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Susana Barrios
From:Andi Friedman <andiattheark@gmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, June
To:Public Comment
Subject:\[EXTERNAL\] OCAC (OC Animal Shelter) Request for 22.8% Increase in Payment by City
of Anaheim: Consent Calendar No. 16: Urge a Vote of NO
Warning: This email originated from outside the City of Anaheim. Do not click links or open attachments unless you
recognize the sender and are expecting the message.
Dear City Council Members and Mayor:
OCAC (Orange County Animal Shelter) is asking your city to increase its payment to their shelter to over 22 percent!
Please vote no on this request. This large taxpayer funded shelter (built in 2018 at a cost of $35 million) is the only
county shelter around that has remained closed to walk-in adoptions, canceled spay/neuter and TNR programs, and the
animals in OC and especially Anaheim keep multiplying exponentially. The worst outcome of this shelter’s poor
management is the horribly high euthanasia rate and the shelter’s reliance on nonprofit animal rescues to take too
many animals that they should be adopting out themselves and getting spayed or neutered. Animal rescues have no
taxpayer support (unlike this shelter) and they are overburdened with an extremely high number of animals from OC
Shelter.
This shelter has cancelled dog socialization and other related dog programs, TNR programs, has no walk-in adoptions, so
animals get labeled aggressive or as having exhibited poor behavior due to kennel stress and not enough time for the
public to view them.
This shelter has been like this since “Covid,” and that was their initial excuse for not doing their job that they are highly
paid to do (Director evidently earns close to $300,000 annually). Since we stopped lockdowns, their atrocious practices
have continued with all types of nonsensical excuses, i.e., allowing the public to have walk-in adoptions will overly
pressure the staff and stress out the animals. So, is it better to have dogs in cages for 3 weeks straight and then label
them aggressive and kill them? Does this sound humane?
This shelter has been, and is totally mismanaged, yet your city and 13 other OC cities keep paying their requests for
more and more funding with almost no programs remaining to help the animals or the public. The other large county
shelters like LA are fully open with programs to help the animal overpopulation crisis but this shelter needs an overhaul,
not more funding when it fails to even do the minimum to help needy animals in Anaheim. The director is so uncaring
and inept that over a period of months, over 50,000 people signed a change.org petition to replace her and bring the
shelter up to the standards required under the law for ethical and humane treatment of the animals. Even after that
petition, the OC Board of Supervisors did nothing, and continue not to force any positive change there.
A few weeks ago the OC Register did an article (front page) on these horrific and inhumane practices at the OC Shelter.
That article was followed a few days later by an editorial backed by the full Editorial Board of the OC Register, asking the
politicians tasked with overseeing this shelter, The OC Board of Supervisors, to step in and revamp the shelter, reinstate
walk-in adoptions, TNR and neuter spay. There was predictably No Response to the OC Register’s article and editorial
criticizing the OC Shelter.
Do not be convinced that the shelter’s fee for Anaheim deserves to be increased! They are a killing machine and are not
doing their job. Instead of giving them more funds, force them to restart TNR programs to help residents pay for spay
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and neuter and to reduce the overpopulation in your City. Demand that the shelter fully open up wide to the public for
adoptions without appointments like all the other shelters! Their director should be fired and no more taxpayer dollars
should be provided from both an ethical and financial standpoint.
Why pay an increased fee when the shelter is not even running the same programs to help save animals’ lives that were
in place pre-Covid in 2019?
Thank you for you consideration.
Respectfully,
Andrea Friedman
Sent from my iPhone
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