City Council Preview for Dec 6 - Part 2

On this week’s agenda the staff is recommending that we give even more money to Orange County Animal Services (OCAS) for animal care services. We are already paying them more than $600,000 per year and they coerced us into contributing up to $1,000,000 more to help them build a new shelter that we will have no equity in. If they follow the recommendations of the Grand Jury investigations and actually do a good job, instead of the poor job they’ve been doing for the past 5 years, we may even pay them an additional $200,000 per year. Now, on top of this, staff proposes to pay them more.

Yesterday we looked at how well OCAS performs. We noted

• Poor management and leadership (Grand Jury conclusion)
• Poor quality care and service (Grand Jury conclusion)
• Secret meetings FOAB (aka Finance/Operations Advisory Board)
• Violation of laws (Sharon Logan lawsuit)
• Under-report data on killing animals
• Over-estimating how well they get people to license their dogs
• Double billing for licenses
• Missing data on animal licenses and vaccinations

It’s not a pretty record.

My experience of working with poor agencies is that you don’t give them more work when they have a history of doing poorly. But staff has ignored completely the record of OCAS and instead recommend we hire them to do even more.

PUBLIC EDUCATION OFFICER

Staff recommends spending $40,000 per year to give to OCAS to employ a “dedicated animal control public education officer” to roam around the parks in Lake Forest for six months of the year. They have no specific duties and no key performance indicators. Apparently they will walk up to people with dogs and talk to them about “the expectations of pet ownership”, give citations for off-leash dogs, and otherwise occupy themselves.

Staff provide no job description (apart from what I already noted) and offer no indication as to the cost benefits will be of such a program. We have no idea whether or not it will pay for itself, whether it will generate fewer field service calls or possibly more. Staff provide no idea of the success or failure of such programs elsewhere.

ADDITIONAL CANVASSING

Staff recommends we pay OCAS an additional $9,600 per year for the next 3 years to hire “extra help part-time employees at a cost of $20 per hour” to supplement the existing efforts of OCAS. Apparently, according to OCAS, they are able to cover 4,710 households for every 480 hours they spend, and that’s included in our existing contract. That’s slightly less than 10 households per hour. Since 4,710 household is only 17% of our 27,500 households in the city, this means that OCAS covers only 17% of the city in any one year. By doubling this coverage for the next 3 years the staff concludes we can cover the entire City.

Whether or not this would produce any new income is not addressed, and whether or not the additional income would compensate for the additional $28,880 is also not considered.

We do know that licensing compliance has been inaccurately computed by OCAS, but using those faulty statistics, we can conclude that the compliance rate has remained relatively constant over the years at about 50% as projected by OCAS. So we know that for the existing $9,600 we spend every year, we have no increase in income. Perhaps canvassing is not effective. Staff neglects to consider this. Staff does not even tell us how many new licenses are discovered every year as a result of the existing program.

If you look at the 2015 Audit Performance report (Click Here) it reveals some grave doubts about the effectiveness of the current program. The report says – “Using productivity data provided by OCAC, it appears that the Canvassing Program does not fully recover its cost. In FY 2012, the Canvassing Program recovered an estimated 73% of its total cost (page 27).”

Indeed, my understanding of canvassing is that it often is ineffective (Click Here), although some people do support the idea. But even if it were effective in other municipalities, why would we believe OCAS would do a good job. They're not going a good job right now using their own statistics. Why is staff recommending we add additional monies to this area?

So what we’re missing from the staff report to support their recommendation is

• An explanation of why the data collection in the past has been flawed and the public reporting has been inaccurate.
• An indication of what OCAS achieves now as a result of their canvassing.
• Evidence of what can be expected in general from canvassing efforts (ie., look at what others have achieved)
• Projections about what we can expect to achieve using OCAS.

Apart from spending additional money on OCAS, staff offer some other ideas.

AMNESTY PROGRAM

Amnesty programs are used in many places and mostly they are effective. The last amnesty program in Lake Forest was held in 2009, but the staff gives us no data on what the results of this program were. Nor are there any costs listed in association with conducting this program.

Note to staff:

• What was achieved the last time we held an amnesty program?
• What has been achieved elsewhere?
• What can we expect to achieve?
• How much will it cost us?

FEES

Cities can set their own fees. Right now OCAS charges among the highest fees around. Irvine and MV charge $20 for altered dogs and $50 for unaltered. OCAS charges $27 and $100.

Strangely enough the staff report never mentions licensing cats. Cats use OCAS services more than all other animals, yet we only collect licenses from dog owners. In other municipalities (e.g., Long Beach, San Mateo) there has been much progress in cat licensing (Click Here), although the topic is not without its critics (Click Here and Here) so why is this area not mentioned? In fact, The 2015 Audit Performance report recommends starting a cat licensing program (see page 31, Recommendation 17).

LOW COST PET EVENTS

Staff mentions in passing that “OCAC may also partner with the City to provide a variety of services to Lake Forest residents. These services could include special events featuring low cost vaccinations clinics and spay/neuter services.”

Nothing is mentioned about what will be achieved by doing this, nor what it would cost. Nothing is mentioned about the results of past events, what they cost, and what the City gained as a result.

Tomorrow we’ll cover the proposal for “Adoption Center Pilot Program”

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 in January at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.