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

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Orange County Animal Services Sheltering Practices and Philosophies The conversations began cautiously, as people who had long ago drawn lines in the sand over divisive phrases like "no kill" and "turnaway shelter" proceeded hesitantly through the facilitated discussion. Soon, though, participants dared to tread on treacherous ground, letting their honest opinions bubble to the surface.. Discussions on such topics usually devolve when the real dialogue begins, At Asilomar, miraculously, they didn't. What could have been just another sparring session became instead a kind of melting pot of differing philosophies and approaches that progressed far beyond anyone's initial expectations. "I was definitely surprised by the openness, the willingness of the various players to try to forget past histories and basically check their luggage at the door to really focus on what's best for the animals," says Richard Avanzino, president of Maddie's Fund, agrant-giving organization in Alameda, California. Maybe the time was ripe, or maybe the face-to-face forum was fertile ground for communication. "When you have to look each other in the eye, that makes a tremendous amount of difference," says participant Jane McCall, executive director of the Dubuque Humane Society in Iowa, The result is a tangible, written document that the Asilomar group hopes will make a tremendous difference, too. Outlined in the document are 14 guiding principles of collaboration; a list of concrete definitions for words like "healthy" and "treatable"; and a statistical reporting template that local organizations can use to measure the extent of the homeless animal problem communitywide, The beauty of the uniform reporting system, of course, is consistency. If every agency in a given area reports intake and euthanasia numbers the same way, the theory goes, it will be easier to identify why some organizations' adoption rates are lower than others-and presumably easier to appeal for mare resources. An animal control agency that takes in 10,000 animals on a $1 million budget, for example, is not going to be as well-staffed orwell-equipped as a private organization that has the same budget but takes in only 3,000 animals-a distinction that will be apparent under the system set out by the Asilomar Accords, "In the past what we've seen is that organizations that have had the terrible task of having to kill unwanted pets got criticized and blamed ..," says Avanzino. "And we're saying it's really the community that has to shoulder the obligation to make for a better world; it's not one agency by itself..,, And if an agency really isn't doing what it should be, nobody should take comfort in basically pointing the finger and thinking that's the only place for blame.." Among the guiding principles in the Asilomar Accords is a special emphasis on the formation of community coalitions of the sort that have already been developed in several other communities, most notably Denver, Composed of