03-pw-02 Animal Control

Recommendations 3

• R1

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  Recommendation pertinent to F1: The grand jury recommends the County make these restroom facilities ADA compliant. However, due to the major remodeling costs involved in most of these locations, the County should provide ADA approved portable toilets in the interim.
• R2

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  Recommendation pertinent to F2: It is recommended that the County should immediately begin to bring these park restrooms into compliance with the ADA.
• R3

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  Recommendation pertinent to F3: a. The grand jury recommends signs be placed along park walkways and entrances directing visitors to the location of restroom facilities and indicating their ADA status. b. The grand jury further recommends that all park literature indicate the ADA status of each Park restroom. RESPONSES: THE FOLLOWING RESPONSES TO REPORT 03-PW-01 ARE REQUIRED PURSUANT TO PENAL CODE 933 AND THE STANDARD FORMAT FOR RESPONSES. 1. The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors shall respond to R1 and R2. 2. The Director of the County Public Works Department shall respond to R1 and R3. GRAND JURY REPORT NO. 03-PW-02 ANIMAL CONTROL Public Works Committee INTRODUCTION: Due to intense local concern over reports of animal neglect and abuse at the Band of Mercy animal refuge, the Humboldt County Grand Jury looked at the case record which reveals public nuisance complaints beginning in1994 and ending eight years later. In 2002, the County condemned the residence and two people were arrested for animal abuse. Previously, in 1997, the Environmental Health and the Planning Departments sent violation letters which were 31 subsequently dead-filed two years later even though the presence of rats and the offensive odors clearly evidenced a significant problem. However, due to the absence of governmental oversight, no County agency regulates non-profit animal rescue facilities. A lack of follow-up by government agencies as well as their failure to ask to enter the premises (due to some confusion over the authority to enter private property) exacerbated the problem. This public nuisance problem was allowed to continue until 2002 when Miranda's Animal Rescue and the Sheriff's department finally removed 34 cats and 19 dogs, most of whom needed to be euthanized due to gross neglect. The grand jury interviewed employees and/or reviewed files from the Departments of Agriculture, Environmental Health, Planning, and Sheriff's Departments and the Code Enforcement Unit of the County Counsel's office. Neither Planning nor Environmental Health availed themselves of a Code Enforcement Unit referral which might have resulted in appropriate enforcement of Penal Code 370 (PC 370), to correct a public nuisance defined as A. . . injurious to health or indecent or offensive to the senses . . .@. It appears that government did not function properly in this instance with a lack of communication between the various agencies on these public nuisance complaints. As a consequence, a public health danger was allowed to continue for an entirely unacceptable period of time.