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City Att'y Publicly Tells Mayor/Council: No Legal Issue Under City's Lease With SPCA-L.A. With City Allowing Sign Promoting Animal Adoptions From City Shelter

Issue goes to heart of autonomy and more robust city animal adoption programs sought by animal advocates


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(June 27, 2019, 11:25 a.m.) -- In an issue that goes to the heart of autonomy and more robust city animal adoption programs sought by a number of animal advocates, Councilwoman Suzie Price sought and received a plainly worded public response from City Attorney Charles Parkin: there's no legal issue with respect to the City allowing a sign advising visitors to the City-operated animal shelter that they can adopt animals from the City facility.

A number of animal advocates have urged an autonomous, more robust adoption program by the City of Long Beach, arguing that it's key to saving animal lives, especially at times when the city-run shelter may be at its capacity.

The exchange (transcript below) came after four speakers -- Anna Wong, Joanne Kwast, Alex Armstrong and Laura Selmer -- used the period for public comment on non-agendized items to state that shelter management had allowed a grassroots created sign (banner) until a telephone exchange between the City's shelter manager and SPCA-LA resulted in taking the banner down.


Ms. Selmer summed up the speakers' position by stating: "I would like to ask City Council and our City Attorney to provide the guidance to the City Manager and staff that we may recover our shelter's autonomy."

Mayor Garcia (who doesn't have policy setting power) responded: "...I don't know the details of the sign issues, I will say Mr. West, I don't see why we can't put the damn sign up. I mean, just put the sign up...These issues keep happening every single week. It's just a sign and it's our property, I would say put the sign up...If there's no legal issues, I think we should just do that."

Mayor Garcia didn't take the next step by asking the City Attorney about the issue...but Councilwoman Price did:

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Councilwoman Price: Do we really have to wait another week and bring this back to Council to say let's just put the sign up?

City Attorney Parkin: There's not a legal issue as to putting up a sign. It's allowed under the lease.

City Manager West: If I can interrupt. We're in the process right now of doing a new sign, working with everybody so a sign will be going up there very very shortly that we've been working on with everybody.

Councilwoman Price indicated she favored putting the sign up, said the sign issue itself seemed silly but acknowledged there might be a back story with more to it.

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Animal adoption advocates (and no-kill policy advocates) have persistently called for a more robust, city operated autonomous adoption program (independent of SPCA-L.A.) SPCA-L.A. operates its own adoption programs with facilities directly adjacent to the City-operated animal shelter under a 1998 lease and lease-back arrangement (referenced by City Attorney Parkin.)

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A December 2017 City Auditor performance audit of the city's Animal Shelter stated among its "key observations" regarding adoptions: "While ACS [Animal Care Services] can adopt out animals, there is confusion between the roles of spcaLA and ACS that need to be more clearly defined to allow better promotion of the ACS adoption program..."

The advance edition of the City Council's July 2 agenda indicates no agendized discussion of the bigger issue that LB's policy-setting Council has thus far declined to seriously discuss implementation of a more robust, autonomously run city animal adoption program. The Council most recently approved implementation of what management calls a "compassion saves" policy that includes goals similar to, but stops short substantively implementing, "no kill" policies.

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An updated supplemental Council agenda is scheduled to appear online after 5 p.m. June 28. If no item on the matter is agendized for the July 2 Council meeting, it (again) effectively invites animal adoption advocates to use the period for public comment on non-agendized items to continue to raise the issue.


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