Santa Barbara County Animal Services has stepped up its game over the past two years, since the American Humane Association conducted a comprehensive assessment of Animal Services in June 2015, concluding with 464 recommendations.
In the month following the assessment, Animal Services created an oversight team to help implement the Humane Association’s recommendations. Nearly two years later, Animal Services presented its progress to the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors at its April 4 meeting.
“It’s a really, really different place,” Susan Klein-Rothschild, deputy director of community health, said of Animal Services at the meeting. “With increased collaboration, resources, and working together, I feel like it’s an even better place. It’s made meaningful improvements.”
Klein-Rothschild went over some of the Humane Association’s key findings from its 2015 report, including a fractured culture, too much control for the Animal Services director, lack of strategic planning, passive population management, and external community members “exerting undue influence” on the organization.
She detailed how Animal Services has worked to address each issue: Reorganization and new policies have helped with the organization’s culture, she said, and a new operations manager has been hired to relieve the director of some responsibilities. Animal Services is now using the Humane Association’s report as a planning guideline, and the organization has implemented a chain of command and more direct communication to check influence from external community members.
Phil Seymour of Santa Barbara’s BUNS (Bunnies Urgently Needing Shelter) organization has worked with Animal Services’ oversight committee since its inception to help fall in line with the Humane Association’s recommendations.
“It’s going to be a very long process, and we are still truly in the beginning stages,” Seymour said at the meeting. “We certainly have not solved all the problems in the last two years. We haven’t even gotten through all 464 recommendations.”
He added that the organization has made good headway in some areas, but improvement would only continue if the oversight committee—which is scheduled to dismantle this June—could take a more permanent form.
“We need to change direction a little bit here,” Seymour said. “In the long run, what we need is an animal commission.”
But according to 5th District Supervisor Das Williams, the county doesn’t have the resources to fund a Brown Act body like a commission. Instead, it should go for an advisory committee for Animal Services, Williams said.
“Basically, what I asked for is for the advisory committee to at some point down in the future either make a definitive vote to stay as an advisory or advising us to establish a commission,” Williams told the Sun. “And if stakeholders coalesce around a commission, I’ll support that, and if they coalesce around an advisory committee, then I’ll keep quiet.”
The board didn’t take any votes regarding a commission, but most—including 1st District Supervisor Steve Lavagnino—said they favored the idea of an informal advisory committee over a Brown Act body.
Lavagnino said that as far as he knows, there’s no other county group that receives more public input or volunteers as Animal Services, where thousands of volunteers offer their time, money, and partnerships to the organization.
“The message was, look how much you guys have accomplished just as an oversight team,” Lavagnino told the Sun. “I think we should continue that pattern and that model, continually having the public look over our shoulder and letting us know what they think on how we’re doing.”
Supervisor Peter Adam, who represents the 4th District, recommended that Animal Services curb its expectations as far as resources go.
“I think it’s going to get really, really bad, and this is going to have a lot of pressure to get cut, so go learn how to play nicely together,” Adam said at the meeting. “Everybody that I’ve ever talked to who’s involved in this on any level is really just concerned for the welfare of the animals. And I think that should be the common denominator.”
Klein-Rothschild said Animal Services’ next area of focus will be its computer software system, Chameleon, which the Humane Association said has been experiencing “limited use” with Animal Services.
“We want to make that change, to use it to its fullest extent,”Klein-Rothschild said at the meeting.
The board voted unanimously to have Animal Services return in six months with another progress report, this time updating the county on how the advisory committee is coming and again addressing the potential for creating a formal commission down the line.
Staff Writer Brenna Swanston can be reached at [email protected].
