Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Vaillaraigosa Gets an "F" from the Animals

Our Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa made a campaign promise to make Los Angeles a NoKill City for animals. After two years in office it is clear that he has failed miserably. Last week in order to stem the flow of animals coming into the shelters they decided to just refuse them because the shelters are full. The shelters are so overcrowded that now twice as many animals are dying from illness and injuries suffered in the shelters. Fewer are making it out alive. What went wrong? And is the Mayor going to do anything about it?

Last week General Manager Ed Boks announced that he would only accept owner surrendered animals during a small window of time midweek. This caused a huge public out cry which caused him to "revisit" his policy twice. Even PETA chimed in with a national phone campaign demanding that people contact the Mayor. Ultimately he rescinded the new policy saying he never meant to enforce it anyway. The policy was just an attempt to "educate the public" he said. In response the Daily News released an article entitled "Animal Services head makes a fool of himself - and us."

Meanwhile, unofficially they are still trying to refuse as many animals as possible. They are telling people to TNR (trap neuter return) feral cats, bottle feed orphaned kittens themselves and to re-home their unwanted pets with private parties or rescue groups, who are of course all full. The Rescue and Humane Alliance of Los Angeles believes that most people will just dump these pets on the streets if refused at the shelter.

A crisis still looming over the shelters is the lack of veterinarians. March 28th of this year writer and animal rescuer Daniel Guss of the Stand Foundation wrote an op-ed piece for the Daily News about the lack of veterinarians. They only have two veterinarians to care for over 56,000 animals a year in seven shelters spread throughout our large City. Eight positions are vacant. Boks denied that this was a problem saying those empty vet positions are for the spayneuter clinics which haven't been built. If we look at the budget reports, there were ten shelter vet positions before the clinics were even planned.