City Council Review - Animal Care

Yesterday we discussed the Nov 3 City Council meeting and the fiasco surrounding Saddleback Ranch Rd. (SRR). Trying to learn some lessons from that ordeal, we came up with a few –

• · Politics and cronyism do not belong in Lake Forest. People should be appointed who have the highest qualifications, not because of their relationship with City Council members.
• · Andrew Hamilton’s amendment needs to be changed and the policy of keeping plans “in the back of the room” or “in the Public Works Department” needs to be revised.
• · The mistakes at SRR are not an isolated event. We need to improve our way of doing things to avoid these types of costly mistakes.
• · We need to be responsive to the needs of our citizens, and we need to be honest in communicating with them.

Today I want to focus on the discussions about animal care.

Four months ago the Lake Forest staff was tasked by the Council “to explore feasible, cost effective options as opposed to any further commitment to remain associated with Orange County Animal Care.” If you read the City’s report you’ll see virtually nothing about “options” to working with Orange County Animal Care (OCAC). Instead, the City’s report drones on about the County program and the “update” on the County’s program constitutes the majority of the report. There is no discussion of “options”, except at the end of the report in which the staff sketchingly list options that might be explored, introduced with this statement – “The City Council may yet wish to discuss options relative to animal care servicers…”

DUH!

The Council asks staff to explore alternatives to OCAC and months later the staff reports that the Council may wish the staff to explore alternatives to OCAC.

Cool Hand Luke would have said – “What we have here is a failure to communicate”.

To make matters worse, staff invited the Director of Community Services, Steve Franks, to brief the Council on the OCAC plans.

Hmmm.

In what was supposed to be a discussion of alternatives to OCAC, the only invited speaker was the Head of OCAC. Did I miss something? Why didn’t we invite the Director of the MV shelter, or the people responsible for animal care from the 16 cities that do not contract with OCAC. Why do you invite the head of OCAC to a discussion of options to using OCAC?

Mr. Franks gave us a summary of the County’s plans to build a new shelter on the Navy Base in Tustin. He was very optimistic. For more than 40 years, Directors of OCAC have been very optimistic in promising a new shelter, yet here we are, with more promises, with the addendum that it will be different this time.

I asked Mr. Franks and our staff what difference a new shelter would make for the problems identified by the various Grand Juries, i.e. –

• · Poor leadership
• · Poor management
• · Manpower problems
• · Training problems
• · Falsifying data
• · High kill rates

No one had an answer to the inquiry. Mr. Franks assured us that he is working on solving the many problems that face the shelter, just as past Directors have given the same assurances.

More telling than the assurances from Mr. Franks was a surprise appearance by Sharon Logan, the woman who successfully sued OCAC because of their euthanasia practices. She reported that since the settlement some months ago, OCAC has continued to use unacceptable procedures and violated the terms of their agreement. Ms. Logan’s first-hand experience is testimony to the worth of the County’s promises.

We had another speaker, Lake Forest resident Randy Johnson, who exposed flaws in the County’s system for calculating “license compliance”. His research indicates that OCAC over-estimates the compliance level in Lake Forest, reporting 51.8% when the real figure is 44.3%. Coupled with my own research that OCAC under-estimates the euthanasia rate for dogs (9.6% reported vs. 23% actual), this is yet another disturbing piece of information about the people who want to care for our animals and who ask us to pay $600,000+ per year and who want us to contribute nearly $1,000,000 to help them build their new shelter.

When the dust had settled, I asked the Council

• · to designate Normandale Park as a possible site for a future animal shelter (see photos)
• · to approve a proposal from Shelter Planners of America to perform a feasibility study for Lake Forest and Laguna Hills to determine the size of a multi-city shelter, construction and operations costs, etc.

Instead of approving my request, my colleagues tasked the staff to look at all of our city-owned properties and come back in 4 weeks with complete information as to their suitability.

The City Attorney claimed that we could not approve the proposal, because we needed multiple bids and an RFP. I said that in my memory the City Manager had the authority to go ahead when the cost was so low, but the staff implied that we couldn’t. Hence, my request to go ahead with the proposal was turned down, although I am pursuing this issue.

Tomorrow I’ll have more to say about animal care, and then I want to conclude with some observations about the rest of the Council meeting.

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.

Lo9YL~Wf