Animal welfare advocates continue to sound the alarm about San Jose’s beleaguered animal shelter, contending that the city’s claims of progress do not reflect the reality of the situation there. Instead, they say, the city has handled the shelter’s issues with gross incompetence, reneging on promises and gaslighting their concerns.
A city audit last year confirmed many of the advocates’ complaints over several years — poor conditions, operating at overcapacity and mismanagement to the detriment of the animals’ health — leading to 39 recommendations and demands from elected officials for marked improvements.
Shelter management said at the Neighborhood Services Committee meeting this week that their actions taken in response to the recommendations would be submitted for review by the end of December. But advocates argued that audit compliance is not a barometer for improvement, and compared the city’s most recent status report to “putting lipstick on a pig,” noting numerous systemic issues that continue to persist and need reform.
“Leadership may claim that audit recommendations are ‘met,’ but as a long-term volunteer, I can attest that conditions inside the shelter have not improved,” volunteer Lyne Lamourex said in written comments provided to the committee. “Staff morale remains low, community trust is eroding and transparency is lacking. Efforts appear focused on checking boxes rather than restoring effective services.”
The shelter’s new Deputy Director Monica Wylie acknowledged the advocates’ passion.
“The bottom line is we’re all on the same team,” Wylie said. “We all want what’s best for the animals, and we want to provide that, so we definitely want to continue in that area. The shelter is designed to be a temporary safe haven, so how can we mitigate any stress caused by the animals for being there (and) how can we keep them in their homes where they already have a home?”
The shelter’s management had come under fire for years before a barrage of complaints and rise in animal deaths led to the audit. The uptick in deaths also led to the shelter losing its no-kill status.
Among the findings were substandard conditions, an increased risk of disease and outdated or nonexistent protocols. The audit also found that the shelter operated well above capacity at times, taking in fewer animals due to trouble moving them on through adoption or rescue and instead focusing on more sick and injured animals.
Other significant concerns included the shelter’s failure to expand medical care, including trap-neuter-return services, to help stem the growing pet population, and the poor relationship between the shelter and rescue groups, as evidenced by a 68% decrease in engagement.
Division Manager Kiska Icard noted that the shelter had taken in 11,189 animals during the last year, representing a more than 8% decline in intake as part of strategic efforts to control its population.
“The shelter is in a much better state in terms of our capacity for care — more space for the animals, less stress for them — and that’s us working really hard at our intake unit and ensuring that the shelter is the right place for that animal,” Icard said.
During the same period, the average length of stay for dogs dropped from 25 to 20 days, while for cats it dropped from 15 to 14 days. Icard added that the live release rate for all animals was now 89%.
In addition to the audit requiring the shelter to update its training and protocols, improve community engagement, and strengthen record-keeping, it called for increasing trap-neuter-return services for the community, which it now offers two days a week, along with low-cost surgery for owned dogs once a week.
But despite the improvements, volunteers, community members and even former staff documented numerous negative experiences through more than 100 pages of public comments and dozens of speakers, including concerns about the quality of care, animals needlessly euthanized, failures to serve the community, the mistreatment of volunteers, and a lack of responsiveness to their concerns.
“We have been providing recommendations, not just critiques,” volunteer Jeaneen Sullivan told Bay Area News Group, adding that foster groups created a separate support network for help that they do not receive from the shelter. “We’ve been very clear. We’ve documented it since the beginning of the year, formally with meetings and lots of emails and for the simplest things — checklists, protocols, supplies — they have rejected them and obstructed them from happening.”
Courtney Ferro, a former animal care attendant, blasted the city and the shelter’s management for failing to train employees as she referenced an incident in May when she found a dog that was unattended that was being suffocated by an IV line.
“It was a result of a shelter with no written procedures, no real training beyond shadowing other untrained staff and no accountability,” Ferro said. “Audit recommendation No. 14 requests written protocols and proper training, yet seven months later, this still has not been implemented. These issues are structural and will continue without meaningful leadership change.”
Other community members called for the city to exhibit more fiscal transparency about how shelter funds were being used, to which the city has agreed. They also want to see trap-neuter-return programs expanded to five days a week, as requested by the City Council last year, and questioned why the city had not formed a community advisory committee, as indicated in the audit response.
In the spring, Public Works Director Matt Loesch took responsibility for not forming the group, citing a family emergency. But on Thursday, he said that he decided to rely on focus groups because the issues were “very disparate in terms of their uses.”
Comments from District 7 Councilmember Bien Doan also inflamed tensions with advocates when he called it wrong for them to offer negative comments about the shelter without allowing Wylie, who was hired six weeks ago, time to implement reform.
Mike Wagner, a former board member of a nonprofit that ran a foster kitten program for the shelter, said he was disappointed to see the committee accept what he believed was a flawed annual report that “misled the public about the shelter’s performance.”
“It’s not clear to me why city councilmembers continue to be so apathetic and disengaged when it comes to an animal shelter that has performed so poorly over the last four years,” Wagner told Bay Area News Group.