Long Beach Audit Reveals Mismanagement at LB Animal Shelter

Animal advocacy group Stayin’ Alive Long Beach has published its assessment of the first phase of the audit of Long Beach Animal Care Services (LBACS) requested by Mayor Garcia in January 2017.

After nearly a year of preparation, the Auditor’s report makes many of the recommendations Stayin' Alive Long Beach (SALB) has made over the past four years in two comprehensive research reports in 2013 and 2014, and a proposed lifesaving plan modeled on the City of Austin’s. In addition, however, the audit reveals a shelter that is deeply flawed and suffering from mismanagement in the form of “inconsistent decision-making” and “conflicting shelter practices,” with changes implemented “without proper direction and explanation” (Review, Phase One; page 3).

“The Auditor’s report reveals a shelter with multiple problems that are negatively impacting our shelter animals,” said Patricia Turner, Ph.D., spokesperson for the group. “We were dismayed to see that many of the most basic practices in shelter operations, animal care and veterinary care are not being put in place by management at the shelter.”

The report makes numerous recommendations in areas from shelter operations to veterinary care to programming. “In terms of shelter operations, animal care and veterinary protocols, virtually any reasonable recommendation made would be an improvement. So we agree with many of the recommendations made in the report in these areas,” Turner said.

In terms of programming, Turner said, “We actually made many of the recommendations in the report when we met with the shelter consultants hired by the Auditor to assist with the audit. We’re pleased to see they agreed and put them in the report.”

Among those recommendations Stayin’ Alive supports are the recommendations to create a strategic plan, increase evening hours to allow more people to visit the shelter to adopt or retrieve a lost pet, make animals available for adoption holds earlier, implement public-friendly, education-based adoption policies, implement a foster program, and overhaul the volunteer program. Turner noted, however, that the report does not include a strong recommendation for a full adoption program run by the City, though many aspects of a strong adoption program are mentioned. “LBACS needs a strong adoption program independent of the program run by spcaLA if we’re going to become a progressive city in the area of animal sheltering,” Turner said.

“One of the main recommendations we agree with is the plan to review the City’s partnership with spcaLA, which shelter management has indicated has undue influence over the city-run shelter,” Turner said. “One of the main problems with the partnership with spcaLA is that we have a private organization in Long Beach who exerts a high degree of influence over the operations, policies and processes of a publicly-funded government department. This means a private organization has some degree of control over how LBACS funds are allocated, without being accountable to the taxpaying public.”

While the report makes many solid recommendations, animal advocates are concerned with the report's preference to 1) resort to euthanasia of healthy and treatable animals as a primary backup plan and 2) tie improvements to an increase in resources. This approach weakens the strength of the recommendations and will likely result in more unnecessary euthanasia of healthy and treatable animals.

“Euthanizing more animals is not the answer, when the City could instead appropriately prioritize low-cost lifesaving practices and resolve serious problems with the management of shelter operations by hiring qualified shelter leadership with experience in lifesaving shelter management,” said Turner.

The report comes a year after Mayor Garcia, under pressure by animal advocates and concerned citizens, requested the report. Pressure arose after it became clear that Mayor Garcia had not delivered on a campaign promise made to animal advocates back in 2014 to substantially strengthen the LBACS’ adoption program and increase adoptions.

“Mayor Garcia’s inaction on adoptions and other improvements has allowed the adoption numbers at LBACS to stay at very low numbers, resulting in increased costs to the City and unnecessary deaths of shelter animals,” Turner said. LBACS adopted out 571 animals into homes from Jan-Oct 2017. In the same time period, the City of Sacramento, which implements progressive programs and policies and has made adoptions a cornerstone of the strategy to save lives, adopted more than 4500 animals into homes. Sacramento’s population is similar in size, demographics and median income to Long Beach.

Stayin’ Alive’s response to the audit, “A Shelter in Crisis: A Critical Assessment of ‘Animal Care Services Review: Phase One,” can be found here. The Auditor’s “Animal Care Services Review: Phase One” can be found here.

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About Stayin' Alive Long Beach

Stayin’ Alive Long Beach is an initiative whose ultimate goal is to make Long Beach a no kill city. Stayin’ Alive Long Beach accomplishes this by advocating for the implementation of the No Kill Equation: responsible, humane, cost-effective policies and programs that will reduce the shelter population and increase adoption rates. For more information on the organization’s work to promote an end to the unnecessary killing of healthy and treatable animals in the Long Beach Animal Care Services shelter, visit their website at www.stayinalivelongbeach.org.

Stayin’ Alive Long Beach can also be found on Facebook at www.facebook.com/stayinalivelb and on Twitter www.twitter.com/StayinAliveLong. Stayin’ Alive has over 3,000 Facebook followers and more than 100 members.