Animal welfare commission continues to fail

San Francisco animal welfare commission hearing on whether to
mandate a No Kill policy. Photo courtesy of the San Francisco
Appeal. (sfappeal.com)

The Commission of Animal Control & Welfare in San Francisco (Commission) met this month to discuss a proposal by three Commissioners to achieve a No Kill San Francisco. The Commissioners have dubbed their plan a No Kill “Roadmap.” The “Roadmap” was introduced at its July meeting after the Commission finished taking testimony from a wide range of organizations on whether to mandate a No Kill policy in San Francisco by enacting shelter oversight legislation that would require all San Francisco shelters to commit to saving San Francisco’s neediest animals.

The effort is directed at extending the safety net to the last of the savable animals still being killed in San Francisco’s animal control shelter—sick and injured but treatable animals, Pit Bulls, feral cats, older animals—and it is an achievement easily in reach given that San Francisco has the lowest per capita intake rate of any municipality in the nation. As a result, there is a growing consensus that the City can easily achieve this goal, even while importing thousands of out of county young and small dogs and cats to meet adoption demand, as the San Francisco SPCA is currently doing.

The discussion has pitted animal lovers, No Kill advocates, and local rescue groups on one side; and, on the other, the City’s two largest shelters: the San Francisco SPCA and the City pound. Ironically, the San Francisco SPCA was at one time considered both the leader and “the crown jewel” of the No Kill movement and spearheaded the national movement it appears to be resisting today. The current leadership of the San Francisco SPCA, alongside the City pound which has always been hostile, does not support the No Kill mandate which animal lovers and rescue groups are urging the Commission to embrace.

Roadmap or Road to Nowhere?

When the plan was first introduced to the community in July, critics charged that it signaled the Commission’s intent to avoid taking a strong stand on the issue, with Commissioners acting reticent about asking the Board of Supervisors to pass shelter reform legislation. According to groups such as Fix San Francisco and other local rescuers, the proffered plan under consideration falls short of a legal mandate and merely recommends the implementation of services already available in San Francisco with no mandates and no measurability for success. They also charge that the “Roadmap” will do nothing to decrease killing of savable animals in San Francisco if the City pound refuses to save these animals themselves as it historically has done; and the SPCA meets the adoption guideline by importing more animals from outside the City, as it currently does.

Others are questioning why the Commission is using New York City as a model as the proposed plan does. According to one critic,

We’ve been saving more animals than New York for years. In the 1990s, we were the leaders in this movement when New York City officials were calling No Kill a ‘hoax.’ Even today, New York is not No Kill and has never been No Kill. Why is San Francisco pointing to New York City as a model of how to achieve No Kill when shelters there are still killing healthy animals? Really, what are they thinking?

According to critics, the key failure of the plan, however, is that it does not include enforceable policies, which shelters in San Francisco will likely ignore. “The bottom line,” said one rescue advocate who requested anonymity,

Is that San Francisco is not No Kill because neither the City shelter, nor the SPCA will save the last 10% of savable animals being killed at the pound, even though they could. Even though other communities across the country are doing so. The pound itself won’t because it is easy not to. And the SPCA won’t because they believe it is easier to adopt out small dogs and kittens they bring in from outside of San Francisco. So unless the Commission stands up and says, ‘this is intolerable’ and forces them to, San Francisco will never be No Kill.

The proposed plan did not include such a mandate, which supporters of a No Kill San Francisco hoped to change at this month’s meeting to discuss it. Unfortunately, two of the three Commissioners working on the proposal failed to attend the meeting, and due to what observers called “typical” lack of leadership on the part of the Commission, the discussion devolved into unfocused discussions which went nowhere. One member of a rescue group called the meeting “a bit of a joke.”

Squandered Opportunity

As a result, no changes were made to the proposed “Roadmap,” and Commissioners charged with specific follow-up tasks were either not in attendance or failed to complete those tasks. But it was the controversy about behavior assessments which took up most of the discussion. Critics of the SPCA and the City pound charged that the process used is “arbitrary” and “often conveniently serves to find excuses as to why an animal is ‘unadoptable.’ ”

Kathleen McGarr of Fix San Francisco stated that,

[C]ountless voices have spoken out about how their loving, calm, even-tempered cat or dog was a ‘reject’ [under the system in place], the point being that these animals who ‘fail’ to pass behavior [testing] are failing because of arbitrary testing and arbitrary deductions and without a rescue organization or individual able to save them, they will die.

Fix San Francisco welcomed the discussion because it showed how shelters in San Francisco were failing animals. In addition, the discussion belied claims that San Francisco runs out of “adoptable” animals, requiring the SPCA to import those animals from other counties instead. The testimony of this needless killing had the potential to salvage the No Kill discussion when Commission Chair Sally Stephens suggested that the Commission weigh the merits of shelter oversight legislation as a framework to ensure that San Francisco’s animals are saved, or impose a tariff on out of county animals imported into San Francisco by shelters while local animals are killed. But it failed to do so.

Any hope of a serious discussion of the necessity of a No Kill mandate was eclipsed when a Commissioner stated that he was informed by the SPCA that it only takes in animals when the City pound does not have any available, a claim belied by the testimony which preceded his comments, the experiences of local rescue groups which are held hostage by the threat of a death sentence for these animals if they don’t save them, and the City’s own figures of the numbers of animals it kills every year. Nonetheless, the Chair did not follow up and the discussion ultimately went nowhere.

Although it is expected that the Commission will take up the issue again in September, many No Kill advocates are increasingly pessimistic that it will go anywhere substantive. While all of them pledged to continue the fight to save San Francisco’s neediest animals by attending meetings of the Commission, continuing the dialog with those Commissioners who are receptive to No Kill, and lobbying the Commission for shelter reform legislation, some have also begun taking the fight directly to the Board of Supervisors. “I don’t know what the chances are,” said McGarr. “But we’re trying.”

For more information on the effort to achieve a No Kill San Francisco, visit www.fixsanfrancisco.org.

For further reading:

What would it take for San Francisco to become no kill?