Submittal to the Board of Supervisors Item County of Riverside, State of California*

Respondent RCDAS partially agrees with this finding. RCDAS is partially in agreement with the finding regarding a lack of policy for handling payments of fees in the field. While we do not have a specific policy for handling payments in the field, we do have Cash Handling Policy 000-22 (Policy 000-22), that was written to include all RCDAS employees. Cash handling has the same requirements regardless of the location and circumstances of receiving the funds. The primary aspects of cash handling are covered in Policy 000-22. Section III of Policy 000-22 covers how to secure funds by placing them in a location that is kept locked and out of direct sight of the public. The Animal Control Officers (ACO) meet this requirement by keeping cash in a locked box that is bolted to a seat in the ACO's truck. When the ACO is out of the vehicle, it is kept locked. Section IV of Policy 000-22 covers general cash handling instructions and instructs departmental staff members to not commingle funds or use funds collected from the public for personal reasons. Section V of Policy 000-22 covers the process of how cash is to be received and treated by DAS staff personnel. This policy is primarily for staff that have access to a change box. Section VI of Policy 000-22 covers the requirements of accepting checks in the field. This becomes a risk to the County and RCDAS as the incidents of passing bad checks may increase. Section VII of Policy 000-22 covers our credit card acceptance policy. We can eliminate or greatly reduce the need for ACO staff to collect cash payments in the field by training ACO staff to use the WEB based converge credit card payment system. Policy 000-22 was written for staff members that have a credit card machine at their desks. We do have a written procedure for acceptance of WEB based Converge credit card payments. Once the officers have been properly trained, we can, for the most part, eliminate cash acceptance in the Response to

Respondent RCDAS partially agrees with this finding. RCDAS is in partial agreement with the finding of cumbersome and unsafe procedures for processing fee payments. All Animal Control Officer and Animal Licensing Offices are currently equipped with tablets. RCDAS uses the Web based Converge credit card system. This has been in place several years but has not been widely used. With the implementation of the credit card-based system, information will still have to be entered into the Chameleon database. RCDAS uses the database to record every activity, receipt, animal ID and owner ID. Without this information, no official record will exist of the transaction. While it is time consuming to enter the information correctly, this method is used by most animal shelters in the United States. RCDAS has been using the system for approximately 20 years and has thousands of records in the system. These records are vital to know the status of animals, such as if they are licensed, have bitten anyone in the past, or have violations of law pending against them. <b>