Long Beach Animal Advocates (Newly Organized Grassroots Animal Rescue Volunteers) Urge Council To Budget Add'l Funds For Animal Shelter; Councilmembers Offer None Immediately; Group Launches Facebook Page, Pledges Continued Pressure

' Long Beach Animal Advocates (Newly Organized Grassroots Animal Rescue Volunteers) Urge Council To Budget Add'l Funds For Animal Shelter; Councilmembers Offer None Immediately; Group Launches Facebook Page, Pledges Continued Pressure

LBReport.com

News

Long Beach Animal Advocates (Newly Organized Grassroots Animal Rescue Volunteers) Urge Council To Budget Add'l Funds For Animal Shelter; Councilmembers Offer None Immediately; Group Launches Facebook Page, Pledges Continued Pressure

LBREPORT.com is reader and advertiser supported. Support independent news in LB similar to the way people support NPR and PBS stations. We're not non-profit so it's not tax deductible but $49.95 (less than an annual dollar a week) helps keep us online.

(August 17, 2017, 6:35 a.m.) -- They were organized. They were prepared. They were polite. They cited facts. They sought change in the status quo in non-confrontational terms.

Long Beach Animal Advocates, a grassroots group comprised mainly of volunteers in the local animal rescue movement, used social networks to organize themselves for the Council meeting. Nearly three dozen residents took the time and effort to attend the Aug. 15 City Council meeting where multiple speakers urged Councilmembers to budget additional sums -- beyond what city management has proposed and Mayor Garcia have recommended -- for Long Beach Animal Care Services (the city's "animal control" agency.) .

Speakers commended LB Animal Care services. They said its staff, including LBACS manager Ted Stevens, were doing good work. But they told Councilmembers that without additional funding, LBACS couldn't reach the "no kill" level now being sought by the City of Los Angeles and LBACS' full year live-release rates would plateau.

The net result thus far: no Councilmember(s) gave any verbal commitment or other public indication that they'd make any motions, or support motions, when the budget comes to Council voted actions on Sept. 5 and/or Sept. 12, to change budgeted levels proposed by city management and recommended by the Mayor. Undeterred, the next day Long Beach Animal Advocates founder and organizer , Emily Ghosh, wrote on her personal Facebook page that the group's efforts will continue and increase...and swiftly launched a separate Facebook page for Long Beach Animal Advocates at this link encouraging further efforts.

[Scroll down for further.]

LB Animal Advocates' stance on the need for additional funding and their non-confrontational approach differ from Stayin' Alive Long Beach, a grassroots animal advocacy group that says the key to increased live release rates isn't money but more robust City adoption efforts (paralleling those in other cities) and changed attitudes by city officialdom.

However both groups dispute mid-year "live release" figures recently cited by shelter management, saying the figures understate the likely figures by year end which they say will be lower. And both want change in the status quo. And both are now focused on actions by elected officials. (Five Council incumbents and Mayor Garcia are up for re-election in April 2018...and Stayin' Alive Long Beach is especially displeased with the record of Mayor Garcia on the issue.).

Mayor Garcia was absent for the entire Aug. 15 Council meeting. Vice Mayor Rex Richardson presided and invited the public to speak before Councilmembers discussed the issue. Among Long Beach Animal Advocates testifying was Emily Ghosh, a co-founder and organizer of the group. Below is her statement as it appears on her Facebook page. Ms. Ghosh ceased speaking when her three minute speaking time had elapsed with part of her statement still un-read; another Animal Advocate finished reading her statement later in the proceeding.

[Emily Ghosh / Animal Advocates testimony] Good evening Vice Mayor, city council and city staff. My name is Emily Ghosh. I am the founder of Live Love Pet Care & Animal Rescue. Our organization has worked with LBACS [Long Beach Animal Care Services] for 4 years. This year, to date, we have pulled more than 50 dogs from LBACS into our foster-based rescue here in Long Beach.
Long Beach has an extensive network of animal lovers. Good Samaritans that stop their car for an injured animal on the road, volunteers diligently give attention and care to pets at our city shelter, good hearted citizens open their homes to adopt a family member and foster pets in need. In our city we pride ourselves on being animal lovers. Long Beach is a proud city with a culture of love, acceptance and celebration of life. This is a great place to live, and part of what makes it great are the humans who give their time, talents and funds to assist homeless animals in our city.

Sponsor

Sponsor

I am here tonight to highlight a movement that has been growing in Long Beach for many years. Local citizens, volunteers, fosters, adopters, donors, and non profits alike have gathered to work together as the Long Beach Animal Advocates. Our goal is to have our city shelter reach a consistent 90% - or higher- live release rate. The 95% Live release rate quoted by Mrs Knight this evening is based on the first half of this year. In actuality, the live release rate will be closer to what it was at the end of 2016 - 85%. A part of her presentation that was extremely accurate- the positive outcomes at LBACS will plateau without your attention to providing more space and funding.
I would like to highlight some more numbers for you as to where we stand at our city shelter. These numbers are from January 1-July 31, 2017. Long Beach Animal Care Services adopted out 363 animals from the shelter, during the same time frame, 400 dogs and cats, those which were not severely injured or suffering, have been killed. I say this not to put down the team at LBACS, I have the utmost respect for them, many are my friends and I am honored to partner with our city shelter. I say this to highlight the drastic need for improvement. The hard work of Non Profit Animal Rescues is largely responsible for the increased Live Release Rate at our city shelter. Again, from Jan 1-July 31,2017, rescues have pulled 918 dogs and cats from our shelter. We cannot sustain this.

Sponsor

I am calling on our community leaders, all of you, to hear our recommendations and to increase the budget for LBACS. The team at LBACS are eager to provide more programs that will benefit not only our sheltered pets, but our citizens as well.
The programs, if funded, available to our city shelter are plentiful. There are many successful nation-wide organization that have developed intricate models as to how to achieve 90% Live release rate. American Pets Alive, ASPCA, Best Friends, just to name a few. I'm here to tell you about one such program that our organization spearheaded to make a reality in our fine city.
In partnership with LBACS, Live Love facilitated Foster the Fourth. This program was modeled after LA's program with the addition of the interception of stray animals from our team. The and objective is to open kennel space by moving dogs into 2 week temporary foster homes so no dogs are killed due to lack of space. During this life saving program, our rescue pulled 20 dogs into temporary foster homes for the first two weeks of July. Our team worked with the LBACS team to network these dogs for adoption on social media, we scheduled and promoted an adoption event, and we provided guidance on training, medical needs and more to get 28 of the 30 dogs into forever homes.
Councilwoman Stacy Mungo Flanigan fostered two of these dogs and found them both homes, one of whom has been adopted with her family. The success of 2017 Foster the Fourth can and will be replicated as a year-round Foster program and that can happen with your vote to increase funding for LBACS.
There are another two dogs from this program, Atlas and Margie, were returned to the shelter after a month of being in their foster home, as planned if they weren't adopted out during the program. What troubles me is that we had an opportunity to keep them in foster care if it was not for the lack of funding to cover them medically should they need to see a veterinarian. Our rescue is not a large organization, we have a very small budget for, on average, 46 dogs in rescue at any given time. We simply cannot afford to be medically responsible for more dogs once we hit our capacity. I know the shelter experiences the same problem.

Sponsor

Sponsor

The shelter needs more funding. It is my recommendation that you consider increasing the three part time re-homing office positions to full-time and permanently fund a full time employee who could manage the cities foster program and implement life saving measure at our shelter. For Margie, and Atlas, for all of the other pets that are waiting for us to make concrete changes that shift our sheltering culture to match the progressive nature of our great city. We are a large part of this community, everyone here on behalf of LB animal advocates, please stand. Thank you for joining us and thank you council-members, vice mayor and city staff for your time.

A number of speakers also criticized the city's current relationship with SPCA-LA (next door to the LBACS facility), alleging that SPCA-LA "cherry-picks" animals for adoption, effectively leaving others to face the death needle for lack of space.

Following public testimony, City Manager Pat West thanked residents for their words and said, "We would certainly like more resources and it's a tough budget." LB's Parks & Rec Director Marie Knight (whose department oversees LB Animal Care Services) acknowledged that the issue comes down to resources but said it wasn't just people [hiring additional personnel] but also space (as the shelter has little space to grow.)

Sponsor

Some Councilmembers pursued the issue of the SPCA-LA contract. City staff and the City Attorney's rep indicated the contractual relationship might call for re-negotiation and indicated a detailed memo on the issues would be forthcoming for Councilmembers.

2nd district Councilwoman Jeannine Pearce (who took office in mid-2016) asked if there'd been any recent Council presentation(s) on efforts to increase adoptions; when management said "no," Councilwoman Ms. Pearce suggested it might be wise to do so in the future.

The day after, Ms. Ghosh stated on her Facebook page: "Thank you to all the community members who sat through the long meeting in support of our movement. #LBAA We need to keep up the pressure. This is only the beginning."

The Council has one additional budget discussion scheduled (Aug. 22) before it's expected to begin taking voted budget actions on Sept. 5 and/or Sept. 12.

Developing.