ASAB Chair Communication to BOCC Chair & Vice Chair Regarding Criticism of the ASAB

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The minutes of the August meeting of the Animal Services Advisory Board (ASAB) accurately reflect that I informed all of the members present at the meeting about your request to address the nuisance provision as part of the unified animal control ordinance and the reasons I and the other officers considered in concluding that it would be best dealt with separately. That discussion and the consensus reached by the ASAB were noted in the minutes of the meeting, which are attached to this email as approved by the ASAB at its September meeting. Regarding some of the other statements in your email, I believe your view of the ASAB's effectiveness may be influenced by the brevity of your exposure to and participation in the Board's efforts. You were appointed to the ASAB in May of 2014, and in July requested that the definition of nuisance be added to the agenda for the ASAB's next meeting, which would be held in August. After consideration and discussion among Vice-Chair Warren Porter, former Chair Susan Elmore, Director Bob Marotto, and myself, we decided not to include a review of the the nuisance provision of the proposed unified ordinance as a separate agenda item (apart from an update on the progress of the ordinance) for various reasons. Those reasons included logistical considerations, including the fact that the County's attorneys were still in the process of making revisions and that the August agenda was already full with a mid-year statistics update and review of the report of the Free Roaming Cat Task Force, which had been in development for nearly 8 months. More substantively, we felt that the process of unifying the County's various animal ordinances to provide for much needed operational consistency was not the most appropriate avenue for addressing your concern regarding the nuisance definition, especially at a late stage in the process. As I mentioned to you and to the rest of the ASAB, the nuisance provision could be addressed separately so that due consideration could be given both to the unification process and the broader policy concerns raised by your request. I also followed up with an email indicating that I anticipated that at its August meeting, the ASAB would provide input regarding the preferable way to proceed with updating the proposed ordinance and presenting it to the Board of County Commissioners. You did not attend the ASAB's August meeting on August 20 and did not offer a reason for your absence, either before or after the meeting. As I indicated I would, I informed the ASAB of your request to review the nuisance provision of the unified ordinance and of my response that your request implicated broad policy concerns that would be better addressed standing alone rather than as part of the unification process, especially given the late stage of that process and the critical need for operational clarity as