For those who could not attend last night I wanted to post the excerpt of the AAC meeting where Scott T put the AAC in its place and the attempt by Lisa Walker-Hutches to get some straight answers from some crooked people: You can scroll down to the horizontal lines where I have marked the speech by his excellency: ____________ Timothy Golden: Thank you, Christy and thank you for pointing that out, Scott. We are still dealing with a lot of things we are dealing with things when bill armstrong was the director of the animal services. Its not a lot, but, you were literally dumped here in the middle of -- I wont use an adjective, lets just say a situation, and, you know, I want to commend you on so many fronts on what you have done, and, you know, and we all agree, theres so much more to do. So, you he know, hopefully at some point in time, they will be able to, you know, take in the animals in, whatever the public needs to, but, I dont know that it will be a 24/7 kind of thing. Okay if nobody -- okay, lisa you have been so quiet, ive got to. Go ahead. LWH: I just have a couple of questions regarding the stats and then a question about a couple of other issues Page seven on public safety and temperament, can you give me a little detail on whats behind the public safety and the seven euthanasia and then what goes behind the temperament. ST: Public safety are bite case animals. Temperament is a much broader category and thats based on either staff evaluation or volunteer behaviorist that comes in and does assessments on the weekends. __________________ LWH: And then to lower that number, can we make an additional plea to reinstate the ADOPT a program and some of those volunteers that put so much time and effort into that? ST: I personally didnt think that the system that was in place would affect those numbers whatsoever. You are talking about a dozen animals or so a year that were going through that program, spending inordinate amounts of time, 8, 10, 12 months from my understanding in the program. I think some form of the behavior modification, some form of a staff behaviorist in the future would be a great thing. I think simply singling out certain animals and sticking them into this specialized program was not beneficial to the overall population, nor did it make a significant impact on the number of animals that were leaving the shelter. LWH: Im not sure that I agree with your statistics. I think theres quite a bit more than just a dozen per year that rotate out of that program. I find it disappointing. I know have some accolades about the volunteers. I was an active volunteer in the adopt program and the ambassador program and I would love to tip to be a volunteer, however, I cease getting any information from the volunteer coordinator for the last several months. Im not exactly sure why that happened. Maybe you can explain that one to me. And I also have some real concerns about this packet that was provided to us from FOHCAS this evening and I would like to know if there was any discussion about providing this to the AAC prior to this meeting tonight. JOHN: Not with me. ST: Let me take a minute and if Devorah can come up to the microphone. This has been an issue that I think has probably evolved -- Im not talking about the specifics Im talking about in bigger general terms. We will get to the specifics in a minute that has probably evolved over years, well before I got here. I would like to remind the committee that you are an advisory committee that is supposed to be advising when the board of county commissioners or county administration asks for your advice to further animal issues. You are not an oversight committee and you are not supposed to be generating questions about the day-to-day operations of the facility. This is a legal communication between the lawyer and our facility and its being handled by our attorneys. __________________ Timothy golden: You had asked deboera to chime in?Just in case anyone wanted feedback from her. LWH: I dont think that we are making any improvement with our volunteers and some of our rescues and that just disappoints me. We have a lot of people out in our community that have been very, very instrumental in saving a lot of animals lives and its still very disheartening to me that those individuals are -- not encouraged to be a part of the solution and do positive things for the shelter or the pet resource center. I just think that its important enough that we need to discuss it. Timothy Golden: I would like to chime in here. Scott makes a very pertinent point with regard to our group here. And our charter. You know, the intention of having an animal advisory committee is, and when you lock it down, yes, we are -- we are supposed to get involved when the county commissioners asked us to, or when the county administrationor asks us to when animal services asks us to because we are a group, for lack of a better word, experts but beyond that, volunteers who have backgrounds in -- in animals and pets and as well as a stake, a vested interest in Hillsborough County. That said, over the years, yes, we have always tried to -- whenever we could be -- be involved in shaping the code, or the statutes, the laws with regard to the animals in Hillsborough County. Im in constant touch with my commissioner when those issues comes up. He considers me the go-to guy when he has a question. In the seven years I have been attending these meetings, if the only discussion we ever had was with regard to an ordinance change we could have done it in about three meetings. You know? With certain exceptions. We -- we are very passionate. We are very involved. And we all have our opinions, as well as our stake in these discussions. So, I look at the public offering, their comments and advice, I believe that is part of our -- if its not part of our job description, its at least part of our persona. So while we are not going to come up to you and tell you that the shelter needs to be opened until 9:00 at night, you know, if you ask us our opinions or you mention that it could happen, we are libel to give you our opinions. And so I hope that everything is -- is -- all of the statements are made and the way that they are heard is with the understanding that we are all in this for the same reason. We are all in this for the same bottom line and its not the numbers. Its that one dog, its the one cat, the hundreds, thousands of dogs and cats and its the million, 1.2 million people in Hillsborough county that we are fighting for. And if somebody -- you know, somebody doesnt like what I say, then they are willing to come on up here and do what Im doing. Let me tell you something, I wouldnt want their jobs and you couldnt pay me enough for their jobs. I feel the same way about veterinarians and most politicians too, but thats -- I digress. >>>>>
Posted on: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 19:36:13 +0000
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