Councilmember Jeannine Pearce Betrays No Kill, Guts Legislation that Would Have Saved Long Beach's Shelter Animals

on M​Councilmember Jeannine Pearce has shown her true colors by joining anti-No Kill voices in the City that are pushing through the “Compassion saves” approach to animal sheltering – an approach with massive loopholes that will allow animals to continue to be killed at the Long Beach animal shelter.
 
Ms. Pearce has been writing the item for the past several months, supposedly working with animal advocates that support No Kill who went to her asking for a resolution that would establish No Kill programs at LBACS. In a classic bait-and-switch, Ms. Pearce ignored advocates’ requests for specific lifesaving programs, and has now come out with an agenda item that supports the City’s weak and ineffectual “Compassion saves” approach, massively gutting the group’s original proposal, slashing specific programs of the No Kill Equation, like a comprehensive adoption and foster program that are specifically and intentionally independent of SpcaLA. 
 
Ms. Pearce also specifically removed the provision for LBACS to have full autonomy from SpcaLA generally-speaking, which is absolutely necessary for our shelter to serve the community.
 
Councilmember Pearce also ignored the provision that SpcaLA be required to be fully transparent and post the outcomes of all of the animals that go into its shelter. (Animals go into a “black hole” at SpcaLA – no records of what happens to animals once they enter SpcaLA are available to the public. At the same time, SpcaLA does not support No Kill, so we have no assurance that animals are not killed when they go to SpcaLA.)

Instead Ms. Pearce’s agenda item, which will be voted on this Tuesday leaves open loopholes for SpcaLA to continue running the adoption program at LBACS, to continue to call the shots operationally at LBACS, and to continue to use LBACS as its main animal supplier in Long Beach. In fact, Ms. Pearce’s item calls for “maximizing collaboration” with SpcaLA with no mention of reforming the toxic partnership between LBACS and the privately-run, multi-million dollar SpcaLA, which has proven to be so harmful to our shelter animals over the past two decades.
 
Finally, Councilmember Pearce made a call in an op-ed piece yesterday for all advocates in Long Beach to “work together.” It’s no surprise – the election will heat up in approximately 6 months, and Councilmember Pearce will certainly want to silence the large and growing ever larger community of Long Beach residents who are calling for LBACS to be a No Kill shelter that is independent of SpcaLA. And she needs that to happen well before the next election.
 
[Note: In spite of a majority of public input requesting a No Kill shelter, Long Beach City Council passed the “Compassion Saves,” approach – a set of policies that establish business as usual at the Long Beach shelter - in May 2019.]