Animal Care in Lake Forest - Part 2 (Service and Costs)

Yesterday we began a multi-part series on animal care in Lake Forest. Please keep in mind that IMO government has no duty to the animals per se, but rather to the citizens, in terms of protecting them from aggressive animals, helping assure domestic tranquility from animal nuisances, preventing disease (either from rabid dogs or from rotting carcuses), and finding lost pets for their owners. Government can also offer places where dogs can socialize, promoting dog health and giving owners a break as well as helping provide supportive services. As with any other service, the job of government is to provide these services at the best possible quality for the lowest possible cost; something we try to do in all instances but rarely succeed because of the difficulty of simultaneously achieving high quality and low costs. In the back of my mind I am always asking “How can we achieve an acceptable quality of service at a price we can live with?”

Two weeks ago the Orange County Grand Jury issued yet another scathing report on the shocking conditions at the Orange County animal shelter. Click here to view the report and coverage in the OC Register and the Los Angeles Times

The County shelter serves unincorporated areas and 18 cities, which is more than half of the Orange County cities. This includes some of the cities that are in South County (Laguna Hills, RSM, SJC). Yet many cities have their own shelters (Mission Viejo, Irvine, Dana Point, Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Seal Beach, Laguna Beach, Westminster) and there are several private shelters as well (e.g., OC Humane Society).

The County shelter is located in the City of Orange, ironically enough right next to the County jail. It’s the only animal shelter in Orange County, so that Lake Forest residents have to travel through the heart of the traffic beast to get there, requiring at least a 30-minute one-way drive.

In 2014, 486 live animals from Lake Forest went into the County shelter – 197 dogs, 122 cats, 13 rabbits, and 154 “other” (e.g., birds, pigs). Nearly 50% of the cats died or were killed during their brief stay at the shelter, and only 20% were adopted. Dogs did somewhat better – 25% died or were killed and 28% were adopted. “Other” animals fared the worse – 41% died or were killed and only 3% were adopted.

As poor as these figures may appear, they showed improvement over 2013 where 817 animals were processed and the death/kill percent for cats was 71% and for dogs 30%.

In City based animal shelters nearby in Mission Viejo and Irvine, the euthanasia rates are less than 10%.

For this service the City paid about $200,000 over and above the fees for licensing, and our fees for licensing are the highest in the State and in some cases, twice as high as neighboring cities (e.g., licensing non-neutered dogs costs $100 for us, $50 for our neighbors). When licensing and fees are added to the amount paid from the General Fund, the City spends about $600,000 per year for animal care services.

In the not too distant future the Orange County Board of Supervisors will try to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from Lake Forest under the pretext of building the new animal shelter that the Supervisors have been promising for the past half century! Before we invest in this mythical creature, we probably should review just how well the County has been managing the one shelter they have.

Bear in mind, Lake Forest has one of the highest per capita numbers of animals in the County, and we are so pet friendly that we are the only city to have 2 PetSmarts and a PetCo in the same city.

Next time we’ll look at what the Grand Jury has to say about the current level of service at the County animal shelter.

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 3 pm to 5 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a mini town meeting quarter. The next meeting will be on August 15 at 2 pm at the El Toro Public Library.

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