Recommendation to request City Manager, or designee, to work with the Animal Care Services Bureau in Parks, Recreation and Marine Department to implement a "Commitment to Adopt Policy" within 60 days to provide a streamlined and equitable approach for placing animals into forever homes.
Madam. I think I skipped over eating there. That's management item 18 meeting. Communication from Councilwoman Mango. Councilwoman Price. Vice Mayor Andrews. Councilman Austin. Recommendation to implement a commitment to adopt policy within 60 days. See if I can. Have Councilwoman Mango motion in. Time to motion. To a party. To. I don't see it because I can't see anywhere else. Into the. Not into the chat it into the texting messaging service that we emailed earlier today or yesterday. Okay. Last week. It was last week. It's okay. Go ahead. Cut one mango. I do it. Thank you. This is the culmination of bringing together a lot of the ideas from many who have come to council meetings and written. Office related to. How to support animal services and getting the animals into the homes. Over the last six weeks, we've seen an amazing amount of work on the part of. Our foster. Partners, and we want to continue that progress on a go forward basis. Many of you know, the shelters are on the verge of empty. We do have a few cats left, but it would be great if they had a home. And so as we come out of this crisis and return to normal, we want to get ahead of it and make sure we have processes in place that support our animal control director and our employees working hand in hand with the community and our foster partners to make sure each animal finds a home. So you may remember that in the state of California, there used to be a ten day sale policy for owners to reclaim their animals, and that was rescinded several years ago and during a prior financial crisis. And so the shelters are only required to be a lot on three days that we do as a best practice for the protest. This would allow people during that time their whole period to. Commit to adopting the animal and then have a backup person. This will allow. The director. And the city manager a lot of leeway in crafting the policy and ensuring that the organizations that follow through on those commitments are rewarded with the ability to make more commitments. But if organizations make commitments and don't follow through, then they would lose their ability to make those commitments so that we ensure that animals have the best chance of finding a home. With that, I hope that my colleagues will support this item. We've done a lot of outreach in the community and we really think that this is a step in the right direction. Also very open to any suggestions that have come up since item was written, which we felt that could improve it both on the city manager side or the Parks. And Rec slash. Animal care side. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman, I have Councilwoman Price who's going to make a second. I'm happy to support this item, and I want to thank Councilwoman Mongo. She's always very, very creative and thinking about our animal care services division and all the different things that we can do to increase adoptions. And I really appreciate her leadership and happy to support this item. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is Vice Mayor Andrews. Yes. Thank you. I also would like to thank our cast in Mungo for bringing the site on board. It was about any measure, you know, everything. I've seen more animals arriving in the home. I think it's worth giving it a try again as a notable bonus item. But the next is council this year. Oh. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilmember Mungo, for bringing this forward. I think completely and a real compassion. To once again. Can I go and get the times, please? I can see that there's a lot of books that are not me, including city staff. Everyone needs to mute their phones except for the person. So thank you so much. But Council Member Pearce. Thank you. I was saying I appreciate the item. I think it is a step in the right direction and aligned with the work that we've done over the last two years with Compassion Save. I did make sure to check in with city staff first and I had a couple of questions that I just want to ask publicly and then I'll give my full support to the item. I know that we the last time we talked about our animal shelter, we had given direction to city staff to start working on an operational agreement, which would seem that some of these items laid out in this item would include could stop. Just give us a report on where we're at. I know that COVID pops up, but what's the timeline for getting an operational agreement with the SPCA? Take out some of our time, Erica. So we were given the assignment by the council to first before we got to the operational agreement, really dove into the review of the agreement and the lease and all the documents that are currently in place. So that work essentially was very close to being finished when COVID 19 happened. So that has been we're very close on that part. We were actually in the process of setting up the negotiation meeting and sitting down with SPCA when I believe it was even on the day that we implemented either Safer at home or declared an emergency. And so that has unfortunately impacted our work to be able to to have those discussions. It is currently on pause and we know it's important to the council. We would like to get back to it as soon as we're able to. But we ideally this item was going to wait until we were done with those negotiations. But we do feel this is a relatively easy step to implement. But the ongoing discussions and operations and the negotiations would take a fair amount of time. So I don't have a date for you. Stephen, does he? He can chime in. But at this point, we're a little bit on a pause. That's that's okay. I just wanted to make sure that we kept that at the forefront of what we're thinking. And my next my next comment would be just and one of the issues that continues to come up is tracking animals that go to the SPCA and making sure that if we're focusing on Forever Home, which has been the continued intent of this council, that we are also tracking what happens to the pets that go to Assisi. So I would ask as part of this, that that staff figure out a way to track when those adoptions are happening so that we have a count of that. So that those are my my two comments. I support the item and think it's a good step following all the work that we've done and want to thank all the advocates that continue to do great work and advocate and again, thank our shelter staff and want to make sure that they have the tools that support them to do their good work. So thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. And we can certainly add to the list of the things we're going to discuss with SPCA, the reporting requirements that you talk about and have that be part of those operating agreement discussions. Thank you, Tom. Councilmember. Thank you. I thank the board. Thank you, Councilman Mongo, for bringing this forward. You did ask for suggestions, so I will really get into the weeds on something a constituent brought up. And that's the last bullet point number eight. If no committee member has requested or allow refuge to pull at 4 p.m. the night before, and what was suggested was that information needs to be out there publicly. So if someone is anticipating an animal still being available for a rescue on a Friday or adoption on a Friday, you don't want to disappoint them by the animal being gone before. That's all I have. Thank you, Councilmember Austin, but thank you. Would also like to lend my support to this. Obviously, I was closing in on this item. I think it's very important. But I also want to commend my colleague, Councilmember, a longer term commitment to this issue. I know she and her husband, Scott, they spend a lot of time and they're very close to an animal shelter near and dear to her heart, the dolphin. I'd also like to think that this this policy that we are moving forward with will help support many of our dogs and partners who are doing some amazing work. I mean, there are a lot of where some of our unsung heroes in the city of Long Beach for their commitment, compassion and work to adopt out my pet. I can speak for my personal experience. Just a little over a month ago, my family, we adopted a pet and know I want to thank our school board member Megan Crawford of fostering and facilitate that. Also want to give a shout out to Sparky and the gang for their efforts to really save the lives of countless amount of animals in the community. And so this is this is a good framework to work from. I think this does kind of get into the weeds, but I'm okay from that. And I hope that you can actually build on this and come back with a really good policy. So I'm happy to support Cities Home as well. Thank you. I'm now a compliment. And they think you're a member longer for me. But I just also wanted to go with my colleagues have said in support of this item and I'm thinking. Well, thank you, Councilwoman. That concludes comments of Councilman Mungo. Your your Q and and it's in motion was I think you did already. Do you have any additional comments to close or. No. I just want to appreciate the adult membership. And I think the same committee member called my office is on my call list. We do have a procedure that smooths that process out and we do need a lot of local information and that will be available. That tells people that some of that so that they can. We really, really want the public to make that commitment to adopt during the ten day period. That's our ideal service. Thanks so much for the and support. Thank you. I just want to add I want to I also want to thank Councilwoman Mongo. I think she has been just really bold in the work at the shelter. Obviously, the shelters have been in the district and there's been a lot of great work on the council. But I know, Councilman, you've been putting a lot of time with the organizations, and I think that the proof is in kind of the new reality that we have with the amazing director and team and volunteers. And this is really great work happening. So I just want to thank you and everyone on the side and integrity and support for the work. So thank you. With that, please do the work. Okay. District one. Lake. District one. Park. West Lake. District two. I. District three. Our district for. I. District five. I. District six. Five. District seven. I. District eight. Oh. District nine. Hi. Motion carries with you now item 90.