After a year of wrangles with the non-profit and a few pending questions ahead, the Palm Coast City Council has approved its annual contract with the Flagler Humane Society, increasing it to $125,000, from $90,000. But the city is pressing the society to be more forthcoming with its data and future plans for potential expansion.
The contract calls for a fee of $156 per animal that the society handles on behalf of the city, up from $132. It also calls for the delegation of a council member to meet with two society board members and a society staffer once per quarter. The council selected Theresa Pontieri, the vice mayor, who has combined strong criticism and strong advocacy for the society, as she did when the council approved the contract last Tuesday.
Pontieri is not pleased with–as she heard it–the society telling Palm Coast residents who want to surrender an animal to “go home and call our animal control to come then bring the animal in.” She sees that as a “roundabout way to get the fee,” which would not apply if the resident were to surrender the animal without the intervention of the city’s animal control officers.
“We don’t turn people away,” Society Executive Director Amy Carotenuto said. “If somebody is turning their animal in, we usually ask them to make an appointment first, and sometimes they’re not satisfied with that.” An appointment could take 10 days, and the society asks questions: why is the animal being turned in? Can measures be taken to prevent it?
“So they may be the ones to go home and say it’s a stray. We get lied to all the time, but quite the opposite,” Carotenuto said. “We actually would rather have the owners in front of us so that we can talk to them about” the animal’s domesticity. When animal control turns in an animal, the society doesn’t get many details about the animal. The surrender fee is nominal, covering a day’s worth of needs, Carotenut said.
Pontieri favors reducing the time when appointments are granted. Carotenuto pushed back. “It’s a bit of an industry standard now. If anything, we are already kind of shorter,” she said. “If somebody walks in with the animal, and they say they need to surrender it today, they surrender it today.” Pontieri asked for five days. Carotenuto said it was “worth more conversation.”
Pontieri also had questions about the determination of a dangerous dog’s status. The contract leaves it in Palm Coast animal control’s hands to make to determine whether a dog is dangerous–but not whether the dog may be released. But as long as the homeowner meets the requirements of keeping a dangerous dog (the requirements are steep, including the embedding of an electronic chip in the animal, signage at the dog’s house, restrictions on the dog’s freedom), then the dog may be released.
The shelter has struggled with space. But the word “overpopulated” is not defined in the contract. City Attorney Marcus Duffy defined it as when the shelter cannot take in animals. But that has not happened despite crowding. On Oct. 2 the city’s animal control officers turned in 19 animals, and 98 cats in July. So there are times when the shelter is overpopulated, Carotenuto said.
“We make arrangements. I got large walk-in cages that we borrowed from Halifax Humane Society,” Carotenuto said. “So we make do, and then once those animals get adopted, we’re back to normal again. But the animals themselves never suffer because of that. The accusation of–we keep them in crates for months at a time, that’s not the case. The animals that are in crates are waiting for surgery or have just arrived. But the animals themselves aren’t crowded. We might be crowded after the 98 cats. I think I had 16 of them in my office for a while. But they were in the big walk-in cage.”
The implication is that the human beings who work at the shelter may feel more crowded than the animals.
That wasn’t Pontieri’s point, anyway: “I’m asking the question because we’re trying to plan for the future,” she said. “My largest frustration with the Humane Society, shutting out everything that people have said is, I haven’t seen a strategic plan for expansion. That’s my frustration. And I think part of having a strategic plan for expansion is keeping these types of metrics.” But again, Carotenuto had difficulties putting “a hard fast number” on overpopulation.
That lack of measurables greatly bothered Pontieri, who is not interested in fueling criticism of the society, but who wants the society to help itself: “If you don’t have that number to begin with, we don’t know what we need to plan for, we can’t even set money aside to do it and to help you, Amy” Pontieri said. “I’m really trying to get there with everybody and satisfy a lot of concerns here, including being very sensitive to what you all are battling from a public perspective and optics perspective. But I need your help to get this data together.”
By definition, Council member Ty Miller said, any time the society has to organize temporary housing, such as walk-in crates, then the society is overpopulated. The question was not resolved.
The county is considering joining with Palm Coast to run its animal control operation. Palm Coast has its own operation now, but does not have its own animal shelter. So any animal the city picks up must be surrendered to the society. That’s where the per-animal fee comes in. “For animal control, we should have one entity that does it for the whole county,” Council member Dave Sullivan said.
Dennis C Rthsam says
ADOPT, DONT SHOP!