Anyone Care About Animal Care? Part 1 - Report Flaws

Tuesday night the Lake Forest City Council meets to decide whether to stay with the County or move toward a local animal care service. Pictured above is one of the County cells for animals.

If you ever wanted a better indication of the resistance to doing anything except contract with the County for animal care services, just read their latest staff report for the April 19 City Council meeting. The first 13 pages of what was supposed to be a discussion of the alternative proposal are devoted instead to a discussion of the County shelter and its’ plans (i.e., promises) to change. More than half of the 20 page report deals with the County shelter.

There are so many flaws in the staff report that my analysis will have to appear in two parts. The first half will deal with general flaws and the second part will focus on flaws that have economic impact.

INACCURATE REPORTING

Not only is the alternative proposal given scant attention in the report, Attachment 9 which is devoted to a comparison between the County service and the proposal is filled with errors, all of them in the direction of making it appear as if the County was providing more services, which they are not. Here are but a few examples.

• · The staff report claims the proposal doesn’t cover collecting fees. In fact, Section 5 C of the proposal says - “Where appropriate, Contractor will collect fees on behalf of the City and remit according to the contract.” There is even a Fee Schedule at the end of the proposal.
• · The staff report claims the proposal doesn’t cover field release of animals to owners. In fact, Section 1 B of the proposal says - “Upon taking an animal into custody, ACO [Animal Control Officer] will determine ownership and attempt to contact the owner and return the animal if no medical attention is required and the owner is able to accept.”
• · The staff report claims the proposal doesn’t cover dead animal pickup. Section 6 A says “In addition to picking up live and dead animals…”
• · The staff report claims the proposal doesn’t cover efforts toward animal placement. Section 10 (a) says – “Adoption is to be promoted through a variety of outreach strategies including advertising, internet and offsite events.” Section 10 (c) says – “Contractor will take detailed information about any person who wants to adopt an animal, and an interview will be conducted. Contractor recognizes that the person(s) requesting an animal should be screened as much as possible to insure a “forever home”.
• · The staff report claims the proposal doesn’t allow public display of animal to allow owner identification. Section 2 (f) says – “The contractor shall create photographs, kennel cards for each animal noting the name, breed, color, gender, age kennel number, animal id #, impound date, review date, intake type, person who did intake, food requirements, any license #, and comments. Kennel card shall accompany animal when released….A picture of the animals along with identifying information (e.g., where found) shall be posted on the Contractor’s website within 12 hours of being admitted.”

I could go on, but trust me when I tell you that almost everything listed in the staff report as missing from the proposals is, in fact, in the proposals, sometimes in spades and covered more than once, and covered in more detail than the County covers or than in more detail than can be found in most other shelter agreements.

SATISFACTION

The staff dwells on the results of their satisfaction survey, a report that I dealt with in detail in an article in The Patch on March 29, 2016 showing how invalid the results were. In fact their flawed survey results gave birth to a survey of my own in which 80 people were given information about the County shelter and then asked if they were happy. The results of the survey of people given information about animal care services were - “Generally speaking more than 90% of the people are “dissatisfied” or “very dis-satisfied” with the kill rate, the location, and the service.”

Yet staff perpetuates the myth that 92% of the people in Lake Forest are satisfied with animal care services. And they do this in light of the fact that a few weeks ago we had a nearly full house and every single speaker and every single e-mail showed deep dis-satisfaction with the County shelter. Why does staff cling to this myth?

AVOIDING VALID CRITICISMS

The staff report never mentions the fact that OCAC was caught providing false statistics about their euthanasia rate and false statistics about their licensing compliance rates. Click Here for my March 31, 2016 report. Indeed the data for their flawed licensing data comes from Lake Forest resident Randy Johnson who showed that the County was over-estimating their compliance rate by more than 10%.

Didn’t it occur to the staff that contracting with an agency that distorts their data might be a consideration in renewing the contract? Why is this never mentioned? Given that our income is based on licensing compliance, and their data is flawed, doesn’t that deserve a notice in a staff report that deals with the County shelter? Why is this missing?

WHY US?

By the end of the year, in all of South Orange County, from Costa Mesa to San Diego County, Lake Forest and San Juan Capistrano will be the only cities still to contract with the County. The list of cities not contracting with the County includes Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Irvine, Laguna Beach, Laguna Woods, Laguna Niguel, Laguna Hills, RSM, Mission Viejo, Aliso Viejo, San Clemente, and Dana Point. The sad fact is that 12 of 14 contiguous cities have chosen to leave the County. What do they know that we don’t?

Staff fails to mention the overwhelming avoidance of the County among South Orange County cities. Is it because of the distance, an issue never raised by the staff? Is it because of the terrible service, an issue never raised by the staff?

These are just some of the flaws in the staff report. Tomorrow I’ll go into detail about flaws which have an economic impact.

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 August 13 at 2 pm at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.

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