Toellner Tells it

Top 10 Animal Welfare Stories for 2009

As I get back in the groove for providing more regular blog postings here, I thought it would be relevant to post what I think were the top 10 Animal Welfare Stories in the KC Metro in 2009.

While there are many important issues that Kansas City needs to tackle as a community, it is important to note that Kansas City serves as a hub of the Animal Health Corridor --and being an animal friendly metro will do a lot to help lure more animal health businesses to the area that are looking for pet-friendly cities.  So with that, here are my top 10 stories of 2009 for Animal Welfare:

1) Saving lives in Kansas City, KS

After years and years of consistent killing in the Kansas City, KS shelter, the Humane Society of Greater Kansas City worked a deal with the shelter that would allow them to pull animals from the shelter for adoption. For the first 8 months of the year, KCK's euthanasia rate went from 56% to less than 4%.  In 2008 the KCK shelter killed nearly 1500 stray pets -- through September of this year they had euthanized only 66 -- all of which they say showed "extreme aggression".  I still have concerns that with the city's current laws -- including MSN, BSL and very restrictive pet limits - that this is sustainable long term, but the early success by HSGKC and their "Ray of Light" program earns the top spot for news item of the year.

2) Kansas City, MO shelter privatizes

In February of this year, Kansas City, MO voted to privatize the shelter operations and allow a local organization, Half Way Home Animal Shelter, to run the shelter operations for the city. Nearly instantly, the number of animals adopted from Half Way Home went up from about 75-100 animals getting adopted out per month to over 300. In 2008, the Kansas City animal shelter, under public control, euthanized 64% of the animals that it impounded.  Things will be better for 2009 -- and will come at a savings of $175,000 to the city. While the new situation hasn't been without its struggles, the step in the right direction makes this the year's #2 story.

3) Greenwood Missouri Repeals BSL

Greenwood, MO became the third local community to repeal a long-standing ban on "pit bulls" -- and replaced the breed specific legislation with a behavior-based ordinance.. The community had worked hard to re-work their animal control contract to be handled by nearby Lee's Summit, which allowed them more options with the change in their dog ordinance.  An article in the Greenwood Dispatch noted that Greedwood was on the "leading small communities in the area with regard to dog legislation." KC Dog Advocates members worked with the city for more than a year to assist them with the repeal.

4) KCMO Adopts New "Performance Standards" for Animal Control

One of the struggles that has affected the success of the new privatized Animal Shelter, is an increase in impound numbers from KCMO Animal Control. With more ACOs on the streets, more animals are coming in, making the shelter workers at Half Way Home's job more difficult. In August, KCMO AC instituted a new quota system, er, "Performance Standards" that is setting minimums for the number of animals being brought in by animal control officers. Instead of incenting mediation and working to keep animals in homes, the animal control is incenting officers to bring more dogs into the shelter.Unfortunately, they based their minimum quota number off of their summer numbers - that if met during winter months, would dramatically increase the intake rate at the shelter.

5) Spay/Neuter Kansas City Opens up new facility

With the help of some city and county dollars, Kansas City's largest low cost/no cost spay/neuter facility opened up a new facility at 59th and Troost in Kansas City (Pictured).  In 2008, SNKC altered 5600 dogs and cats, and with the new facility, is expecting that number to go up to around 8,000 in 2009, and more in 2010. SNKC really does a great job serving the needs of the low-income population of Kansas City and the new location -- both in size and better location for them -- will continue their great work.  SNKC also runs a great outreach program as well.

6) Animal Haven Opens up Mall Adoption Center for the Holidays

Animal Haven, an animal shelter that handles all animal control intake for 11 communities in the Kansas City metro (all in Johnson County, KS) opened up a satellite adoption center at Oak Park Mall for the holiday season. With still a week left in their 5 week lease, Animal Haven had adopted out 159 animals from the mall location.

7) Kansas City Dog Park Chaos

After two years of study, a Citizen's Task Force made recommendations on park locations that would be suitable for possible dog parks in the city. However, after a month of review, the Kansas City Missouri Parks Board scrapped the recommendation and decided to institute awhole set of arbitrary rules for the dog parks -- virtually insuring that about 90% of the parks in the city -- and all of the ones in urban neighborhoods -- can never have a dog park.  The decision left a black eye on the political process in the city, and is poor for urban neighborhoods and dog owners in the city.

8) Kansas Citians step up for good causes

In late August, the Humane Society of Greater Kansas City sent out a plea for help. The Ray of Light Program (See #1) had been saving the lives of hundreds of animals in Kansas City, KS, but the additional cost to HSGKC was running at about $10,000 a month. Because of the high expense, the program was in jeopardy of running out of money, so they sent out a plea for financial help. Within the week, the program had received just under $100,000 in donations. Even local rescue group The Pet Connection helped in the fundraising efforts. The support for the program was an amazing testiment to the willlingness of the public to help out organizations and programs that are doing it right -- but it also speaks to the need to make some improvements in the KCK laws to make the progress sustainable.  HSGKC is doing great work, but needs municiple support. 

Kansas Citians also stepped up for The Pet Connection earlier this year after thousands of dollars in kennels and fencing were stolen from their facility. They sent out a plea for help and thousands of dollars more than needed were raised in a short amount of time. Kansas Citians will support good animal welfare organizations.

9) Animal Haven Announces Plans for New Shelter

Animal Haven had a public conference that showed plans for a proposed new shelter in Lenexa that would more than triple the current amount of space for their shelter. Animal Haven operates as a no-kill shelter for all animals impounded in 11 metro cities, but a new facility would greatly enhance their operation and ability to grow with the communities they serve. Animal Haven is currently raising money for this new facility.

10) Revised Animal Legislation -- some good, most bad - around the metro

Back in early November, Prairie Village, KS passed a law that would allow police and animal control officers to enter fenced back yards to impound barking dogs. While officials say they will only enforce the law as a last resort -- preferring instead to go through the old proceedure and contacting the pet owner and getting them to comply with noise restrictions. I'm no fan of consistently barking dogs -- especially when they interrupt my sleep, however, it seems allowing dogs to be confiscated just for barking is a recipe for increasing shelter intakes which seldom ends well for the dogs -- and may very well be unconstitutional. The PV law is just another example of municiple code that is making it harder for our local rescues and shelters.

Also this year, Independence, MO passed a law that gave more flexibility in their pet limit -- allowing four dogs or cats vs just two dogs and two cats. However, in March, Independence refused to pass new legislation that would protect feral cats and allow for TNR for feral cats in their community.

Overland Park, KS adjusted its polciy that requires 10-day holds at the shelter for animals that commit minor bites if the animal has proof of rabies vaccination. The new policy instead allows for the pets to be on 10-day quarantine in their own homes. The new policy will take pressure off of the shelter to make space for the animals while they are on hold.

As you can see, we have a lot of really great things going on in the KC metro. However, we are in dire need of the municipalities to work WITH rescue groups and shelters to make Kansas City a better city for pets and pet owners (and eventually, a no-kill metro). There are still way too many laws such as breed bans, mandatory spay/neuter, overly restrictive pet limit laws - and policies such as quotas -- that are dramatically inreasing intake numbers throughout the metro putting undue pressure on the rescue community and costing animals their lives. We MUST get municiple support to advance our cause.  And that support will ONLY come from the citizens in their communities DEMANDING it - -and voting in dog-friendly candidates.

Citizens have no input

This is going to end up being a rant. It's one measily story -- about not one of the most important topics in Kansas City, but I think, in a nutshell, it emcompasses almost everything that is wrong with politics in this city.

If you're a normal taxpaying citizen of the community, your opinion doesn't matter. Even if you get on a citizens committee, your opinion doesn't matter.  The city doesn't have to -- and won't likely -- listen to you.  At some point the government in this town quit caring about its residents, and now takes a "Daddy knows best attitude" toward the people.  And we need to fix it.

The Dog Park Debate

I quit caring much about the dog park in Sunnyside Park awhile ago. I was never the biggest plan of the proposal but even less of a fan of how it's been handled by our city officials.

Two years ago a group of citizens approached the parks board with the idea of building a dog park in Sunnyside Park in Waldo. They had raised $20,000 of their own money to help pay. They had crafted a design.  In a back room deal that I'm pretty sure violated open meetings laws, the parks board unanimously agreed on a proposal that required a dog park to be a certain minimum size, and that no dog park could exceed 20% of the size of the overall park.  The proposal essentially eliminated 90% of all of the parks in Kansas City from being able to contain an off-leash dog park -- including Sunnyside Park. 

After much debate, the Parks Board decided to create a citizens committee to make recommendations on potential dog park sites in the city.

For the next nearly two years, this committee met.  They studied parks based on Walkability, vegetation, topography, distance from programmed areas, rainwater management, availability of parking (it wouldn't be a KC discussion if we didn't discuss parking), restrooms and availability of water for a drinking fountain.

The committee wasn't swift in its findings, but it was thorough. And even though I don't agree with all of their recommendations, it was tough to find fault in their effort for their 47 page report.

Unless of course, you are our parks board. Which once again came back with a unanimous decision to createits own set of rules for the requirements of dog parks - -including that all dog parks must be no less than 5 acres big (this ignores the reality that Kansas City's only current dog park - -one that by everyone's assessment is extremely successfull - is only 3 1/2 acres big).  The new criteria virtually assure anyone living in on of the city's many older neighborhoods that will never get a dog park in their community -- based on an arbitrary size made up by 6 parks board appointees.

So while the Citizen's Committee created recommendations for up to 22 parks in the city that could be used for varying sizes of dog parks, the Parks Board came back with 6. The one in the "South Region" (nearest Sunnyside Park) that is recommeded is at South Oak Park.  While very close to Sunnyside Park, it's terrain is very wooded and would require the removal of 5 acres of trees to create the dog park -- making it so costly that it likely will never get done. The Citizens Committee ranked this park 12th best out of 15 parks in this region for suitability for the dog park. Nice.

The Parks Board essentially ignored the citizen committee's recommendations - wasting 2 years of time for a committee of 14 people. Daddy knows best. And the idea of creating a second dog park in the city of 500,000 people is on year 3 with virtually no progress.

Dog Parks

There have been a lot of comments about dog parks being for dogs, and parks for people, and all kinds of things on the internets. I want to set the record straight here. Dog parks are for dog owners as a place to take their dogs in the same way that Tennis Courts are for people who play tennis - -not for tennis rackets.  I've never quite understood why people think it's ok to build tennis courts with taxpayer money, disc golf courses,skateboard parks, playground equipment for kids, softball fields, soccer fields, bike trails, running trails and the vast array of things we put in our parks, but for some reason, not for dog owners. We share our park space. I don't play tennis -- but I think it's great that we have tennis courts for these people. I don't have kids, but like that kids have a place to play. Shared park space makes for a better city for everyone. But I don't quite get how a larger percentage of people can own dogs than have kids under the age of 12, or participate in most of the specific activities we put in parks and yet people who own dogs don't get much respect when it comes to their own space.  It doesn't make much sense to me.

In the 2008 citizen satisfaction survey, 51% of people said they don't feel safe in our city parks during the day.  90% don't at night. In large part this is because our parks are terribly underutilized and it isn't an odd occurrence to be in a city park and be the only one there.  Putting dog parks in many of our city parks would increase usage (see what it's done for Penn Valley park?) and the increased usage would increase the feeling of safety.  We're missing a huge opportunity with our under-utilized parks system.

Speaking of the parks system - -it should be noted that less than 50% of the population in the Citizen satisfaction survey were satisfied with every single element of the parks and recreation district (except the location of the parks). And only 18% of citizens are happy with our appointed boards, including the parks board.

But is anyone listening to the citizens?

Mark Funkhouser

Three years ago, mayor Mark Funkhouser announced his new parks board and it was with great satisfaction that he declared that this would be a non-elitest group (implying that the old board was). But since then, the board has been infested with the same old same old (or worse than the old group) problems. It started with the problems (and eventual stepping down) of Francis Semler who was a member of the minute men group and has manifested itself through an entire group of people who make snap, rash decisions, who put arbitrary limits in place with no rationale at all, and who seem more interested in using power to settle personal vendettas against other people than actually following any type of real public input and public service. It's been a real disgrace to this city in so many ways.

"Are we gong to disappoint people?" asked Parks Board President John Fierro.  "Of course.  We disappoint people every Tuesday when we meet here." 

It shouldn't be that way.

We must make the change

The citizens of this city need to take back their government. At some point over the past few decades we became a a group of people that fears their government -- when it should be the government that fears us. They work for us: the voters, the taxpayers. We need to demand better. We should no longer allow a few high-dollar campaign donors to raise enough money to keep electing THEIR candidates into office. We need to vote in OUR people. This may mean voting for the person with less money, without the snazzy ad campaign and signs. It may take going to forums, meeting the candidates, reading their websites and really getting to know them outside of the pages of the Kansas City Star. But the citizens need to do it.  The information is too readily available now online and in blogs for us to continue to make bad decisions on candidates who don't represent us -- or who think they can appoint a board that doesn't need to listen to its constituents -- or its own appointed citizen committees. 

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm tired of living in a city where the citizens don't matter....and we somehow accept it. 

This story is only about dog parks....but the same thing happens daily in virtually every area of our governing body.

Shame on us.

Steps forward for animals in Kansas City

The Star has a good follow-up article today on the new privatized animal shelter in KCMO - Half Way Home Pet Adoptions.

Back in February, the city council, under the leadership of Councilwoman Cindy Circo, passed through an ordinance that took control of the city's animal shelter away from the city, and into the private hands of Dr. Wayne Steckelberg. The moved saved the city roughly $175,000 a year (contracting out the shelter was cheaper than running it themselves), but has the move had benefits other than financially?

Sure seems like it.

Immediately after taking over the shelter from the city, the folks at Half Way Home began making major improvements to the shelter -- including a major house-cleaning, and then repurposing areas of the shelter for animals. Where before, cats were kept in a crowded hallway with poor ventilation, now, the 75 cats that live in the shelter are free to roam in a large caged area in the basement that comes complete with old furniture for the cats to climb on. Executive offices have been converted into exam rooms for the animals. The area formerly used as a men's locker room is now a haven for the smallest of the puppies and kittens that enter the shelter.

The shelter has also gotten more aggressive about adoptions. While under the management of the city, the shelter was adopting out 75-100 animals a month, and killing roughly 550.  Under the new privatized management, the shelter is now adopting out nearly 300 animals per month -- dramatically reducing the number of animals that are killed due to lack of space - mostly through programs the city-run shelter should have been doing in the first place. And the citizens wanted these better results.

In last year's KCMO Citizen Satisfaction Survey, Animal Control had only a 33% approval rating -- ranking it 11th out of 12 performance criteria under "Public Safety Services" (found on page 23). Pets are an important part of life for many Kansas Citians. Over 60% of the city's population owns at least one pet . And with Kansas City being the hub of the Animal Health Corridor, how we treat animals in this city is important, not only for the satisfaction of the citizens, but also for attracting animal health industries for new jobs in the metro.

This won't completely solve animal control's issues, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.

Moving forward, I hope the city council can continue to make seemingly small (and cost effective) changes to each area of living in Kansas City -- to continue to improve the areas of the city that citizens are least satisfied with. This is one example of a simple solution that has been a win for everyone in the metro.

And if you're one of the majority of people who are lovers of the pets in the community - take the opportunity to go check out the shelter for yourself. Maybe recommend to a friend or neighbor that is looking for a pet that they check them out and adopt from them. Maybe you can help volunteer a day or two during the week to help out at the shelter, or give them a financial donation. One of the reasons they agreed to run the shelter at a cost below what the city was able to run the shelter for themselves is because they knew that if they ran the shelter the right way and began saving the lives of the pets, they would be able to get ample volunteer and financial donations to make up for the shortfall. Let's prove the right.

Click here for more on Half Way Home Pet Adoptions.

KCMO set to Privatize Animal Shelter

Well, I've been hearing a lot of buzz about this -- but without knowing if it was public info or not I've decided to hold off on saying anything -- but if it's in the Star, it's pretty public at this point.

Kansas City, MO is making moves to privatize the city's shelter facility.  About a year ago, the city sent out a request for bids on taking over the shelter facility. They received 2 bids back.

Today, Councilwoman Cindy Circo plans to introduce a bill that would turn the shelter over to Dr. R. Wayne Steckelberg -- a 50 year veterinarian who most recently has been working at a local rescue shelter.

I've never met Dr. Steckelberg -- but the people who know him seem to think pretty highly of him. And if you watch the video of him talking about the shelter, it's not hard to realize that his heart is in the right place. Even without knowing him, I am thrilled about the posible (Likely) transition. There are really appear to be no drawbacks.

According to the article, Steckelberg will get about $600,000 from the city for staff, utilities, etc to run the shelter. This will save the city about $200,000 for the costs of doing it themselves. Meanwhile, the move will free up quite a bit of staff that will then add to the number of animal control officers out on the streets -- which will be a huge plus for the under-staffed department.  This savings comes at a time when KCMO is facing a projected $85 million budget shortfall for 2009 -- so the savings will be well needed.

Meanwhile, the shelter, which is a remote location, has had almost no access for adoptions. The shelter is open for adoptions Monday - Saturday, Noon-4pm, and to 7 on Thursdays.  To the best I can tell, the average person in KC would have about 5 hours a week that the shelter would be open when they could actually get to it.  Steckelberg has already pledged to improve the shelter hours -- and the accessibility will no doubt improve the traffic and adoption rate at the shelter.

Steckelberg has also pledged to work with local rescue group Wayside Waifs to help get more dogs and cats out of the city facility and into a better adoption facility.  At the same time, he has some ideas for improving the city shelter to make it more adopter-friendly -- including getting rid of some of the offices to create more room for animals so they can be housed longer (most are there the minimum of 5 days now) to give them a greater chance of being adopted or their homes found.

The city shelter has not been able to get many volunteers to work there -- primarily because volunteers got tired of the management's lack of response to ideas that would save animal lives. I would expect that Steckelberg would be able to attract a healthy crop of volunteers that could significantly help the facility.

In 2007, the KCMO shelter euthanized 6,769 animals -- about 62% of the animals that came into the shelter. In 2008, the shelter euthanized 4,912 animals. 

In fairness to a couple of people I know that have worked at the shelter, there are a couple of people there that honestly care about animals -- however, have never had the support of the managment to make the changes necessary to improve the overall situation down there. I am very excited about this change in shelter management and hope the rest of the animal welfare community steps up to help them in every way possible.

I have a couple of small suggestions, that if they aren't on the plan, I would love to see them added to the proposal:

1) Make sure contract states that all shelter records will be public record subject to the state's Sunshine Laws. I don't think it will be a problem with this particular managment, but I do think it is good policy to make these records public, even if they are a non-profit group.

2) They may want to do year 1 as a trial year -- but I really hope they look at making this a long term contract (with some clauses if things somehow go terribly wrong). The shelter facility needs a LOT of work to make it friendly for adopters, and I think this group could raise a lot of money to make the improvements if they know they are going to be there for the long-haul. But making the necessary shelter improvements may be difficult if we string them along with a series of 1-year contracts.

Meanwhile, I'd like to make a note on this about Councilwoman Cindy Circo. I spoke with Cindy a lot during her campaign about animal welfare issues - -and she has made it one of her missions to improve this situation - -not only because she is an animal lover, but also because the shelter resides in her district. I've been really pleased with her continued presence in this area and want to give a shout-out to her for working to make this a better situation.  Kansas City is in the middle of the Animal Health Corridor -- which has garnered us mention among some of the world's most innovative cities.  What a great way to show off the benefit of being in the Animal Health Corridor by becoming one of the most animal-friendly cities in the country.  

I believe this will be a good step toward making that a reality. 

Kansas City Spay/Neuter of Pit Bulls almost 2 year report

There was an interesting article on the front page of the Kansas City Star regarding the nearly 2-year report on Kansas City's law that mandated the spay/neuter 'pit bull' type dogs.  The article calls the results "mixed" but that's being pretty gracious (or misleading).  The numbers are similarly on track to the numbers I reported 3 months ago.  

According to the article, the number of 'pit bulls' impounded since August 2006 (when the ordinance was passed, even though it didn't go into effect until December of the same year) was 4,000 dogs (in about a 22 month time window).  In the 25 months prior to the ordinance being enacted, the number of 'pit bulls' brought into the shelter was 2,600. If you amortize out the intakes (182 per month), that would be 4,550 killed in 25 months.  That's a 75% increase in impounded pit bulls since the ordinance took effect.

The number of 'pit bulls killed went from 1600 in the 25 months prior to the ordinance to 2,500 in the 22 months following the ordinance (2841 if you amortize out over 25 months) -- a 77.5% increase.

The number of bites has remained virtually the same (consistent with my numbers).

The Humane Society of the United States estimates that each animal brought into an animal control facility, held for the minimum of 5 days, and then euthanized, costs $117 per animal. So with an increase of 1,241 animals over 25 months that are euthanized cost the taxpayers of Kansas City about $145,000 in fees just for containing and killing these dogs.  In 2005 our animal control department only answered 20% of its calls, and according to Mike Schumacher (who oversees animal control), there is currently a 4 hour response time for animal control calls because of poor staffing.  This year, our city also cut funding for the Zoo and other services while Mayor Funkhouser suggested closing the shelter due to a lack of funds.  So AC is spending a LOT of money that could have been used to hire or train several more animal control officers or for a host of other services our city desperately needs.  Where is the oversight on spending?

Interestingly, the article in the Star spent most of its time interviewing the two organizations (Kansas City Animal Control and Spay/Neuter Kansas City) that supported the ordinance two years ago while leaving the opponents, like Kansas City Dog Advocates that testified before the council on this ordinance, completely out of the discussion. And somehow the supporters looked at these numbers and declared that the ordinance is showing signs of working.

"All I can explain to you is that we obviously impound more, and the more we get off the street, the less we'll have out there," said Patrick Egberuare, the new head of animal control (Mr. Egberuare was not involved in getting this ordinance passed, those honors go to his new boss Mr. Schumacher). 

The only thing I can take from this quote is that if we kill them all now, there will be fewer to kill later, which will help our kill numbers. ????

Michelle Dormandy, who runs Spay/Neuter Kansas City and also supported the ordinance originally, also found upside.

"If it wasn't for the ordinance, we wouldn't have spayed and neutered as many as we have, but the downside to the ordinance is that there are more dying."

Isn't the point of spaying and neutering to decrease the killing? So if your increasing the killing to increase spay/neuters, is that an improvement?  Really? So other than that pesky dying, it's going great!

The article completely ignores that the city has also had several problems with taking people's animals for not being neutered and accidentally killing them in the shelter, even when the owner agreed to get the animal spayed/neutered.

The article also has a nice angle of thinly veiled racism with how these dogs are a big part of the "urban" culture and not as much in the suburbs...because we know that "urban" in this case has very little to do with where the people live.

Here's the thing folks. Enforcing the law is having the following effects:

1) Animal Control is going out and confiscating and killing dogs because they aren't altered (or in some cases, just not licensed).  There are reports of cutting locks off kennels and seizing dogs when owners are not present and without warrents.  There are possible constitutional violations going on with illegal search and seizures. 

2) Because the shelter is overflowing with animals, the 75% increase in impounded pit bulls has led to a 77% increase in the number of pit bulls killed (even though the ordinance was supposed to have the opposite effect).

3) There is no evidence to support that we are even denting the overall population of dogs, as many of these owners are now going out and getting new dogs -- which is increasing the demand for bred dogs (it seems unlikely that these people are running out and adopting dogs at the local shelter that just killed their previous dog).

4) The law has had no impact on the number of dog bites.  This isn't increasing public safety so what is the point besides wasting time and resources?

5) All of this has come at a large price to taxpayers, and with a huge waste of animal control resources -- a department that like so many in the city is inefficient, ineffective, and underfunded.

And yet somehow this is seen as "mixed" results? 

Mayor Funkhouser, the city council and taxpaying citizens of KCMO should demand a full, independent audit of this department, its policies and its practices.  Increasing citizen satisfation with city services was a campaign promise of the Mayor and animal control has been broken for far too long. 

KCMO to meet with local dog advocates

I noted this last week, but it looks like due to popular demand, the meeting with KCMO animal control has been rescheduled and moved to a larger venue.  The meeting is TOMORROW NIGHT -- so be there if you can.

KCMO has killed over 90% of the dogs it has brought into the shelter over the past 2 years.  This is our opportunity to talk to the new head of animal control and make our voices heard.   Here is the release: 

What: KCMO Shelter Discussion/Meeting

When: Thursday, April 17, 6:00 PM

Where: Trailside, 9901 Holmes

Announcement from KCMO AC Dept:

Subject: Meeting for Rescue Groups Regarding Animal Health & Public Safety

Due to much interest, the meeting scheduled for this Thursday will be held as originally scheduled at 6:00 p.m. However, it will no longer be held at the animal shelter. It will be held at Trailside, which is located at 99th & Holmes (9901 Holmes). Take the "Tourist Information" exit off of 435 and go four blocks north and it is by the fire station. Our meeting is registered under KC Pet Program.

The manager of the shelter, Patrick Egberuare, has agreed to attend and answer our questions. He will be accompanied by Mike Schumacher, who is Mr. Egberuare's supervisor at city hall.

KCMO Animal Shelter, a possibility for change

A couple of weeks ago, an email went out from the person who overseas Kansas City animal control to animal control directors across the country asking for advice as the city was considering allowing for private control of its animal control shelter.   As the city continues to seek areas in its budget to cut costs, allowing for private control of the shelter is a possible solution to the high costs of running a shelter.

Members of the animal welfare community in Kansas City are welcoming the change.

In 2006, the KCMO animal shelter killed 97% of the dogs that it brought into the shelter.  In 2007, they killed 86% of the dogs that came through the door.  This is a huge number of dogs -- killed at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars to the taxpaying community.  This is a number of dogs that barely makes Kansas City seem like a civilized community, much less a dog-friendly one.

Putting the shelter in the hands of the right organization or group of people would be an opportunity for Kansas City, MO to take a HUGE step forward in becoming a dog-friendly community.   It's one of those rare opportunities to really take some time to get it right.  KC should consider its options wisely.

There are many groups that are interested in helping  KCMO get this right. No More Homeless Pets has certainly become one of the leaders in the community in creating low-cost voluntary Spay/Neuter programs and Trap/Neuter/Release programs for ferel cats.   NMHPKC has embraced much of Nathan Winograd's No-Kill philosophy that has been so successful in many areas at eliminating the senseless killing of dogs and cats in communities. 

Kansas City Dog Advocates has also fully embraced the no-kill solutions, including helping cities to create responsible by-laws that encourage public safety, but are not restrictive in a way that uselessly takes animals out of good homes for silly "violations".  Such laws would be overly-restrictive pet limits, mandatory spay/neuter laws, and breed specific laws.  The group also helps push for better owner education and in promoting voluntary, low-cost spay/neuter programs.

There are also countless rescue groups, independent shelters, and humane societies that would love to get involved.

There is a possibility that no one group has all the resources necessary to completely create a no-kill (or at least low kill) shelter environment in Kansas City, MO.  But there are certainly the resources when all of the interested parties pool their resources together to make a substantial difference in our community.

KCMO would be wise to reach out to all of these interested parties to begin discussing solutions, visions, and ideas of what "could be".  Enough with the closed door policies, and lack of public information.  A meeting with these groups had been scheduled...but we all just received notice of its cancellation.  It appears as if they are shutting out the people who want to help the most and have the knowledge and resources to do so.

As for the animal welfare community, enough with the posturing.  This may be our one chance to get this right for Kansas City...all of us are smarter an any one group of us.

The 2008-2009 budget is approved.  The shelter is not closing any time in the next 12 months.  Let's get together and create a smart, viable solution for Kansas City.  This is no time to make a quick decision without talking with all the people who have a vested interest -- the people who have and are trying to make the shelter/rescue system work in Kansas City.  This is no time to sell out to the lowest bidder, or make the "easy" choice.  It is an opportunity to talk about the possibilities and opportunities with this change.  We have a great opportunity to create a long and lasting impact on the city -- let's do it right -- and get everyone involved.

KCMO Animal Control Accidentally Kills man's dog

For at least the second time in the past month, the KCMO Animal Shelter "accidentally" killed someone's dog.

Oops.

In this story, the dog, named Ox, was removed from a kennel at 55th and Norton and taken to the city shelter because the dog had not been neutered (which violated the city's mandatory spay/neuter laws for "pit bulls").   

Animal Control was supposed to give the owner, Marlin Hatcher, five days to rescue Ox from the city shelter.  However, 2 days into his stay, Ox was killed.

Head of Animal Control Leslie Forsberg said, "I'll use this opportunity to express my deepest apologies to the owner. We never want something to happen to an animal while it's under our care."  It's great that you're sorry Leslie -- but this is AT LEAST the second time in the last 30 days this has happened.

It's beyond time to stop making excuses for the killings and start focusing on actually providing shelter for dogs.  It's time to stop pretending that the mandatory spay/neuter law is working when the net result of the law is that more dogs are dying in the animal shelter, not only dogs like Ox that never should have been in the shelter in the first place, but the city's euth rate went up nearly 10% in the first year of the Mandatory Spay/neuter law.  Wasn't it supposed to go the opposite direction?  Didn't authorities say that the mandatory spay/neuter law would REDUCE the killings?

The KCMO Animal Control is badly broken.  This is yet another example of its brokenness.  "Sorry" isn't enough. 

Bad day for Marky Mark's PR Machine Today

Marky Mark (Funkhouser) and his hand-appointed Parks Board (for now known as the Funky Bunch) are a PR nightmare at every corner.  For something that seems so non-controversial, this parks board has sure found a way to be a disaster for the Funkhouser administration, and he has no one to blame but himself.

For the past several months, local people in Waldo have been put forth a proposal for a new dog park in Sunnyside Park to serve the Waldo and Brookside neighborhoods.  The folks met all kinds of demands to overcome the few, but vocal, opposition to the park.  So today, at the Parks and Rec meeting, the Parks Board decided to propose an amendment to the current Off-Leash Dog Program. The new amendments feature a couple of provisions that basically ensure that there will be no such thing as a neighborhood dog park in KCMO -- in spite of evidence that there is demand for dog parks in other cities and they actually have a propensity to raise property values.  You can read more about those amendments here.

What was marvelous about the amendments were the complete under-handedness and lack of openness that they came with.  The news the the public hearing about the Sunnyside Dog Park was cancelled and that these Amendments were going to be voted on came on the Parks and Rec Website at 11:00 today.

When someone mentioned that violated their agenda policy of 24 hours notice they smuggly stated "well, it was posted in our lobby yesterday" -- yes, because the average Kansas Citian passes through the Parks and Rec lobby probably several times a day.  Nice job getting the word out.

It was also brought out that apparently these amendments and discussion all occurred behind closed doors (since they never happened at a public meeting) -- which is yet another violation of the requirement that these types of meetings are open to the public (yeah, that'd be a Constitution thing).

Then, the amendments were passed with ZERO public discussion -- or at least none that didn't come while Fierro was banging his gavel trying to maintain order.  As soon as the new amendments passed, Fierro looked over at one of the other folks in the room and said something to the effect of "Is it safe to assume that Sunnyside Park no longer qualifes for the dog park." The Person said "yes" and Fierro replied, "well, then let's move on."

If the news stations (who were all present) come back with a newscast that shows anything short of a circus show tonight, it will have been some super-fine editing in the works.

This is going to be a (yet another) PR debacle for the Marky Mark's appointed Funky bunch. Marky Mark based his campaign off of public openness -- that didn't happen in this case.  He also called out early in his administration that he badly wants to increase use of the city's public park spaces, and then had his parks department, behind closed doors, turn down an opportunity where scores more people would be using Sunnyside Park -- and funding all of the renovations with PRIVATE FUNDS.  And to make it worse, they've made sure to continue to make it virtually impossible for other private groups to build more parks.

Meanwhile, Marky Mark made a comment at the announcement of the Park's board that previous board was elitist - -and THEN, allows Aggie Stackhouse (who it's my understanding was the driver behind these amendments) to drive this plan into the ground because she is friends with one of the few opponents of the plan.

Whoever is handling the PR at City Hall doesn't get paid enough to deal with this...it's another debacle, and there is no way to spin what happened out there today.  I voted for the Marky Mark, and have supported him, but allowing this type of thing to continue within the Funky Bunch.  It's time to break up the band.

Editor's Note: Looks like the new dog park guidelines are already up on the web.  It's amazing that it was proposed, voted on, and on the web in the amount of time it takes to sell out an Elton John Concert (90 minutes) but it took them 21 hours to update the website to let people know the agenda item change.

A Solution for Mayor Funkhouser

Yesterday, KMBC TV ran an article about how Mayor Funkhouser is concerned that citizens don't feel safe in the city's parks. 

I won't get into the complete absurdity that the "news" station focused its story on Loose Park -- easily among the city's safest parks -- as opposed to focusing on the parks that have even bigger issues.

But I do want to propose a solution...that actually improves two problems in one.

One of the reasons that people don't necessarily feel safe in many of the city's parks is because most of the parks have relatively few people in them. If there are other people around, they feel safe, because if "something happened" there would be someone there to help them.  So as people quit going to parks, parks become less populated, which makes them feel less safe, and the cycle continues.  There is nothing that makes someone feel unsafe like being the only person in an empty area with a lot of trees/wooded areas around for unsavories to hide and stash their bodies.

So let's create something that will instantly draw people to the parks -- getting bodies in the parks will perpetuate itself.

An easy way to do this is to build a lot of smaller-sized dog parks (small in size, but not necessarily for small dogs -- although some should be for that too).   Roughly 45% of Kansas Citians own dogs...most would love a close, convenient dog park for their dogs to run, play and socialize with other dogs.

The City of Calgary, Ontario has 83 total dog parks in the city -- a community that's roughly double the population of Kansas City, MO -- which has 1 dog park and is working on a 2nd. 

Calgary's rush to build a lot of dog parks has happened over the past 15 years to solve a completely different problem.  In 1985, Calgary had a peak in dog-related incidents -- at approximately 2,000 incidences.  Since then, they've adopted other policies and built over 4,500 acres of dog parks (totalling approximately 25% of their total park space).  In 2006, they had only 400 dog-related incidents in spite of doubling the human and dog population in that time.  Even with that much dog-park land, Bill Bruce, the head of animal control in Calgary, says that their off-leash areas are almost maxed out. (Editor's Note: I would like to note that Mr. Bruce is going to be coming to Kansas City on September 15 for the Canine Legislation Conference to talk about the success of Calgary's dog ordinance -- in a talk that we do intend to open up to local civic leaders who would be interested in finding out about how a real affective ordinance works -- so put it on your calendar if you're interested).

So let's see, if we use a larger portion of Kansas City's 9,776 acres of park space to dog parks, not only would they increase attendence at parks (that everyone benefits from, because with some of the park space in use, the rest of it becomes "safer" because there are other people around), we can increase the usage of public parks, AND help increase the socialization of the city's dogs and make the city's citizens safer from non-socialized dogs.

If money is the problem, let's use Mark Forsythe's idea (damn you Mark for beating me to this as I SHOULD be both a better dog person and advertising person than you) presented here (see Nov 10 entry) and sell advertising on the fencing to companies looking to reach dog people (there are a lot of them). 

Problems solved.  More used parks.  Safer parks.  More dog-friendly areas and thus fewer dog attacks.  Mostly paid for by advertisers. 

Just a thought.