We were talking about shelter reform and many have suggested a Winograd consult followed by his picking top management. Of course you know the Mayor and Mayoral staff will hate this idea.
Certain others with a hate Winograd attitude say anyone but Nathan. One helpful person with an attitude stated others do consults, and I was given the 2004 HSUS consult report for Riverside County by Brad Jensen. The latter if 174 pages long and Nathan's 112
Nathan's was also a 2004 consult I believe..
You read them and judge their relative qualities.
http://www.nathanwinograd.com/linked/paccaassessment.pdf
http://www.clerkoftheboard.co.riverside.ca.us/agendas/2004/2004_08_10/16.03.pdf
More info on Riverside statistics by Brad Jensen are below. Take a look at these figures, they are important:
www.sheltertrak.com/downloads/riverside/
Besides the quality of the report, I like Nathan's better for a number of reasons, it seems more to the point and has a directive toward 90% save; HSUS does not.
But the quality of the report is not enough. There are areas in which I think both fail: how to implement; hour much additional time and budget is required to do all this; best use of volunteers to help staff; manpower analysis; how to get difficult employees out.
However, we can measure the perfomance of these two systems two years after the consults. How much impact the consults had on the current perfomance, I don't know. No one does.
Remember, Philly went from a Nathan speculation that Philly was an 85-90 kill before his consult and manager placement. For the past 12 months their stated kill rate was 39%. That is more than cutting euthanasia in half in two years.
Lets take a look now at Riverside for 2006 and 2007. The pie chart is supplied by Brad Jensen on sheltertrak.com. The difference is astounding:
CLICK ON ANY CHART TO MAKE IT LARGER
Remember, Philly is 39%, Riverside, 72%; Riverside kills about twice as many.
Who provided the better consult and subsequent management? Nathan, even though he says Philly is not making the progress they should and is backsliding. Even though the operations manager he touts has jumped ship. For Nathan, Philly is now a failure, yet they are doing twice as well as Riverside.
Now, let's take LA Animal Services under Boks. We know for sure his 2006 stats are not credible because he was refusing kittens and ferals. The first year he started, as I remember, his kill aret for cats was way over 60%, and I don't have a 2006 pie chart but look, for 2007 through January 2008:
Two years after Ed,there has been--at best--a 12% reduction vs. a 55% reduction for Nathan's Philly.
In addition, the HSUS consult does not really emphasize decreasing the killing as a main point, or decreasing intake. I can't find it now, but somewhere the HSUS calculated a 2003-2004 impound number as 28,000. As you can see it was well over 31,o00 in 2006 and has increased to about 33,000 in 2006-07.Therefore, whatever happened after the 2005 HSUS consult has led to increased impounds and killing in 2007, while Nathan's consult led to over a 55% reduction of killing.
Boks had an 11% reduction. What does this tell you?
However both consults were weak on implementation, budgeting and manpower. There was no analysis to how many hours it took to do much what was being done vs. how many how and organization and structural change it would take to implement Nathan's or the HSUS recommendations. This is a HUGE omission by both.
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5 comments:
There are more things to consider such as population growth. Riverside grew at crazy levels in the last ten years. That's why intake may be up.
LA was already doing most of the low kill programs before Boks got here.That's why there's not that much improvement, real or imagined. Philadelphia wasn't doing many of the programs so there was more improvement.
There are many things to consider than just who was the Director at what time. Right now foreclosures are way up, people dumping animals everywhere. If you compare this time to a time when people made more money and were more likely to adopt a dog instead of dump a dog, things would be different.
For your information regarding Riverside, Robert Miller, the director, came out of Phoenix and was there about the same time as Boks. I met Robert Miller for the first time shortly after he started and we met at the Winograd presentation in Rancho. Robert claims to be going no kill but has actually followed the same route as Boks. He has managed to intrench himself with the "good ol' boys" in Riverside. Complaints are coming left and right from the same activists that brought about the Grand Jury investigation, yet, again, the elected officials are failing to hear them because they are being told that Riverside is following no kill. Just a little insight on Riverside.
Of course there are other things to consider, there always are. But without an analysis of all the factors we can't even validly speculate.
For example, Riverside for ten years? I was comparing Nathan's 2 year live release figures to Riverside's. That is two years, not ten.
I also do not see Philly's impound numbers decreasing that much over the two years either, yet live saves dramaticaly increase.
Look at the dismal adoption rate for Riverside compared to LA, Philadelphia, LA County or San Francisco.
I don't see the HSUS consult has had much positive impact. Why? For one thing, they did not even consider the possibility of a 90% live save shelter as a goal of the consult. There was not the will to make it happen or even the belief it could happen.
It is not a matter just as to the quality of the report, but subsequent management's ability or will to implement major changes.
So, let us compare LA and Philly.
Philly went from 15% live saves to 60%, while LA went from 50% to 56% for cats and dogs.
You say LA had already made many chnages, thet is why there was so little change. Are you of the opinion then that the most we can ever hope for is a 60-65% live save rate? If you do, the goal of a 90% save rate is ignored and it will never happen.
Instead of pooh poohing other's successes, think about how to make their success our success.
What about San Francisco? They have a combined SFAC&C/SFSPCA save rate of 86%.
You see, there are a whole bunch of very, very negative people out there who will not accept that other shelter systems' perform much, much better than LA and they give a hundred reasosn:
1. You can't trust the statistics of any shelter that claims good success, LA is as good as it gets;
2. If Winograd had ANYTHING to do with it, don't believe it;
3. Or, as the above comment, explain success or failure on increased population, higher wealth and educational levels elsewhere, rural vs. urban, demographics, etc. You can always find pet theories to justify success or failure, but without evidence, you are speculating.
I have one persistant hate Winograd critic who says you can trust the SF or Philly or Nevada's stats because A. B, C is there or missing. Does that mean we just throw that data out and assume all shelters have a 50% kill rate, that Boks and Stuckey are as good as it gets?
This appears to be the thrust pf the thinking: success anywhere is suspect, only failure is to be accepted at face value.
This critic also says--and many like him/her--that since we know Boks cheats on figures, we must assume that everyone everywhere, who claims any degree of claimed success, is lying about figures.
This assumes that every shelter everywhere is run by sociopathic liars.
What a dismal, self-defeating attitude this is. I just don't understand such a defeatist attitude.
You'd have to go back as far as the 2003-2004 LAAS numbers in order to find that 19-20% adoption rate Riverside is currently seeing for cats. Actually, its not that current. For some reason, Miller is no longer publishing their statistics, hasn't provided an update since last summer.
Brad Jensen
Cypress, CA
Do you have a link for Wingrads Washoe county NHS assessment, then we could see how that looks with the philly and king county assessment
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