Contra Costa County Grand Jury
• 2011-2012
Animal Shelters In Contra Costa County - Tails of Two Shelters*
⚠️ Translation Notice: This content has been automatically translated. The original English text is the official version. Translation may contain errors.
⚠️ Este contenido ha sido traducido automáticamente. El texto original en inglés es la versión oficial. La traducción puede contener errores.
Findings and Recommendations 4 findings
F1
The Antioch Shelter currently has an insufficient number of volunteers to provide adequate time out of kennels for training, socialization, playtime or exercise for the animals each day, which is part of the humane treatment of animals. Respondent Disagrees OFFICE OF THE CITY MANAGER Contra Costa Grand Jury September 6, 2012
Related Recommendations (1)
R1
The Antioch Shelter should explore ways to increase the number of volunteers to ensure the humane treatment of the animals and that each animal receives adequate personal attention (walking, socialization) each day. Response: This requires a response by the City of Antioch. The Antioch Shelter should explore options to provide lower cost spay/neuter fees for
F2
services by nearby shelters and, for this reason, may discourage adoption from this shelter. Response: This requires a response by the City of Antioch. The cost differences between the two shelters (as shown in Table 1) are great enough
Related Recommendations (1)
R2
newly adopted animals. Response: This requires a response by the City of Antioch.
F3
to merit closer examination for cost effectiveness. Response: Respondent agrees with the finding.
Related Recommendations (1)
R3
Each shelter should examine its cost per animal to ensure that the amount being spent provides for efficient, effective, and humane treatment for the animals. Response: The recommendation has not yet been implemented by the County Animal Shelter, but will be implemented in the future. We believe that the Contra Costa Animal Shelter already provides for the efficient, effective and humane treatment for the animals. However, the County also believes it is a good idea to review performance from time to time. An analysis of this type takes significant staff time. Due to vacancies in several positions in the Contra Costa County Animal Services Department, staff is not currently available to perform this work. When these vacancies are filled and staff is available, a review will be performed. The Department will make every effort to complete the review no later than October 15,
F4
The County Shelter and the Antioch Shelter should consider establishing advisory councils to provide direction and suggest priorities for each shelter. The recommendation is not reasonable. As you are aware, the Chief of Police is the department head in charge of the shelter. The Chief of Police takes direction from the City Manager, who in turn receives policy directives from the City Council. Input is given at council meetings from those who are community stakeholders relative to the animal shelter and animal advocacy. The formation of an advisory council would create another step of additional bureaucracy for information to reach the Chief of Police, City Manager and the City Council. Moreover, we currently do not have the staff or resources to support such an advisory council. Sincerely L, Jim Jákel City Manager Mayor and City Council cc: Lynn Tracy Nerland, City Attorney Dawn Merchant, Finance Director BOARD OF SUPERVISORS RESPONSE TO GRAND JURY REPORT NO. 1205: Tail of Two Shelters FINDINGS
No recommendations for this finding
No Responses Found 2
Government entities assigned to respond to this report. No response documents have been linked in our database.
Antioch
City
Contra Costa County
County
* This report's PDF did not contain easily extractable text and required Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for analysis. There may be minor errors in the extracted findings and recommendations due to OCR limitations with scanned documents.