For two years running, the community has documented the degradation of OC Animal Care – the county shelter, supposedly overseen by Orange County Community Resources (OCCR). We are now witnessing the county managers’ outright disdain for OC taxpayers. Community members researched the background of the shelter’s director Monica Schmidt using press reports, tax filings, and newsletters. They found that Schmidt inflated her experience and qualifications on her job application. Schmidt, who studied political science, claimed extensive shelter operations experience, but her background is actually dominated by public relations.
When the community pointed out that the shelter was lowering its standards, the bureaucrats’ fig leaf was Schmidt’s supposed “experience”. Smoke and mirrors. Schmidt, a slick PR professional, is friendly and attentive to those she wants to influence: The county CEO, the Supervisors, and their aides… but has no grasp of animal shelter operations, and routinely lies to Supervisors and the public.
Schmidt’s protectors are Dylan Wright (OCCR director) and Cymantha Atkinson (OCCR assistant director). Is fibbing on a job application normal for Wright and Atkinson? Integrity is lacking in the OC senior bureaucracy, as we found out in a slew of recent scandals involving Supervisor Andrew Do, his chief of staff, ex-Supervisor Michelle Steele, and senior county managers (including Wright)… not to mention Atkinson wasting money on a weird contract at the shelter.
The shelter should not be flying blind.
It has a Strategic Plan, developed by national experts. Egregiously, Schmidt and Atkinson abandoned this plan. They lowered the shelter’s standards to excuse their poor performance. On the shelter’s website the Strategic Plan is nowhere to be found. Since Spring 2023, we’ve been asking the shelter to follow the Strategic Plan. These failed managers stalled and delayed. Now they’re using another audacious scheme: A contract for a “new” Strategic Plan.
That will mean more delays, more taxpayer dollars wasted, and no accountability.
OCCR’s slick PR says they’re looking to “reconnect with the public” and have “a community conversation”. To see what this means, I attended the quarterly meeting of the animal shelter’s Community Outreach Committee last month. The bureaucrats’ contempt for the taxpaying public was palpable. For the entire meeting, Schmidt sat with her back turned to the public. She twisted her chair and her posture to avoid facing taxpayers. Schmidt was the only person on the dais to take this action. A community member suggested that Schmidt should turn towards the public. It’s just one hour every three months, he said. Schmidt could surely come face to face with the taxpayers just four times a year. His words fell on deaf ears. Meanwhile, Atkinson (Schmidt’s immediate superior) sat behind the public, grinning at Schmidt’s stunt. Forget “reconnect with the public” and forget “community conversation”.
Schmidt and Atkinson, abetted by Wright, are treating the shelter as their private domain.
We see no better from County Supervisor Katrina Foley who coddles incompetence and parrots the bureaucrats’ lies. In April, after months of sneaky delay, OCCR announced their bizarre selection of Schmidt as director. In the county Press Release Foley gloated and raved, ignoring the shelter’s deterioration – and the fabrications in Schmidt’s background. Foley’s district is coastal Orange County, served by excellent local shelters like Mission Viejo and Newport Beach – not by the county shelter.
Foley is straying from her own district to foist a sub-standard shelter on the rest of the county. Is she looking down on middle-class cities like Anaheim, Huntington Beach, Orange, Tustin, and Fullerton?
Enough already. Taxpayers already paid for a Strategic Plan based on national standards. We don’t need a “new” one. Just get to work and follow it. Deliver the high-quality animal shelter our community expects. Start here:
• Get rid of remaining COVID-era policies and give visitors full access to the shelter, not just 3 hours a day.
Please note, that the public still cannot go in and see all the dogs available, the little dogs are kept in the inner circle and are not accessible at any time.
You can only see the little dogs if you make appointment. That is not the way to run an Open Shelter” and does not help get dogs adopted.
• Hire Animal Care Attendants in line with national standards. These are the front-line staff members that take care of the animals and facilitate adoptions.
• Provide dogs with daily out-of-kennel time and socialization. Readers, please ask the Board of Supervisors and OC cities to implement the Strategic Plan. Not some future expensive fuzzy one, but the one they already approved in 2018. If managers are incapable of following this plan… then it’s the managers that should be ditched, not the Strategic Plan.
The taxpayers shouldn’t pay for a “new” plan to accommodate dishonesty and incompetence.
Check OCShelter.com for the latest published articles, the Grand Jury report, the Strategic Plan, and more.
Margot Boyer, an animal welfare advocate, lives in Yorba Linda. She is an experienced Event and Trade Show Manager, Green Industry Hall of Fame Director, and Event Director for the California Association of Landscape Contractors.
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