Agenda - 09-19-2006-7b - Laserfiche WebLink

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Orange County Animal Services Sheltering Practices and Philosophies 61 animal control agency and "adoptable" animals who cannot be placed by animal control are transferred to the SPCA. Partnerships of this nature are impossible to sustain in communities unwilling to fund adequate animal control services, Consider the case of Pike County, Ohio, where government officials who were willing to consider construction of a $1.3 million government services center recently refused to increase the local abuse/humane agent's $25-a-month compensation-a salary that has not changed since the position was first created in 1875. Or look at the cases of many of the areas Pullen visited in Virginia; in these places, there is no distinction between the functions of animal control and humane societies because the only provider of hands-on care, field rescue, animal control, or basic sheltering to the county's animals is one compassionate person employed by the county itself, The Cultural Gap Further illtastrating the economic divide, a recent Associated Press article detailed areal-estate survey that puts San Francisco at the top of the list of the most expensive places in the country to set up a large high-tech business. A hot spot for the wealthy, the Bay Area is home to a generous lot, too: Around the time that Avanzino left the SPCA in the late '90s, one out of every three households in San Francisco was donating money or services to the organization.. On the other side of the country and at the bottom of the national real-estate ranking was Baltimore, Maryland, where one-third of the people can barely afford to feed themselves, let alone their pets, says Baltimore's Bureau of Animal Control director, Bob Anderson, Lack of funding for Anderson's agency stems not so much from indifference on the part of local government as it does from cash- poor coffers; the budget left over for animal care and control is dismally low, The one private open-admission shelter in the city, the Maryland SPCA, is already maxed out, taking in 10,000 animals a year, while Baltimore's Bureau of Animal Control takes in 14,000, The animal control budget is just over $2 million a year-and that's supposed to cover all expenses related to field services, shelter operations, and cruelty investigations, "Right now I have 33 people-[HSUS] tells me I should have 42 people just for the shelter alone," says Anderson. "[fhe National Animal Control Association] tells me I should have 32 officers on the street. Combined, I've got 33 people at this time," Adding to the pet homelessness burden in Baltimore is an attitude toward animals that some of Anderson's West Coast counterparts haven't had to contend with in decades: While San Francisco was recently named by the Fancy publications as the best place in the country to be a pet, in Baltimore animals are so low on the totem pole in some people's minds that they think the only purpose of cats is to keep the rat population in check, And as recently as eight years ago,