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 ,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 medical or otherwise. >> i just wanted to add, to my comments that if you have not visited the facilities, if you have your image of dog catchers in mind and as what the department represents it could not be further from the truth with the really caring people that work under really

difficult facility and conditions there. and so i am glad that you have some slides on facilities needs and i think that is coupling up and i know that there are a ton of people that want to speak. and i did want to say that the increased the animal socialization activities is critical because when i visited to see the cats and the abused dogs, that the facility is really in need of much more improvement in addition to the positions and it or the additional animal care attendants as well. and but i did want to say that unless you have seen directly the facility, that the data is not as or it does not hit you as hard until you see facility, but i did want to say that slide number nine gives the

data on the types of animals that are currently within the animal welfare and control and i see a trend of wild animals going way up and i know that bunnies are dumped after families get them around easter time and there are other types of animals that are coming in, but it looks like cats are going down, dogs are going up. and but the numbers of animals seem to be going down a little bit from several years ago, is that right? >> that is correct. >> okay. >> and that, that bar graph does show that we have a particular spike in right when the economy tanked. and in 2008. 9, and we saw a huge uptick in honor and surrenders and we continue to see a number of surrenders and in particular, the dogs, the cost of the vet care in san francisco is very

high and the cost for behavior and training and so forth and also, probably not enough pet housing throughout the city and so, we do see an increase of about 1,000 dogs annually coming into the shelter, i did, i do have some staff and managers here if there are questions that come up but one of our animal care supervisor eric can speak about the onnes that it takes or the toll that it takes or the burden for caring for dogs is greater than that of the other animals just in terms physically the labor for cleaning for them and the socialization and the vet cost and all of that. >> so, could i just ask you, since you are up here and i know that the staffing needs and then i know that the next slide is on the capitol budget and but for the facility of i think, it, when i saw the facility, it looked like it is

a very old building with not enough space for a modern, i guess, in modern day dealing in the psychology of the animals that have been abused and or in the small confined spaces but could you just talk about that capitol need? >> sure, and the building dates back to 1939 and i think that it was a munitions warehouse, and it was subsequently used by the city as a purchasing department, and in, 1988, the city received notice that the san francisco sbca would not continue to provide the contract for services animal control service and so, they converted that building, and about a year, year and a half time, to an animal shelter, which i don't know how they did it as fast as they did, still not an ideal space for it. and given what we know now, about animal care and the needs, both behaviorally and medically of animals and we

could, definitely use, the significantly more space, of course, from a human resources, perspective we could use more space as well, some of our managers do not have private offices even to have the conversations with the employees, we definitely don't have enough storage space for disaster supplies and other things like that. and not enough space to even park all of our vehicles. and so we are definitely challenged by the space that we have. for the animals for the people and for the equipment. so, you know, when we talk about wanting to increase space, and we are really not talking about increasing the number of animals, because caring for more animals is and well, i come from starting this in the city with the sheriff's department, and that same perspective about jailed and prisons if you build them you fill them and if you build the space we could warehouse the

animal and we don't think that is in the interest of animal welfare either. >> there are only a couple more slides. >> that is just to continue as far as the proposed enhancements, currently there is one vet and one vet tech that is budgeted and that is for the treatment and care of 10,000 animals in a given year and one of those persons is out we are not able to provide it. wait that we have done it is as-needed staff but they are budgeted but i think that we could improve the care and plan and just coverage, where were to have more vets and vet tech. and also would like to be able to increase the animal associate *f socialization activity and helps to offsets the cost. >> how does this, this happen?

that, the we have this agency that has so many responsibility, like critical responsibility from the shelter and the vet and the animal control officers, and so forth, and yet, the budget is just, it seems to be just, willfully unadequate and i know that the city administrator did not prepare the budget, the mayor and the board of supervisors we have a political responsibility of budgeting for the agencies but it just seems pretty stark. and some, how did this happen? >> well the budget has been static for as far as i know for the last decade and if you go back further i would not be surprised if the budget has been the same there have been some increases because of cpi but the level of resources has not changed with the exception of the past two years we have been working with the mayor's budget office to try to increase the level of funding and we increased by the level

of supplies by close to 200,000 and that is to offset the increased cost of vet materials and equipment, and medical equipment and medical supplies and they have also helped to provide more salary dollars, and to reduce basically the attrition, and that enables us to hire, closer up to the 41 fte that we are budget $and they are aware and trying to work with us to increase the double resources and they have been providing a lot of capitol funding for the last year and this year. and there are well over a million dollars in funding to help improve the facilities for the animal care and control, and looking at the floors, and actually that ties in the nice link to the next slide and provides, $700,000 for this year and just to look at the facility planning and to determine what will be the best plan for the acc and whether it is to do the renovations within the existing facility and move to another location, and building that out. but, for the current year, we have $50,000 to repair the

roof, and $52,000 to repair the floors, and last year there were many other enhancements for improving the hvac system and looking at security, kenling the cages was improved, and so, they have been working with us to try to meet the needs as you have noted there are additional areas where we think that we can enhance the level of resources and the quality of the services that they are providing. >> i think that what this really does and points to as well is i am glad that there is more organizizing in the community and going on around the animal welfare and issues and funding in particular, and what we have seen as the colleagues can attest is during that the budget process and whether it is with the board and it is, and the rule of the squeaky wheel and we see that the subject areas and the budget where the strong organizing and the community tend to do well in the budget and i would just encourage those who were interested and improving something around the animal welfare issues to be

extremely organized and vocal and participation during the budget process and because that really has a significant impact, and i think on the mayor and on the board in terms of making sure that priorities are actually getting addressed. >> for the next steps we need to finalize the planning and determine what is the best fit in order to provide a modern facility that meets the needs of the animal and refine our own work load and look at best practice and smart practices and talk to our partners regionally and see what is the opt mal level of resources to provide for the animals within the city and we need to submit the budget and we will do so in february. and we will work with the mayor's office and supervisors through june, and july, and in order to finalize the budget for acc. >> okay. >> thank you, >> thank you, so much for the presentation. >> okay. >> supervisor weiner and tang, if there are no other

presentations, let's open this up for public comment. >> i think that before we get to the public comment, the one last statement is stevens from the animal welfare commission is here, and could speak for just a few minutes. and a brief statement and we will go to public comment. >> hi. >> good morning. >> animal care and control is a important agency for the animal and people as well. the under funded and they are under staffed yet they do a lot of good things in spite of all of that. there is so much more that they could be doing, if they were properly staffed and funded. for example, they could administer programs to peer shelter with the kids at the juvenile custody center and help the adult and youth, and more out reach to help to row exist with the wild life or a data base of abusers to keep

them from adopting pets. and if they had adequate staff and added funding. acc is not just about animals people who abuse or neglect animals also often abuse and neglect children and spouses. and investigating all reports of animal abuse and neglect will save human lives as well. if acc has enough staffing to do so. acc is crucial to the city disaster planning and another animal commission and dr. o'neil could not be here but she sent you a letter outlining the importance of the work on the disaster animal response team training and for the building that holds the acc staff and animals is not rebuilt. we expect acc to shelter the animals if we find ourselves temporarily forced out of our homes and that become harder if not impossible to do if the shelter cannot be used because it is no longer safe, please find a way to rebuild the acc facility. and the control of