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Mismanagement has festered in OC Animal Care (OCAC), the county shelter. The reason? The county exploits the shelter to feed its own bureaucracy – at the expense of the community and its companion animals. County bureaucrats make all the operational decisions on animal care and services. Then they tally the costs of their bad policies, tack on a huge administrative (overhead) expense, and bill the cities.
There are some eye-opening numbers in the county’s billing for FY 2024.
The county took in $5.8 million in license fees from pet owners. But that covers only a fraction of OCAC’s budget and left $16.8 million in net expenses. Of this, the county allocated $15.7 million or 93% of the cost to the cities, to be paid out of their municipal budgets. (See the highest-paying cities at the top.)
Let’s back up a step and look at how much overhead is in these bills. To OCAC’s direct costs of $15.3 million, the county added $8.4 million in admin expenses for the county bureaucracy, including such questionable figures as Cymantha Atkinson and Dylan Wright of OC Community Resources. That’s an overhead rate of 55%, bringing the total to $23.7 million. Some of it is paid by OC citizens in fees when they deal with OCAC – and the rest by their cities, to the tune of $15.7 million.
To recap, the county pays 7% of the billable amount, or $1.2 million, but collects $8.4 million to feed its bureaucracy. That’s why the county wants to control the animal shelter. It’s revenue for county headquarters.
Is this bureaucracy doing some stuff that’s helpful to OCAC? Probably. But it’s also causing harm. The bureaucracy is often behind OCAC’s serious problems. Not enough Animal Care Attendants to clean the kennels and feed the animals? It’s Dylan Wright’s HR being too slow in processing job applications, we’re told. Senseless restrictions, blocking visitors from seeing dogs in kennels or play yards? Volunteers prevented from walking dogs on the sidewalk? The mysterious “CEO Risk” office, having no expertise in animal shelters, is making up rules. (But this same office tolerated the reckless conduct that caused a $400-million wildfire.)
The cities are paying for a good shelter and getting a dysfunctional one. OCAC didn’t keep track of its animals and withdrew its statistics – twice! There’s an unsolved mystery of disappearing bunnies and hamsters. For years, OCAC disregarded safety and lied about the number of bites, perhaps to please the “CEO Risk” office.
OCAC is not meeting standards on kennel staffing, because money is going to overhead rather than rank-and-file staff. By national standards, experts told OCAC, it needs 26 Animal Care Attendants per day. OCAC director Monica Schmidt lied to the Board of Supervisors to justify having less than half the required number. Knowledgeable volunteers debunked Schmidt’s claims one by one.
What is the Board of Supervisors doing to bring about accountability? Supervisor Janet Nguyen is demanding reform and Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento has challenged the shelter’s claims. These good Supervisors have a clear path for progress: The OCAC Strategic Plan, approved unanimously by the Board of Supervisors in 2018.
But county bureaucrats are attempting to downgrade shelter standards by “updating” (read: canceling) the Strategic Plan. They issued an RFP that had only one bid from some generic consultant. Then Dylan Wright’s bureaucracy that consumes millions in admin costs took 4.5 months for “ranking” one bid. Huh? If this RFP wasn’t malfeasance, it was total incompetence. It should be invalidated… and investigated.
Supervisors Nguyen and Sarmiento should point out that the 2018 Strategic Plan was unanimously approved by the Board and is still in force. With good policies, the existing plan is the cost-effective way to serve the companion animals as well as the taxpayers of OC.
The most puzzling actor in this is Katrina Foley, Vice-Chairman of the Board of Supervisors. Foley has been blindly backing OCAC director Schmidt, with whom she shares a focus on Public Relations over substance.
In the Board discussion about kennel staffing, Foley chimed in: “we do intend to follow the NACA guidelines for standards of care in animal shelters, I believe that that’s the case.” How convenient. Did Foley look up the recommendation of the county’s own consultants to see that OCAC is falling way short of these standards? Let me help. Foley can go to pages 4-5 of these excerpts from the JVR recommendations to read: “Staffing for daily cleaning and feeding based on HSUS, NACA, ASV: … This equates to 26 Full-Time-Equivalent staff members per day.” That’s a careful calculation, done by experts in animal sheltering. Instead, Foley blindly sided with Schmidt’s PR.
At the top, we showed the eight highest-paying cities under OCAC’s jurisdiction. Let’s flag them on a map of the County Supervisors’ districts.
None of these cities are in Foley’s district. She’s served by excellent municipal shelters. She shouldn’t be undermining animal services in other districts.
By contrast, Janet Nguyen’s district includes 3 of the top 8 cities and Vicente Sarmiento’s district overlaps with 4 of the top 8 cities. These Supervisors want their communities served by a humane and efficient shelter – and they’re fighting for responsible, accountable county government.
Will Board Chairman Doug Chaffee and Supervisor Don Wagner uphold the existing Strategic Plan? If not, OC cities should consider other options. They can establish their own animal shelters, working with non-profits. City contracts with OCAC expire in just 17 months. There’s no time to lose.
Contact the cities that use OCAC and tell them to start exploring other options. If they don’t, the county bureaucracy will corner them into another sucker contract.
Jackie Lamirande has served multiple animal welfare organizations (municipal shelters and non-profits) across the country, as volunteer services manager, volunteer foster care administrator, and member of the Board of Directors.
Opinions expressed in community opinion pieces belong to the authors and not Voice of OC.
Voice of OC is interested in hearing different perspectives and voices. If you want to weigh in on this issue or others please email opinions@voiceofoc.org.
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