Mayor Robert Garcia's One Year Animal Welfare Report Card
During the 2014 mayoral election, then Vice-Mayor Garcia ran on a pro-animal welfare ticket, garnering the votes of Long Beach's animal lovers by billing himself as an animal lover, willing to take on the issue of the high kill rate at the Long Beach Animal Care Services shelter. This came about because Stayin' Alive Long Beach, the year prior, had spoken to an unresponsive City Council and vowed to make shelter animal welfare an election issue.
Mayor Garcia took full advantage of the opportunity, telling animal advocates that he would work to improve the City's adoption program and using Stayin' Alive's name specifically on his campaign flyers to get votes. Unfortunately, he did so duplicitously, without truly supporting the reforms that Stayin' Alive advocated for.
Many Long Beach residents, concerned with the plight of Long Beach's shelter animals, voted for Mayor Garcia, specifically buying into his pro-animal campaign promises and persuasive animal-themed rhetoric (“Robert Garcia - He loves kittens.”) Given that Garcia won by a narrow margin – just over 2,000 votes – it is fair to say that Long Beach's animal-loving residents played a significant role in Garcia's election win, with the hope that he would address a number of issues, in particular, the high kill rate and lack of proactive programs and policies at the Long Beach animal shelter, operated by the taxpayer-funded Long Beach Animal Care Services (LBACS).
One year later, how has Mayor Garcia performed with regard to eliminating inefficiencies and improving the save rate at the Long Beach Animal Care Services animal shelter? Stayin' Alive Long Beach has evaluated Mayor Garcia's responsiveness in three key areas in shelter animal welfare in Long Beach: lifesaving programs, campaign promises and transparency.
During the 2014 mayoral election, then Vice-Mayor Garcia ran on a pro-animal welfare ticket, garnering the votes of Long Beach's animal lovers by billing himself as an animal lover, willing to take on the issue of the high kill rate at the Long Beach Animal Care Services shelter. This came about because Stayin' Alive Long Beach, the year prior, had spoken to an unresponsive City Council and vowed to make shelter animal welfare an election issue.
Mayor Garcia took full advantage of the opportunity, telling animal advocates that he would work to improve the City's adoption program and using Stayin' Alive's name specifically on his campaign flyers to get votes. Unfortunately, he did so duplicitously, without truly supporting the reforms that Stayin' Alive advocated for.
Many Long Beach residents, concerned with the plight of Long Beach's shelter animals, voted for Mayor Garcia, specifically buying into his pro-animal campaign promises and persuasive animal-themed rhetoric (“Robert Garcia - He loves kittens.”) Given that Garcia won by a narrow margin – just over 2,000 votes – it is fair to say that Long Beach's animal-loving residents played a significant role in Garcia's election win, with the hope that he would address a number of issues, in particular, the high kill rate and lack of proactive programs and policies at the Long Beach animal shelter, operated by the taxpayer-funded Long Beach Animal Care Services (LBACS).
One year later, how has Mayor Garcia performed with regard to eliminating inefficiencies and improving the save rate at the Long Beach Animal Care Services animal shelter? Stayin' Alive Long Beach has evaluated Mayor Garcia's responsiveness in three key areas in shelter animal welfare in Long Beach: lifesaving programs, campaign promises and transparency.
Lifesaving ProgramsGrade: D
Mayor Garcia ran on a pro-animal advocacy ticket, but has done little to create sustainable, long-term changes that will increase the save rate of Long Beach's shelter animals. Stayin' Alive Long Beach and other animal advocates made numerous suggestions for improvements, including a Lifesaving Programs Implementation Plan based on the experiences of the highest-performing shelters in the nation. Rather than pursue proven effective programs and policies at LBACS, Mayor Garcia has chosen to reinforce the status quo, declining to publicly commit to a No Kill plan and performance goals for LBACS. He has instead chosen to invest in a limited number of cosmetic fixes – notably, a one-off adoption event at City Hall and a highly-touted new adoption coordinator position at the shelter, which became a conversion to full-time of an already-existing part-time position. Such small fixes will do little to change the culture at LBACS. They may get a few more animals adopted, but not in the numbers needed to make Long Beach a No Kill city. |
Campaign PromisesGrade: F
Besides assuring Long Beach's animal welfare community that he would work to help save the lives of Long Beach's shelter animals, Mayor Garcia also promised at a Town Hall Meeting in October 2014, in front of more than 100 animal advocates, to visit the Sacramento city animal shelter to gain insight into how their shelter does over 3,000 adoptions per year when Long Beach Animal Care Services does about 400. Nearly a year after making this promise, he still has not visited the Sacramento animal shelter. The Mayor's inaction showcases his lack of genuine concern for the plight of the thousands of Long Beach's shelter animals that perish in our shelter every year. |
TransparencyGrade: F
In March 2014, prior to the election, Stayin' Alive Long Beach asked then Vice-Mayor Garcia to look into the misleading methods used by Long Beach Animal Care Services to report their progress. He said he would follow up, but never did. Instead, in July 2015, he adopted the same reporting practices designed to mislead the public that LBACS currently uses. Mayor Garcia was offered mathematical proof that LBACS' numbers were doctored on several occasions, and yet rather than provide a fair response to a fair request for transparency – a professed value of the Long Beach city government – he instead abandoned our shelter animals and began reporting the same inaccurate numbers the shelter habitually reports in order to portray the taxpayer-funded agency in the best possible light. |
