Animal Care on City Council Agenda Tonight

(If you’re coming to the City Council tonight, Portola Hills advocates have asked that you wear something RED, representing the danger to their lives from the proposed changes. You can also wear RED if you’re coming to support animal care alternatives, representing the needless blood that is being shed by the high euthanasia rate at the County shelter.)

Yesterday we looked at tonight’s City Council agenda and the Saddleback Ranch Rd discussions and the Dog Park ordinance. Today I want to discuss animal care.

Previously we examined what’s wrong with the animal care system, the considerable flaws in their new “business plan”, and their mis-representation of the euthanasia rates. To summarize -

• · The shelter is old and in poor condition.
• · It takes in 30,000+ animals a year and serves 1,000 square miles in one single shelter.
• · OCAC has been severely criticized by several Grand Juries for poor leadership, poor management, inadequate training, and manpower problems among a long list of deficiencies.
• · Their euthanasia rate is one of the highest in California and is about 40%, although they produce statistics that hide the true extent of the killing.
• · We are the only large County that has a single shelter. Most other counties our size have 2 or 3 shelters to handle their animals.
• · We are one of the largest single shelters in California, and research clearly demonstrates that as shelter size increases, the euthanasia rates increase. Shelters with less than 1,000 animals have an average euthanasia rate of 7% while shelters with 10,000 or more average 37%.

The County is proposing to build a new single shelter, which will not eliminate the problems of leadership, management, training, manpower, and the high kill rates. Having a new shelter is certainly better than having an old dilapidated shelter, but it does not address the core problems.

Everyone agrees that having a local shelter, as many other cities have (e.g., MV, Irvine, Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, San Clemente, Dana Point, Westminster, Seal Beach, etc.) provides better service and higher quality of care than the County does. The stumbling point seems to be money. Some people claim that that it would be more expensive to operate our own shelter. That’s probably true. But a multi-city shelter is a different situation, and not at all uncommon. For example -

• · Mission Viejo operates a multi-city shelter by taking animals from Laguna Niguel and Aliso Viejo.
• · Laguna Beach accepts animals from Laguna Woods.
• · San Clemente and Dana Point jointly operate a shelter.
• · Newport Beach and Costa Mesa contract with OC Humane Society for their shelter needs.

Nearly half the cities in Orange County do not use OCAC and using local shelters hasn’t broken the bank for any of these cities. Though my research indicates it would cost less to operate a multi-city shelter than the current costs, the decision should not rest on costs alone. Even if the costs were slightly higher, don’t we deserve better than the concentration camp type care and poor service we receive? If half the cities in OC can afford to give their citizens better care and service, why can’t Lake Forest?

My critics will say that I am letting my passion for not killing animals needlessly interfere with my objectivity, and perhaps I have not handled the numbers correctly. I confess to being upset by seeing the conditions in which animals are forced to live at OCAC, and even more horrified that every day kittens and puppies and being killed at that place. But I don’t think my passion has clouded my vision any more than the passion of the City staff to prevent our cities from working together has clouded their vision.

In 2007, staff from Lake Forest and Laguna Hills worked on a report that conclusively showed that we would spend a lot more if we jointly operated a shelter, but that report was so deeply flawed, especially on the revenue side, it was discounted when the flaws were exposed. Nonetheless, a follow up was never done.

During discussions at other cities, staff from Lake Forest appeared at those Council meetings and argued that the cities should not work together.

A few years later, Lake Forest staff promised to initiate a trap neuter release program for the large feral cat problem in the City. It was never done.

In July 2015, Bruce Channing the City Manager of Laguna Hills warned the Lake Forest City Manager that “some of our Councilmembers have banded together with the same group of animal activists and are, once again, pushing to have us conduct a feasibility study…” Later he said “I hate to be the bearer of bad news but our Council took action tonight to modify our answer to the GJ by saying “we will not implement Rec 4 because it is not reasonable as phrased. Instead the City intends to join with neighboring cities that currently contract with OCAC to pursue potential animal-care opportunities…” Imagine the situation where Mr. Channing considers working together to find an alternative to OCAC “bad news”! Bad for whom?

Mr. Channing continued “…I didn’t think anyone liked the way we led the feasibility study the last time and that LF was a more logical choice, particularly since they appear to have a site for a shelter. Gardner raised his hand, said you have three sites for a shelter and was very happy and willing to take the lead in doing the study…”

Mr. Dunek replied in an e-mail – “we would politely decline the lead on this issue – the flight pattern is full.” Since the Council was never asked about this situation, I assume that Mr. Dunek was speaking for himself and/or the staff, and not the Council, when he refused to take the lead. When I offered to take the lead, I knew I had to go back to the Council and get their concurrence. Apparently Mr. Dunek didn’t feel the need to refer to the Council when making policy decisions for the City.

(FWIW – these memos were discovered by Rose Tingle who did a Freedom of Information request of the City of Lake Forest in September 2015)

More recently, in September 2015 Lake Forest staff invited staff from other cities to attend a working group. But in his letter, Mayor Scott Voigts specifically told the Mayors of RSM and San Juan Capistrano that he understood if they didn’t attend since they were pursuing their own alternatives. He should have done the opposite – implored them to attend even if they were exploring their own alternatives, but instead he gave them the easy way out, and they took it.

On September 19, 2015 I urged the City Manager to conduct a meeting of the Council in closed session so that we could designate possible sites for an animal shelter. This is the first and most necessary step in building a multi-city shelter, because without the land, no shelter is possible. The City Manager still has not called that meeting. Without the designation by Lake Forest, no progress can be made on building a multi-city shelter.

The County now claims that a new shelter will open in September 2017 (They originally said it would be 2019). They still don’t have the OK from the Navy, yet they claim a new shelter will open on those grounds, and as a result they are demanding that the cities begin paying their ransom as early as April 1, 2016. They will try to extort $1,335,000 from our two cities to participate in the construction of a monolith that will still be poorly managed, still kill high numbers of animals, and still provide bad service. The fact that they chose APRIL FOOL’S DAY is no mere coincidence. Unless the cities pay their ransom, by April 1, 2016, the County will not serve them after July 1, 2017.

Yet four months after being tasked to work with the other cities to come up with alternatives to using the County, the City has done very little.

The City Council at Lake Forest should agree to designate one of our city-owned properties as a site for an animal shelter, and then work with Laguna Hills to get an independent company to provide a feasibility study.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook. His comments are not meant to reflect official City Policy.

Dr. Gardner has office hours every Tuesday from 4 pm to 6 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a Town Hall meeting every quarter. The next meeting will be on Dec 12 at 2 pm at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.