want to pay, wait for the animal to get on the green or red list. This way the public has ample time to adopt it. Hopefully the public will adopt it then the rescuer has more room for other animals.
Boks should not be blaming City Council for his mistake. He knew this would not increase adoptions and would cause revenue to drop. He knew it would eventually be stopped, as it was in Arizona. He did this to score points with rescuers. Now that they are losing this, they are mad. He should have expected this.
One last thing, the revenue goes to the general fund, so Boks didn't care. It didn't affect his budget.
$30 for a dog will bankrupt the rescue group? If they're that broke, they shouldn't be rescuing. They will spend more on the dog for veterinary care and food before it gets adopted.
Noah's Ark was raided. Most of those dogs were free New Hope dogs. Free dogs was partially responsible for that hoarding situation.
If free animals doesn't cause more to be adopted, why do it? It only benefits the rescue group a tiny bit.
The Hayden does not strickly define "rescue" as a legit 501c3 group but rather anyone that "presents" themselves as a "rescue". Thus hoarders take advantage. Offering "free" to rescuers is not an answer. It only diminishes the almost non-existant value of animals. I have taken many an animal from the shelter and always paid the regular fees because it was a good deal for me. At my local shelter the fees to adopt were cheaper than it would cost me to alter the pet. If the animal is altered prior to release to the groups then no worries about the groups can't find vets who do early spay/neuter. I have seen too many groups adopting without spay/neuter because their vet advises against it. The Hayden doesn't provide any power of enforcement against this breaking of the law either. If a rescue doesn't have the money to get an animal out of the shelter then where is the money coming from to alter the animal prior to adoption? Could it be that they adopt out and expect the adopter to take the pet to the vet and pay for it? This is not a good thing to do either. Pay the fees, animal is altered, no fuss, no worry, and adopt it out for an adoption fee large enough to cover what you paid. Helps the shelters with additional income that can go toward more programs to help the animals. We certainly don't want the shelters to lose money, that doesn't help anything.
The two previous comments completely miss the point.
The rescue groups which save the lives of shelter animals under the New Hope program are non profit charities. Non profit: get it?
Do you know how much they have to spend on shelter animals to get them well? They invariably come out with URI, pneumonia, really bad kennel cough, mange, broken limbs, etc.
And the full price is $91 for a dog, not $30. County shelters charge $37.
There are always a lot of moms and litters in the shelters. The puppies get adopted but the moms often don't.
If Boks gets his way, rescuing a mom and litter of 6 puppies will cost $541. If they are all sick--which they almost always are--that's $541 which could have been spent on vet care.
Also, not all animals will end up on the green or red lists. That was the original plan presented to rescuers when Boks took over but it hasn't been true for a while. So get your facts straight.
The longer animals stay in the shelters, the sicker they get, and the more it costs to get them well.
Not charging rescuers does not lead to hoarding. There were hoarders before the animals were free, and there will be hoarders if the animals cost $500.
I don't know what the charge for cats is, but 6,000 rescues at $90 each is $540,000. That is not chump change. Maybe fees can be the same as County, $37. That is still $220,000 in savings.
You might think of it as a city investment to support non-profits. I have long supported this approach.
As to whether the program works or not can not be discovered just looking at how much New Hope adoptions have increased. We really don't know what would have happened to N.H. adoptions rates if the animals were not free.
You cannot say putting that $500,000 into spay/neuter would be more effective, because no one knows without research what effect such an investment will have a year down the line.
You don't get it. Everyone has their theories of how to allocate resources, but there is no research in any of these areas, even the economic impact on N.H. partners by the subsidies.
I have called over and over and over for research in this area and no one listens.
Maybe $250,000 put into research eventually will save 5,000 animals 3 years from now.
Until then, it is always just a shot in the dark.
Boks has refused to do this basic research, I don't know why.
When I saw the heading for this post:
"Concil's (mispelled BTW) Decision Will Kill More Animals, " I thought it would be about the spay/neuter law as that would be the truth.
While the new fees for New Hope are ridiculous and will certainly kill more animals, the mandatory spay neuter law will also kill more animals. It's easy to fault Rosendahl if you don't like him; but his point ( when he objected to the spay/neuter law- although poorly stated) reflects the truth about this unnecessary and animal killing code:
It is unenforceable. Period.
And at a cost of $400,000 per year it basically disables the New Hope program by making the council look for the money...wait, they found it...raise fees for rescues.
It is unenforceable. Why?
1. There is not enough staff to canvass or investigate unaltered pets in the city.
They cannot even handle the workload they have and don't respond to a large percentage of calls for assistance. If only 20% of the dogs in the city are licensed and canvassing has done nothing to improve that, then just how are they going to find all these unaltered dogs?!
The only animals which the City comes in contact with are those brought to the shelter (or those impounded for other reasons). Altering is already in place for those animals before this new law. Reesponsible pet owners ALREADY alter their animals without the law so we're aiming for irresponsible owners and breeders? These are the people you are not going to affect with a new law (and they won't even know about it...or care).
2.So who does the law affect? People who don't know about it and don't care to license their dogs anyway.It will never touch 99% of those people, unless their animal is impounded. Faced with fees to redeem the animal, many will abandon it. More killed animals.
3. Backyard breeders are already underground and they will merely go further underground faced with this new law. Ist this going to stop the guy selling a box full or pit bull puppies on the corner? NO.
Is the department going to institute and FUND a spay/neuter task force to find all the unaltered animals. NO.
Is this going to stop the people who allow their unaltered animals to run loose? No.
4. This law is puffery and only meant to allow this GM to publicize that he passed it-his ONLY accomplishment in 2 years.
Look at the numbers a year, or even 6 months, from now. Killing will be higher, guaranteed. Adoptions will be severely down. Owner surrenders will be severely UP. The only problem is, the if the rescue fees are raised it will not be so obvious as to the cause of the increased killings which will make for a very muddled situation.
The combination of these two acts by Council is disastrous for the animals!
The people who supported this mandatory spay/neuter law did it as a feel-good reaction to a real problem. But it doesn't solve it. Did they even read the
law?
Wanna spend $400K? Spend it on marketing. Buy 40 BillBoards throughout the City for a month. Use it to raise awareness and to encourage adoptions. Make spay neuter FREE for all animals and let the public know that the shelters even exist. Huh? Go ahead, drive through the intersection of Lacy St. and Ave 26 (the entrance to North Central Shelter). Tell me what tells you there is an animal shelter there. Nothing.
Wanna spend $400K? Spend it on mandatory training and adoption counseling for all dogs adopted from the pounds to reduce the number of animals that come back.
The public is ignorant to the animal problems (let alone the existence of the department) in this city. Want proof? Spend 20 minutes outside your local Ralph's or Vons or Starbucks. Ask 20 people if they know where their local animal shelter is. Ask them if they know there is mandatory licensing and altering in Los Angeles.
Be shocked at the results of your little survey. Let's get out heads out of the sand and our minds outside our own little circle of rescuers and activists.
This gigantic problem can only be solved by changing the minds and the behavior of the general public.
Without a new and creative mind at the head of this department (rife with laziness, poor employees, corruption and mismanagement) nothing will change. What will make that happen? It seems that only taking to the streets will work.
Emails don't work, complaining doesn't work...even the behind the scenes maneuvering of interested parties has not rid us of this arrogant, sociopathic , narcissistic and ineffective boob.
The problem is lack of leadership and allowing council to act in this irresponsible manner.
God help the animals, because this won't do it.
The CAO report showed that giving the animals away for free did not increase adoptions.The purpose of giving animals away for free to rescue groups was to increase adoptions. Therefore, the program was ineffective. The reason rescuers did not take more animals was because they were full. Why would the City continue the program?The answer here is to recruit more rescue partners who are not full.
Non-profit certification does not mean the organization does not make a profit. They must at least break even. They can't go negative. Rescue groups prefer to take the young, pretty, healthier animals over sick, old, unattractive ones. It makes sense. They can adopt out the cute ones faster than the other ones and sometimes at a profit. Of course they want the ones that aren't on the green or red lists yet. They want them before other rescue groups can get them. If they want them, they can pay for them, or just wait until they're on the green list. Rescue is about rescuing the animals from being killed. Just wait until they're on the euth list otherwise you're just taking an animal from someone else who wants him. You're not rescuing the animal.
"Just wait until they're on the euth list otherwise you're just taking an animal from someone else who wants him."
That's a nice plan, but that's assuming 1) you're involved in a rescue that gets the green or red notices before the dog is euthanized, and 2) the rescuers can physically make it to the shelter after the dog has been made available to the public but before the dog is euthanized. 405 rush hour traffic, anyone? It's a killer for anybody who wants to keep a full time job and yet rush to/from the shelters.
New Hope rescue status can address these issues, especially in times where the rescue volunteers, who work full time jobs and need to take care of their own dogs, simply cannot get to the shelters before they close. New Hope rescuers can simply call in a pull.
However, there aren't alot of rescue groups signed up with New Hope. If you look at the list of New Hope partners on the LAAS website, the list is only a third of a pdf page. Compare that with over 3 pages on the Maricopa CACC website. Why aren't rescues signing up as part of LA's New Hope? My theory is because they have to sign off to being treated like collectors by LAAS. I bet they have to report all their foster homes and waive their right to refuse a search of their premises without a search warrant or even due notice. It's not something that a rescuer in LA and LA county would want to do in light of unreasonable pet limits, because even if an extra animal is not a permanent resident and is only in transit, who knows how LAAS will view it. Why risk losing their owned animals in addition to the foster animals?
If LA city and LA county really wants to help increase the number of dogs that rescuers can take in, they need to lift ridiculous pet limits. A person could have 2 acres of land out in the middle of nowhere and be allowed to have a high number of livestock (fowl, goats, horses), but the cat/dog limit is still set to 3.
So in short, money has not been the issue with good financial stewardship and creative fundraising. Time is somewhat an issue. Pet limits are definately an issue. Raising pet limits would increase the number of animals a rescuer could take in before being considered full.
Just my scattered thoughts.
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