Thursday, July 03, 2008

Creating a Humane LA: A Call to Action

LA Animal Services has long been committed to making Los Angeles a “No-Kill” community for animals. “No-Kill” is defined as getting LA Animal Services to the place where only dangerously aggressive and terminally ill and injured animals are euthanized. In other words, no animal will be euthanized, or killed, because the community lacks the space or the resources to properly care for and place an animal in a loving home.

Over the past several years LA Animal Services has implemented numerous programs and policies to achieve No-Kill with some remarkable success. To help hasten LA’s progress, some have asked LA Animal Services to consider a purportedly new approach called “The No Kill Equation”.

Proponents of “The No-Kill Equation” claim it provides a revolutionary formula to help local animal care and control agencies achieve “No-Kill”. In fact, the "No-Kill Equation" is actually comprised of ten commonsense, long-standing practices embraced and implemented to various degrees by LA Animal Services.

To help better familiarize concerned Angelenos with LA Animal Services’ efforts to achieve “No-Kill” and at the same time gather input and feedback on how we could do better, we are scheduling a series of public workshops to focus on the ten tenets of the “No-Kill Equation”.

The series of workshops will be called, "Creating a Humane LA". The meetings will be scheduled in the order outlined below, about two weeks apart.

Two Council Members asked to host High Volume/Low-Cost Spay/Neuter Workshops so the series will begin with two sessions devoted to this topic.

District 8 Council Member Bernard Parks will host the first workshop. It is scheduled for

Tuesday, July 22 at 6 p.m.
High Volume/Low-Cost Spay/Neuter Work Shop
The Constituent Service Center
8475 South Vermont (near Manchester)
Los Angeles, CA 90048

District 7 Council Member Richard Alarcon will host the second High Volume/Low-Cost Spay/Neuter workshop at a location yet to be determined probably during the week of August 4th. The schedule below will be updated and posted on our website as the work- shops are scheduled and confirmed. We will do our best to get the word out to the community. We appreciate your assistance in helping us publicize these workshops to anyone who may be interested in attending.

1. High Volume/Low-Cost Spay/Neuter I (CD 8 - Parks - July 22nd CONFIRMED)
2. High Volume/Low-Cost Spay/Neuter II (CD 7 - Alarcon - Week of August 4th)
3. Rescue Groups (CD 13 - Garcetti - Week of August 18th)
4. Foster Care (CD 2 - Greuel - Week of September 1st)
5. Adoption Programs (CD 10 - Wesson - Week of September 15)
6. Pet Retention (CD 1 - Reyes - Week of September 29th)
7. Medical and Behavioral Rehabilitation (CD 6 - Cardenas - Week of October 6th)
8. Feral Cat TNR (CD 15 - Hahn - Week of October 20th)
9. Volunteers (CD 11 - Rosendahl - Week of November 3rd)
10. Public Relations/Community Involvement (CD 4 - LaBonge – Week of November 17th)
11. Creating a Humane LA (The Mayor - Week of December 1st)

Any organization who would like to set up an information table at any of these work- shops to explain your role in legitimately and meaningfully helping LA achieve No-Kill is invited to contact LA Animal Services at 213.482.9530 to determine if we can accommodate you.

If you or your group would like to be part of the Work Shop panel discussion, please contact me at 213.482.9558 to discuss your involvement.

Be watching for additional updates!

If you would like to review what is currently happening in LA with respect to the ten components of of the No-Kill Equation, click here.