by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
The City will consider a proposal to split its Animal Care and Control division.
The proposal, originally recommended by a 2001 City task force, was put forward by Leona Sheddan, a member of the mayor’s Neighborhoods subcommittee and the Humane Society. It calls for a separation between the care and control functions.
The City would continue to administer control at its shelters while a private entity — most likely a non-profit group — would take over care. Sheddan defined control as “protecting humans from animals;” while care protects the animals from human abuse.
Proponents of the split say the two missions are divergent. Sheddan said during Tuesday’s subcommittee meeting that it was difficult to reconcile the mass killings that control often demands with caring properly for healthy animals. She said this can lead to a reliance on euthanasia.
That appeared to be the case in 2001 when former mayor John Delaney’s task force examined the division. More than nine out of 10 animals brought to the shelter were killed. Only 8 percent were adopted.
The task force set out a road map marked with adoption benchmarks and employee minimum standards to transform the division. Task force member Michael Munz said deplorable conditions inside City shelters led him to support private oversight of adoptable animals.
He told the subcommittee Tuesday that he could not describe the conditions he found in 2001. He said shelters were overcrowded and the staff was not trained to care for animals. He referred repeatedly to water buckets too large to allow puppies to drink from them.
Delaney decided to keep care within the City’s jurisdiction, and Munz said he had come to believe that partial privatization would not work.
“What you end up with is animal control becomes a gulag; you have adoptable animals over here and all the time is focused on them, and animal cruelty is neglected on the other side,” said Munz. “Animal cruelty has to be part of our focus.”