residence and green tree and also the west coast property manager and jay, waiver associates as well. and so the colleagues, those are the speakers can we open this up for public comment? >> yes. >> thank you, so, any member of the public that would like to speak on this item, please come forward and you each have two minutes >> seeing no member of the public it is closed. >> i would like to say thank you so much to all of the speakers and our office will work with the supervisors that are working on these issues and i think that identifying more support to hsa and working with community based organizations and like, dolores street and also the department of organization defined even stronger, efforts to reach the vulnerable renters that are displaced and more coordinated efforts with the community and the city. i just wanted to thank people for raising a number of other

issues like the renter's insurance issue and how to proactively get the units back on-line as quickly as possible. and so thank you so much to everyone, and mr. chair, i would like to ask if we could continue this item to the call of the chair? >> so we have a motion to continue to the call of the chair? could we take that without objection? >> without objection. >> mr. clerk, if you could call item number three. >> item three is a hearing to better understand the operational and budgetary needs of animal care and control including enforcement staffing and capacity to care for animals, and exploring these issues and how best to insure that the department can perform all of its responsibilities. >> great, thank you and this is an item that has been introduced by supervisor weiner, and supervisor tang. before i turn it over to them, i want to make a quick note. i have to leave the meeting for a prior commitment but i do want to note that i certainly support any effort to increase the resources of this

department which i think is doing a great deal with very, very little. and so, i would be supportive of that and i think that supervisor weiner for calling this item. >> supervisor weiner? >> thank you, very much, mr. chairman and i appreciate the support. i called this hearing today to really shed public light on the significant funding and staffing challenges faced by animal care and control. and i wanted to do it outside of the budget season, once we get in the budget season, there is so much going on, and what ends up happening is some of our smaller departments, and functions even within larger departments, just really get swept under the rug, and once we are in the budget process and i think that this really deserves its own hearing. as we have seen, recently and i am glad that we are having more i think, dialogue about this on the board of supervisors and we saw this the other day with

park patrol and we have very, very basic fundamental municipal functions that we as a city are simply not funding. and we have, we told the park patrol that we have almost no park patrol officers and dpw has been gutted in a lot of ways and we see in the animal care and control the same thing has happened. animal care and control is our safety net agency for animals, in san francisco. and san francisco, if nothing else, is an animal city. and this is a city that we have, not just dogs, but cats and every other manner of pet, we have wild life, and this is a city that is, we are passionate about, and animals, and in this city and there are a lot of animals in this city. and it is very, very important that we, as a city provide an agency and a safety net agency, that is being funded and

staffed in a way that matches up, to the critical important and significance of animals in the city and we have not done that. and animal care and control, is in addition to its shelter services, and a shelter that does not turn away any animal. and whether it is domesticated and whether it is wild, whether it has behave or issues or not. and this, agency has run deficits for the 7 out of the last ten years. it recently had to shut down its shelter, two days a week because of budget problems fortunately that has been reversed, although who knows for how long. it has, the agency has very few officers in the field and so stepping outside of the shelter, this is an agency that responds to calls of animal abuse. and animal neglect. and it deals with even barking

dogs issues, and it deals with vicious animal issues and whether it is wild or domesticated animal and i can say that i am getting more and more complaints from the dog owners and dog walkers about dog parks where there might be a dog that is attacking other dogs. and so it is a very, it is a, it is a very important function of this agency, in terms of being able to respond when there are problems around animals that need to be addressed. and yet the agency has very, very low staffing to even respond, right now, i know that animal care and control receives on average, 31 field calls a day and has the staffing to respond to 7

right now it is under staffed to the point where the people are on vacation and out sick, there is no one to cover for them. there is an increase in the dog surrenders and a significant increase without a come men sur rate increasing. and we know that in a bad economy, sometimes it is whether they have to move or they just don't have the resources, that they you see an increase in surrenders of animals and we have not staffed this agency to be able to respond to that appropriately. and the agency has also seen a significant increase in the reports of abuse case and again, it does not have the capacity to fully investigate all of those cases. and so i called for this hearing today, to really, shed public light on the budget and staffing challenges of this agency to talk about what we can do differently. and about budget, and about the staffing, and other considerations, as well. to make those agencies really what we need it to be. and as a city. and so i look forward to the

discussion today. and i know that supervisor tang i want to thank her for co-responsering this hearing and i would like to make some introduction remarks and then we will have a presentation, from our city administrator and from animal care and control. >> i just wanted to thank supervisor weiner for calling this hearing today and i wanted to co-sponsor because i do appreciate the fact that we are talking about this, you know, again, outside of the budget season and so that as we are putting together, you know, what our needs are in terms of capitol expenditures that we can really take this into consideration and for a full disclosure a spent a lot of time in the animal care and control when the family was looking for an animal to adopt and i spent every weekend there looking for something and if you take a look at the space that it is, you can see that even the infrastructure is so inadequate and so today i really just hope that through

the hearing we can shed light on what some of the needs are not only in the facility but also what service they provide out in the community. as you know, at least in terms of dogs, there is about 150,000 dogs that according to the animal care and control in our city alone and i don't know the numbers for you know some of the other animals and this is significant, and i think that it goes out, without saying that many people consider their pets as part of their families, when you are talking about services or the case of a emergency or natural disaster the people do care a lot about their animal and some go so far as to trying to go back into a burning building just to save their animals. so, and in many cases i look forward to the hearing today and thank you supervisor weiner for calling this hearing. >> i just wanted to add in that i think that this is a really important hearing, and i wanted

to thank rebecca cats for always reaching out from my office to really provide the information on the visits to the animal welfare and control space, and it has been really eye opening and i should reveal that i am a cat person. and that is how i live my cat really dominates my public space and residence. but i grew up with many dogs and i really appreciate the very lively discussions that we have had at the board level on declawing on cats and coyote and the so-called no kill legislation over the years. but in terms of the work of the animal control and even the connected space with the sbca it has been wonderful to see but you need so much more support in my opinion as well and so thank you for calling this hearing supervisor wean and her taning. >> thank you. >> and i would go down to the shelter more and rebecca is trying to get me to go down and i know that it is a trick and

she will not let me leave without adopting and my 17-year-old cat would not be happy about that. >> and so thank you, colleagues and so i would now like to invite up, and we have a joint presentation by animal care and control and the city administrator. and then we will hear from sally stevens from the animal welfare commission. so, miss cats? >> thank you, sir. supervisors, good morning, and i want to thank you for hearing this matter and for your continuing support and in particular, supervisor weiner and supervisor tang for co-sponsoring this matter and we really appreciate the opportunity to tell you more about what we are doing, and how we are doing it. and before we continue on, i would also want to acknowledge, my staff and volunteers, and some of whom are here in the chambers and some aren't. but, i have incredibly, dedicated folks that i have the

privilege to work with. and i just want to that thank them for all that they do and the san franciscan mals and the people who care about them. and so starting off with this presentation, go ahead. >> and we are going to talk a little bit about what our mission and mandates are and what our resources and adam will speak to our operating budget and staffing and those kind of issues and the work load and what they are proposing for enhancements and where to go from here. the danimal care and control is san francisco stray, injured and abandoned and mistreated animal and the enforcement of all state and local animal control and welfare laws and we will show a 30-second video that tells a little bit about what we are doing. >> animals bring out the best in us, they lack one vital gift, a voice. >> the animal care and control is an open door shelter, we

take in any animal that comes through our door. >> we touch people's lives through animal. and we do everything that we can to save their lives. >> we have to, we never lose our humanity for both people and animals. >> join me, as we help to give a voice to it the thousands of animals who otherwise go unheard, we thank you for your support. >> and that is a really brief version of a longer film but it gives a little bit of an idea of what we are doing. and to talk about some of the key functions do i want to say that we have mandates both in local and state law, but, we do much more than what is mandated as supervisor weiner noted, people really care about animals in the city and consider them, members of the family, and of course, there are people who don't care about animal and respond to their concerns as well and we really try to provide the public protection services and health

and hull man service and we go beyond what the legal mandates are because we know what the expectations of our residents are and we try to do more than what we are mandated to do and so from an animal welfare perspective we are doing rescues and surrenders and taking in the animals surrenders by the owners who can no longer keep them, redemption and prosecution, and wild life, co-existence education and mutual aid, both here in the city and to other agencies, and whether that is law enforcement agencies and the fire department and again, the health and human agencies but also the aid to the other communities, when the pipeline explosion occurred and we sent the people down for example, and things like that. we provide the animal care, which is our vet services providing vaccinations and microchip and working with the community and on the failed cat programs and the tnr and the behavior and training programs and the volunteer service and community out reach and

education and providing shelter for the guardians in a hospital and the battered woman's shelters or jails and we have an on site groomer who helps us and we have the public education functions and we also provide as a said for people, public safety and health, and issues that we do code enforcement and we deal with the abuse cases and studies show that abuse of animals cruelty to animals is often a prekursor towards the violence towards humans and we respond to injured animal and deal with the reporting of bites, and the zoonotic diseases and rabies, and animal remains and licensing and the aid and disaster response for any number of disasters. >> and then i am going to turn it over to adam. >> good morning, supervisors, and from the city administrator's office and i am going to run through the slides for the budget and the resources that acc has.

and give us a sense of their work load and then talk about, the budget proposal and also, the next steps. and to just start with, we have here the operating budget and comparing the actuals to the budget for the past ten years or so and you will see with the gray bars that is the allocated budget in 2003, 2004 and it was about three million and it has grown up to 3.49 million and that agrowth could be attributed to increased cost for personnel and mostly through retirement and healthcare costs and they have actually have had little adjustment, or no adjustment for the other items lying materials and supplies and contracted services etc.. and the top numbers, on your screen, basically demonstrate, across the top here, the deficit or the surplus, that they have had each year and you will see as supervisor weiner mentioned earlier that they have had the deficits due to

the increased cost of supplies and if you look at the staffing you will see that it is static over time and for the past ten years or so, they have had about 41 fte that are budgeted for the program and you will look at the orange bar, or line, and it shows that the average calculated is the average number of people working the man-hours and it has about about on budget and what you don't see, and in the next slide we have had a fair number of temps on the staff and just to meet the demand if you look at what is budgets in the various divisions for the acc for the field services and those are the animal care officers and they have 12 budgets and plus one supervisor and they have nine and those are the shelter reps that man with the front desk and the animal care and those are the animal care attendants and they provide the care to the animals within the shelter. and they also, help to

facilitate adoption and departure and then we have the administration and the volunteer coordination. and so the fte is at 41 and the actual head count is about 47 and it has been about as high at 15 and that is through the use of temps if we look at the calls for service, and so these are the ones that the animal care and control officers go out to and you generally have 12,000 or 13,000 calls on a given year and they receive far more phone calls, and these are just the ones that we are recording and provide response to and these include, many different activities that we called out down below and they do about 2500 a year and, that is about, 22, or 23 percent of the investigations or the total calls for service, and those are particularly notable. and because, they require often multiple visits and into the field and they are very time intentionive and if we look at the number of investigations that has increased by 15

percent. other calls for service, include animal rescue and dealing with animal remains and licensing, and dealing with strays and transports of animals, and also, wild animals. and next slide shows the animal intake totals for about the past six years or so and here we see that in on average they have about 10,000 animals coming in and we do see a very different trend, however, over the period. and you notice that the orange line, that that is increasing, and that is actually a 42 percent increase over the past five years. and that is notable because dogs require more space and they also require a lot more attention and treatment and more care and they are more expensive, more time intentionive to provide the care to, and the cats have gone down substantially largely to the great efforts of the sbca and with their... >> actually i wanted to

interrupt you quickly and welcome the children and the parents from the bay wood school and just to the children, we are discussing our animal welfare and control offices and a our pets and also when our city needs to support the animals that are within our communities. four leged as well as two leged people that we support in our city, please continue. >> if you look at the number of animals in the shelter, they have on average, 400 animals on any given day and there is a course in the seasonalty and the number of animals in the shelter and it ranges from 200 in the middle of winter, and up to about, 600, 500 animals, in the busier parts of the year and you will notice that there are 100 dogs on average in the

shelter. a large number of wild and small animal and these include,, rabbit and reptiles and hamsters and birds, etc.. >> and to provide the other activities that they do, and the animal care and control, the dog licensing and they are approximately 20,000 dogs that are currently licensed in the city and they are available for purchase through many different venues, and including acc itself, and you can go on-line, through the treasure and tax collector and some other partnering organizations and the animal care, officers also provide, education and enforcement in the field. and for dog walker permits, currently we have about 140 and that have been issued today and today, this morning, we are doing a number of inspections of vehicles and to the word has gotten out in the field that this is a mandate of something that is required among the dog walkers and that is actually, we expect this number to bump up considerably today and later on this month. >> and so, our proposed enhancements and we did the

analysis and we looked at the global staffing and the resources available to acc and comparing that to the volume and the expectations of the community and one thing that we could do better is to improve the officer safety and response and by adding more of those position and currently the officers respond to calls anywhere from 6:00 a.m. to midnight and also from basically midnight up to 6:00 a.m. for emergencies and they work alone typically and sometimes, hostile, dangerous situations dealing with either domestic violence issues and situations that go in and sometimes they will do seizures of animals that can be dangerous or the owners themselves are threatening. and so we think that by sending out some officers, and in pairs, for a specific types of calls such as investigations and also the animal rescue and when you have a dog running on the freeway that will be safer

for the people involved and for the animal. and also, we think that it will be safer for the officers if they were to be paired at night and so, in darkness, they can go into some more dangerous parts of the city, and we think that it would be beneficial to have that second officer with them. >> okay. >> thank you. and so following up on that and what we have got here in terms of the proposed staffing enhancement and in terms of the animal control officers and i agree that it will be bet forethem to go out in pairs and any law enforcement and the police officers work in pairs and there is a reason for that and i am glad to hear that but i am curious to know sort of beyond insurancing the safety of the animal, or of the acos or the officers that are currently going out. pairing them up is not going to increase the capacity to respond to calls, because we know that there are a lot of calls where the agency really

struggles and responds to them and i guess that my question is does the city administrator believe that the current staffing levels are enough to respond to all of the bearing responsibility that these field officers have? >> well, for the majority of the calls that it is true, we think that they could spend more time on some of the calls and in particular, for investigations, and there is a backlog of cases, that were less priority. and looking at... >> but, that is, i mean and i agree, that some in the investigations but that also requires the staffing and so the question is does this agency need more staffing, in order to be able to respond to the many, many different kinds of calls. we can improve the response, or the timeliness of some of the

responses he right now there are 11 officers in one agency, and how many are working at any given time? i mea this is half of that. and so, how many of them are on the staff at any given time? 24 hours seven days a week? >> yeah, so we are actually we are budgeted to have 12, people in the division. and we currently have, no, ten, we currently have ten, we have two positions that we are working on filling. so we have, in the evenings and nighttime we have one person on at any time. and throughout the day we usually have three people three to people in the field and one supervisor in house to respond.

>> and that is seven days a week? or is that sundays? >> that is seven days. actually, can i call up our captain brown is over sees the field division and he can answer the questions that you have about the field. and the numbers of people that we have out there. >> good morning. >> so currently we have three officers out in the field, one sworn officer that is covering our dispatch ship and we have myself which is a supervisor that over sees the field service. >> and so at ten on a tuesday morning, or four on a thursday afternoon, or, noon on a saturday, there are typically three or how many officers are available? >> basically on any given day we have a total of five officers, that is including. >> no, one moment in time. not during the entire. >> at one moment in time. we have three officers on at one time >> that includes the supervisor?

>> correct. >> so one supervisor and two staff. for the entire city and county of san francisco. >> yes, and we also have a sworn officer that is our dispatcher. >> for hundreds and thousands of animals. and because it seems that, thank you very much. >> and it seems that we have a situation where we have very few available officers because of the staffing is so low. and a significant volume of calls for all manner of challenges that we have whether it is vicious dogs or abused or neglected or a dead animal that needs to be removed, and i am sure that i could go on and on and on with the different reasons why the animal care and controls get a call and it is legally responsible to respond. and we are, they don't have the resources to respond to everything in a timely manner or to do enough investigation, and so i am hearing that maybe we will pair them up which is great for the officers safety.

but that does not seem to address the capacity issue, which seems to be part of the fundamental problem and so, the city administrator believes that there is enough capacity to actually meet these mandates in terms of responding to these calls and i know that you are in a difficult position because i know that ultimately the mayor's office puts out the budget and decides whether to put any increases in the staffing and then we are, and we have the board are in a tough position because we don't have a lot of, and we can do some things to fix the budget issues, but, fundamentally the mayor, the budget office puts out a budget, with the head count and so, but, as the agencies that over see the animal care and control, i am just curious does the city administrator think that there is adequate staff. >> and that is one of the things that we like to look into further and we have started the rough modeling for

this already and we have gotten a sense of how long each of the activities take to respond to and the average number of activities that we receive in a day, and we look at the number of calls for instance, and it appears that they are able to meet the demands and one is the timeliness and response has to do with a target of going out to a call at 23 minutes, and of that call. and right now, our average is 21 minutes, we are meeting that pretty well, but of course, there is activists that we would like to do better. >> i just, i have not seen those specific statistics and i would have to say that based on my experience, representing the district that has probably more animals on average, and then other areas of the city, and i don't know that, factually and i am going to speculate and i don't see that, because we have, i mentioned earlier, more and more we are hearing from the people with the dogs saying

that we have a dog that is attacking other dogs in a dog park and we can't get anyone to respond. and so i just, you know, even if, i don't know what technically how long it is taking, but we are hearing more and more that tr there is not a response, i don't think that there is a lack of wanting to respond and my sense is that there is no one to respond because it is for the entire city there are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of animals there is very few people even available to respond. and i would like more data on that. >> we will provide that in the future. >> noted on that, though, because there are eleven officers, and when there are, for instance, people that are out sick and if we have vacantcy that can put a great stress on the team itself and there and then the pure resource is available to deploy into the field and so it ties

nicely into the next point and with the animal care and attendants we know that that causes the issues in the shelter and so right now we have eleven, animal care attendants that provide, basically a cleaning, and also, care, feeding, and adoption, and redemption and departure services for the animals and they have 400 on any given day and each, animal care has to deal with about 50 animal and i believe that within the industry, one of the standards that is considered to be a best practice is that he wants each and every animal to have about 15 minutes of interaction with a person and right now, given that ratio of our staffing, and also because of vacantcies, it causes pressures, where we are not able to meet that 15 minutes. and there, we think that they could use more positions, in order to take into account the people that are out on live, for whatever reason, vacation or