Over the next day or two, we’ll be breaking down our analysis of the City’s presentation so you can see what the “new” approach to sheltering in Long Beach now is.

Part 1. No Independent Adoption Program at LBACS

The first thing to know is that LBACS will not be doing an independent adoption program. This is the first indication that the approach the City has come up with, which they’ve named “Compassion saves” is not No Kill. A complete and comprehensive adoption program is crucial to No Kill; therefore, it is virtually impossible for a municipal city animal shelter to be No Kill without an adoption program.

Second of all, the City’s discussion of No Kill was clearly designed to discredit No Kill once and for all as an approach to sheltering in Long Beach. The entire presentation was an exercise in creating fear among residents, claiming that if the City went No Kill, LBACS would have to become a closed admission shelter that would turn animals away.

This is, of course, a complete falsehood. Sacramento, though not yet No Kill, follows No Kill programs, strives for No Kill and yet is completely open admission. Austin’s No Kill shelter, the most successful in the nation, is absolutely an open admission shelter. In telling this falsehood, the City of Long Beach aligned itself with PETA, a nationally-recognized anti-No Kill organization that kills 72% of animals in their shelter.

Although the City acknowledged that closed admission is not part of No Kill, the theme of “No Kill makes shelters close their doors” was pervasive throughout the entire presentation, and it revealed the true intent of “Compassion saves” – Compassion saves is designed to be a smokescreen to make it appear that LBACS has an orientation similar to No Kill. But it’s clear that LBACS will continue, at this point, to be nothing more than an animal control agency, which is exactly what SpcaLA wants it to be.

The good news is that advocating for No Kill has been enormously successful in decreasing the kill rate at LBACS. When No Kill Long Beach (then Stayin’ Alive) broke the news on the front page of the Press Telegram in 2013 that LBACS was not a No Kill shelter, LBACS had a 53% kill rate. In the six years since then, we’ve seen a 34 percentage point drop in the kill rate -- an unprecedented decrease in killing due uniquely to the fact that we advocated consistently and firmly, and made sure that LBACS’ true status as a shelter that kills was known to the public.

Advocating remains an extraordinarily powerful means of saving lives at the LBACS shelter. We hope you’ll continue to support and advocate for our shelter animals. By continuing to be their voice, we are able to support them and make it difficult for the City to force LBACS to continue killing.

One day, people will look back in history and find it unbelievable that we killed animals relentlessly throughout the 20th and early 21st century in our country’s shelters. We sleep easy knowing that we who support No Kill be on the right side of history when people look back. No Kill is compassionate and effective, and we’ll continue to advocate for No Kill in Long Beach.
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October 2, 2018
 
Dear Mayor Garcia and Members of City Council:

This letter is submitted as commentary on the performance of City Manager Patrick West. It is in regard to Mr. West’s management of Long Beach Animal Care Services during his tenure as the city’s top administrator.

The recent audits of Long Beach Animal Care Services (Phase One and Phase Two) have revealed how poorly managed this city bureau has been during the decade that Patrick West has been the Long Beach City Manager.  The current chaotic condition of LBACS is directly attributable to Patrick West’s negligence of the shelter and his failing to take into account the key role it plays in the lives of the people of Long Beach.  In the wake of the troubling reports that have come out of the City Auditor’s performance review of the shelter, there now can be no doubt that LBACS is a shelter in crisis – a situation that could have been prevented had Mr. West hired competent managers and carried out proper oversight.  A review of the shelter’s condition over the past 10 years shows that under Mr. West’s management, LBACS has failed to hire managers with backgrounds in animal sheltering. In addition, it has lacked proper staffing and resources to maintain humane care of animals.  Furthermore, LBACS has seriously mismanaged taxpayer funds in ways that show a gross disregard for or misunderstanding of fiscally-responsible management of taxpayer resources. 

Based on the Auditor’s findings, it is clear that LBACS has been chronically mismanaged under City Manager Patrick West’s tenure, not only currently, but also at least since 2009, and likely earlier.  Given the depth and breadth of the problems documented by the Auditor’s review, and the nearly ten-year span of financial hemorrhaging of taxpayer dollars discussed in the report that has occurred through LBACS’ mismanagement, it is clear that oversight of the shelter by the Mr. West has been inadequate, costing the taxpayers of Long Beach millions of dollars over the past decade.  We submit the following for consideration in the performance evaluation of City Manager Patrick West.

Fiscal mismanagement at LBACS is a longstanding problem at LBACS.  It has been the subject of two prior audits and the recent audit shows that LBACS continues to be fiscally mismanaged.  Phase Two of the Auditor’s recent review notes that LBACS has failed to collect nearly $1 million in citations since 2009, collecting only 13% of the fees due to LBACS. Nearly 2/3 of the outstanding amount can no longer be collected due to statutes of limitation in effect.  This has occurred during the tenure of Mr. West as City Manager, starting two years after he was hired. Even more troubling: fiscal mismanagement is a pattern that has been in place at LBACS for nearly a decade.  The Auditor’s report alluded to, but did not explain, that the City Auditor’s Office (CAO) carried out an audit in 2011 that revealed that an LBACS employee had embezzled over $250,000 from LBACS. The audit found that the theft was made possible by lax accounting procedures in place at LBACS, an area that Mr. West should have been monitoring via the Director of Parks, Recreation and Marine and the various managers LBACS has had over the past decade.  Subsequent news articles reported that the employee had embezzled $600,000 over the course of a career at LBACS. A 2014 audit found that problems with LBACS’ accounting procedures that led to the embezzlement had not been fully resolved.

Mr. West has hired a series of inexperienced managers at LBACS who were neither educated nor qualified via experience to run the operations of a shelter. Historically, City Manager Mr. West has hired managers from within the City’s own departments, hiring people who don’t have the specific training, education or experience in animal sheltering that is necessary to humanely run a shelter. These managers left after mismanagement or outright animal cruelty were revealed by the public or by the Auditor’s office.  As told by media stories and city audits, the story of LBACS managers has been one of bumbling, stumbling and weaving, as animals were killed by the tens of thousands over the past 10 years. The past three managers that have been hired at LBACS under Mr. West’s tenure have all resigned in the midst of crisis:
 
LBACS Manager Wesley Moore resigned from LBACS in 2008 after a dog was inhumanely killed in what was described in the press as a “grisly” scene. The LA Daily News/Press-Telegram at the time described the horrific incident in detail. Rather than acknowledge the role of the manager in this situation, the City blamed the incident on a lack of resources. Mr. Moore resigned.  City Manager Patrick West at the time said in the media that Moore’s resignation had nothing to do with the dog’s inhumane treatment.

LBACS Manager John Keisler was hired in the wake of Wesley Moore’s resignation. Mr. Keisler left LBACS soon after a national scandal which implicated LBACS in the inhumane transport of more than 125 animals by a Long Beach rescue.  According to the Press-Telegram, LBACS supervised the loading of animals into a truck by a Long Beach rescue group in preparation to move the animals to Virginia. The truck was stopped en route and the rescue was charged with 128 counts of aggravated animal cruelty. The news outlet notes that “the animals were being transported in deplorable conditions” and “[o]fficers [in Tennessee] noted urine and feces all over the cargo compartment and located no food or water provided to the animals.” According to press reports, then-LBACS manager, Mr. Keisler, admitted that the Long Beach animal control officers who went to the loading of the animals in Long Beach did not do a final inspection, and likely had no idea that the rescue was transporting nearly 130 animals in spite of being present at the time of loading. In the wake of press reports that LBACS was involved in the loading of the animals, Mr. Keisler promised to do an investigation into LBACS’ procedures.  To our knowledge, the results of that investigation were never made public.  Not surprisingly, Mr. Keisler left the position of LBACS manager not soon afterward. When he left, LBACS was killing 55% of the animals in its care. And Mr. Keisler, like the managers before and after him, still made excuses for the killing.

Current LBACS manager Ted Stevens is also leaving at a time of crisis – the recent audit reports have shown the shelter to be currently suffering from poor management – clearly an indictment of Mr. Stevens’ lack of leadership.  Mr. Stevens has been the manager of LBACS during the specific period during which the last two audit reports were prepared, and although the audits praised the staff of LBACS for their work, they also found that employee morale at LBACS is very low, that employees were given conflicting instructions and that operations were poorly managed. Furthermore, the audits found that LBACS lacks adequate housing, veterinary care or operational know-how to run a humane, well-run animal shelter. For example, the Phase One of the audit found LBACS engaging in numerous practices that do not meet minimum industry standards, including housing sick animals next to unvaccinated animals, a lack of proper monitoring of animals after veterinary care, contaminating dogs’ drinking water with detergent while cleaning and other similar issues that affect the care of animals.  
 
Phase Two of the audit continued to document LBACS’ poor performance, revealing that LBACS provides grossly inadequate care to animals, including an inability to properly feed animals or clean animals’ housing. According to the report, animals receive only 6 minutes of care per day -- less than half the industry-recommended standard of 15 minutes. Even more troubling, the report finds that veterinary care is insufficient, with a very high ratio of animals to veterinary staff, and with veterinary staff at times unable to complete daily rounds to check on animals’ welfare. Daily rounds are a very basic requirement of animal sheltering, without which animals often fall ill. No Kill Long Beach’s research has shown that animals euthanized for illness at LBACS often come into the shelter healthy but suffer declines in health over time, and they are subsequently euthanized for illnesses caused by the shelter itself.
 
Further, during Mr. Stevens’ tenure, No Kill Long Beach found that at least one dog has been killed in violation of California’s Hayden Act, which establishes specific conditions under which an animal may not be euthanized.  In addition, during Mr. Stevens’ time as manager, LBACS burned a dog so severely by leaving him on a heating mat during surgery, that he nearly died.

The Auditor’s review blames a lack of staffing for these deficits – an issue directly impacted by Mr. West.  In addition, as mentioned above, Mr. West has repeatedly hired managers from within the City’s ranks with no experience in animal shelter management. It is difficult to believe that Mr. West’s practice of hiring managers with no animal shelter management experience has not affected staff’s ability to work at optimal levels.
 
Losses in the millions of dollars, the consistent hiring of shelter managers without appropriate education or experience, the resulting inhumane treatment of animals, and the ongoing problems stemming from the fact that the residents of Long Beach are unhappy with the direction LBACS has taken for the past decade or more are not hallmarks of a good manager. 
 
We hope that in reviewing Mr. West’s performance as City Manager, the Mayor and City Council take into account the facts presented in this letter. Long Beach residents deserve an animal shelter that is among the best in the nation, one that is befitting of the sixth largest city in California. Thank you for reading.

Tomorrow is Long Beach Animal Care Services' annual Open House. For at least the past five years, LBACS and the City have used this as a vehicle for "putting one over" on the people of Long Beach, trumpeting small achievements and, unfortunately for the animals, sweeping under the rug the many unnecessary killings of animals at the Long Beach shelter, multiple chaotic management and personnel issues (recently documented in the city audit of LBACS), and what we now know are poorly managed animal welfare practices and, at times, inhumane treatment of animals at our city shelter.
For those who go to the Open House this Saturday, though, many of whom have supported the shelter animals through thick and thin over the years, you deserve much better than a cavalcade of thin excuses, feel-good celebrations and trumped up achievements that ignore the deep problems that plague our city shelter.
You deserve: A genuine, honest and transparent explanation of the audit's conclusions and why LBACS has "very limited standard operating procedures," and why management engages in "inconsistent decision-making and conflicting shelter practices, as well as in changes being implemented without proper direction and explanation." These things hurt our shelter animals immensely. You deserve to have that acknowledged.
You deserve to have Ted Stevens, Marie Knight and Mayor Garcia tell you, in PRECISE terms, what the City intends to do as a result of the audit, rather than trotting out the tired old "everything's just fine - we're doing great" message they've conveyed for the last 5 years as they've faced public scrutiny.
You deserve to be told that the PRECISE things the City plans to do are: To run a humane, No Kill shelter that is free of the influence of SpcaLA, that has its own adoption program and foster program, that sets goals for performance and sticks to them and that:
SAVES EVERY HEALTHY AND TREATABLE ANIMAL AT THE LONG BEACH ANIMAL SHELTER.
If you don't get that, if instead you get feel-good reports about minuscule changes in the euthanasia numbers, new play areas for dogs that serve only to keep them from spiraling into desperation until they are killed, and thanks for performing services our city taxpayer dollars are paying LBACS to do and that LBACS lays on the backs of under-resourced, hard-working rescues that Mayor Garcia is more than happy to transfer the work of saving lives to - if that's what you get, you'll know that it's business-as-usual at LBACS, animals will continue to be killed, and Long Beach is no closer to becoming a no kill city than it ever was.
We hope the City will take the high road and start to see how misguided the current sheltering model is.
We hope the City will stop the suffering of shelter animals and the people who care about them.
The good people of Long Beach deserve a city-run animal shelter that is run in accordance with their compassionate and humane values.
Let's hope we get that tomorrow.

The numbers for 2017 are in, and while there has been some small improvement, LBACS still lags far behind progressive shelters in lifesaving, killing nearly 1,100 cats, dogs, puppies and kittens in 2017.
These are the numbers you will never see or hear from Mayor Garcia or LBACS.

Typically, Mayor Garcia likes to talk about decreases in impound and euthanasia numbers, and he completely leaves out adoptions, fosters, the missing, or even the numbers transferred to SpcaLA, which remains unaccountable to the public and firmly against No Kill.

This year, Mayor Garcia, in a display of bravado that is shocking even to those of us accustomed to his lack of genuine concern for shelter animals, said during the State of the City speech that adoptions had increased since he came into office. He offered no numbers, no proof to show what that means. That is because adoption numbers have barely crept up (from 403 adoptions in 2014 to a heartbreakingly-low 682 adoptions in 2017, while Sacramento did over 5,600 adoptions in 2017.)

Here are the numbers Mayor Garcia doesn't want to talk about:

To reiterate, LBACS did only 682 adoptions and had only 4 animals in foster for all of 2017. With a shelter that is killing nearly 1,100 animals, a strong and viable adoption and foster program are absolutely VITAL to lifesaving. We still have not seen a statement by the City saying they are committed to a strong adoption and foster program.

If LBACS did even a fraction of the 5,600 adoptions Sacramento did, our shelter would be saving all of the healthy and treatable animals in Long Beach. It would also have the capacity to take in animals from nearby higher-kill shelters like Downey and Carson.

Nearly 1,100 animals were killed at LBACS in 2017. They were named Mopsy, Thor, Charlie, Pumpkin Spice, Buda, Thaddeus, Blueberry, Beau, Bella, Zeus and so many more.

There's literally no excuse for not having a strong adoption program in Long Beach - ours is a city full of animal lovers. A mobile adoption van was generously donated to the City last year - and only 103 more adoptions were done as a result.

That's not a shelter that has "not enough money." That's city management Pat West, Marie Knight, City Council and Mayor Garcia remaining indifferent to our shelter animals, not caring that rescues are working every waking hour to save animals and not looking at the answer that is staring straight at them:
A strong adoption and foster program.
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Our shelter animals and the people of Long Beach deserve better.

Kudos to the Signal Tribune Newspaper for balanced journalism. They have released the second installment in their two-part coverage of the Long Beach Animal Care Services Audit - the watchdog group they talk about is Stayin' Alive Long Beach.
In the article, we see Marie Knight, Director of Parks, Recreation and Marine, backpedaling, as a brilliant Huffposter once said, "faster than Wile E. Coyote off a cliff" when it comes to the audit's clear identification of a clear problem between LBACS and SpcaLA: the lack of a formal operating agreement.
From the Signal Tribune article:
"Marie Knight, who has served as director of Long Beach Parks, Recreation & Marine for almost a year, concurred that there is indeed an operations agreement but that the auditors are calling for clarification on the working relationship between the two entities– not necessarily a new agreement."
Hold onto your hat.
The fact is, there is NO operating agreement between LBACS and SpcaLA -- only a lease-back agreement. And the audit says so: "[t]he lease-back agreement does not contain terms related to key operating functions, such as animal adoptions, for which both organizations are responsible."
The audit also fully recommends a formal operations agreement between SpcaLA and LBACS, not just "a clarification," as Ms. Knight erroneously states.
So what we're seeing here is:
1) SpcaLA saying that there is an operational agreement between SpcaLA and LBACS, when there's not (a verbal agreement or a working agreement is not a formal agreement). The truth -- that the audit clearly states -- is the only agreement that exists is a lease/lease-back agreement (we have obtained it through the California Public Records Act and posted it on our website. You can find it here: https://www.stayinalivelongbeach.org/acs-and-spca-la-whos-w…)
2) Marie Knight folding to SpcaLA and then misstating the actual audit by ignoring the fact that the shelter consultants recommends specifically on page 6 of the audit that the City "work with SpcaLA to develop a formal operations agreement."
3) An "alternative fact" being created right before our eyes, as Marie Knight and SpcaLA attempt to erase the clear fact stated in the audit that there is NO operational agreement between the two organizations by saying that there IS one. It is precisely this loosey-goosey operational chaos at LBACS that prevents SpcaLA from being accountable to LBACS in any way, shape or form, and it is this lack of sound city management that is hurting our shelter animals.
The good news is - people can change this by going to City Council, writing letters to their City Council person or even simply educating people by sharing on Facebook as a first step.
We have the power to help our shelter animals. We just have to use it. The shelter animals are depending on us to be their voice.
Read the Signal Tribune article here:http://www.signaltribunenewspaper.com/?p=36407

The following is an annotated list of the recommendations that the recent audit make that point toward more euthanasias. Each recommendation is followed by commentary by Stayin' Alive Long Beach.

Animal  Intake and Flow – Short-term Recommendations (Audit, Page 7)

• Make outcome decisions (i.e. transfer out or euthanasia) promptly to prevent suffering, while obeying existing laws such as the Hayden Law. (Bullet 6)

Stayin' Alive notes:  Transfers to other shelters and euthanasia are not the only possible outcomes for animals – relatively easy to implement changes in adoption policies and a foster program would have almost-immediate positive impact.

• With current resources ACS should not be taking on long term medical cases. Animals with long-term medical conditions should be found a medical foster or rescue. Housing animals long-term-in a shelter (typically beyond a two-week LOS) can lead to deterioration of behavior. If medical foster or rescue cannot be located, treatment decisions should be based on the ability to safely and humanely provide relief, prognosis of recovery, likelihood of placement, duration of treatment, expense and resources available. When adequate pain relief cannot be achieved, transfer to a facility that can meet the animal’s needs or humane euthanasia must be provided. (Bullet 7)

Stayin' Alive notes: LBACS doesn’t have a foster program. Without a foster program, the probability of finding medical fosters is small, which means that more animals will be euthanized. The way this recommendation is stated, “expense and resources” can be used as a rationale for euthanizing very treatable animals. We agree with the point that LBACS should not be taking on long-term medical cases, as it has problems addressing even basic humane conditions for animals at the shelter. However, the answer to this problem is to hire qualified leadership with expertise in lifesaving animal sheltering.
 
If LBACS had a viable adoption and foster program that moved healthy animals out of the shelter, they would be able to treat many of these animals. Sacramento ACS, a comparable shelter, does not choose euthanasia for its treatable animals and instead garners community support to get prompt and competent medical care for their animals with medical needs.  They do this because they are committed to meeting the Sacramento community’s expectations that they will have a humane, proactive, city-run shelter. You can see an example here: https://goo.gl/Y4ZoGz. 

Animal Intake and Flow – Long-term Recommendations (Audit, page 10)

• During the strategic planning process, stakeholders should decide if investment in behavior modification is a future priority. Until resources are allocated for behavior modification, fosters, or socialization, placing animals with a rescue should be a focus. If placement cannot be achieved, humane euthanasia should be considered to ensure the animals do not further deteriorate. (Bullet point 3)

Stayin' Alive notes: This recommendation again ties improvements in sheltering practices to increased resources and says that if placement with rescue organizations cannot be achieved, euthanasia should be considered. This provides a considerable loophole for the City to justify killing of animals because of a supposed lack of resources, when many of the audit’s recommendations can be achieved without substantial additional resources (e.g., shifting adoption hours to allow people to visit the shelter after work; reducing extended hold times and networking animals earlier and more). Note the recommendation doesn’t mention the implementation of a viable adoption program as a focus; instead, it talks about placing animals with rescue organizations, who have increased their intake from LBACS over the past four years and, as a result, are overworked and under-resourced.


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