Humane Society fundraiser on tap Although Antioch plans to spend about $75,000 more on its animal shelter over the next year, advocates for the pets that end up there want services that officials doubt the city can afford. The shelter gets most of its money from the city but because Animal Services historically has been part of Antioch Police Department, the police chief always has had the final say in how much of the city's general fund it should receive each year. The shelter also receives donations and revenue from the fees it charges to license, microchip and place animals with adoptive families.
The City Council adopted a 2007-08 budget last month that includes a $618,518 subsidy for Animal Services, nearly 14 percent more than what it earmarked for the center last year. But Barbara Sobalvarro has a wish list that's challenging its budget. She founded the nonprofit organization Friends of Animal Services in 1979 to ensure that the shelter Antioch residents had voted to establish the year before would be the best it could be.
In Sobalvarro's book, that now means restoring the manager's position the city eliminated from Animal Services Center a few years ago and giving that person the authority to develop the department's budget. It also means hiring a full-time veterinary technician and eventually offering a spay and neuter clinic with a veterinarian to run it. Animal Services lost its only veterinary technician, who also served as supervisor, in January, and the employee now overseeing the facility temporarily is juggling that job with her regular duties as one of the shelter's two animal control officers.
City Councilman Jim Davis doesn't think the center's allocation this year is enough to fulfill Sobalvarro's desires. "We're not cutting anything from Animal Services -- we're just not restoring everything that they hoped that we would," he said. The city is facing an estimated $1.
7 million deficit this year, and Davis said there's at least one spending priority that takes precedence over shelter animals. "It can't be public safety -- that we can't compromise," he said. Davis nonetheless hopes that the subcommittee to which the mayor has appointed him and Councilman Reggie Moore will come up with some answers.
Sobalvarro also is part of the group along with representatives from two other local organizations that care for unwanted pets: East Contra Costa County Homeless Animals' Lifeline Organization, or HALO, and Homeless Animals Response Program, otherwise known as HARP. During the next six months, the subcommittee will examine the costs of running the shelter and explore ways to drum up more money, Davis said, adding that members will report their findings during the city's midyear budget review. Perhaps the city could apply to Animal Rescue Foundation for a grant or hire the Walnut Creek-based nonprofit group to run its shelter, he said.
Maybe it could impose a licensing fee on cat owners to generate the revenue needed to expand its payroll, Davis said. Or the city shelter might offer its services to Brentwood and Oakley residents, who currently must take their pets to the county's shelter in Martinez if they don't want to pay a private veterinarian to microchip, vaccinate, spay or neuter them, he said. To do that, the shelter must be larger, said its acting supervisor, Monika Helgemo, adding that the budget probably won't support an expansion.
Although HARP President Karen Kops hasn't asked the city to add specific services, she'd like to see it hire another animal control officer. With only two in a city of more than 100,000 residents, they hardly have time to teach people how to be more responsible pet owners, she said. Helgemo echoed the sentiments, noting that a third animal control officer is needed to provide better protection against aggressive dogs on the loose, ones that not only might attack other dogs but people.
"In a fantasy world it would be wonderful (to have the money to do other things), but realistically, who's going to do public safety?" she said. Verlene Leonardo, president of HALO, said that if the shelter only could pay its part-time volunteer coordinator more and offer benefits, there would be less turnover in that position.
The longer that person stays in the job, the longer shelter volunteers are likely to stay, Leonardo said. And the more volunteers the shelter has, the more human contact its animals have, which, she added, makes them more adoptable. Reach Rowena Coetsee at 925-779-7141 or rcoetsee@cctimes.
com.
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