This is a really good exposé on LAAS conduct and on Best Friends Animal Society. There is a LOT more, dig it up.
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Brenda Barnette's Animal Services Mishaps
Do unproven groups and extremist Pamelyn Ferdin have City Hall's ear?
The idea was never aired before longtime animal-rights stakeholders, as would be the norm.
Koretz's personal staffer Jeff Ebenstein, who handles many Animal Services issues, said the plan came from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's personal staff and city chief administrative officer, Miguel Santana, and was endorsed by Animal Services chief Barnette.
Garcetti spokeswoman Julie Wong, trying to explain why established groups were shut out, says it "sounded like" outreach had been sufficient because Santana sent the city's animal-care groups a "Request for Information" report — an official heads-up that the city was seeking interested groups to run the closed-down Northeast Valley Animal Shelter.
But that's not, in fact, what happened.
According to Amanda Foundation president Austin, Santana acknowledges that the city sent its official heads-up — called an RFI — to a 3,000-group distribution list filled with agencies with no connection to animal care. Groups such as the Amanda Foundation and SPCA were not on it.
Paul Neuman, communication director for Koretz, argues that by pulling in just one legitimate applicant, the City Council was practicing good business: "If you receive a solid, proven applicant, even if there is only one applicant," Neuman maintains, "then you have accomplished what you set out to do.
Beth Heisen, attorney and former Animal Services commissioner, thinks differently. She suggests that if more groups had applied, a collaborative contract could have been agreed upon in which three or more animal groups could have run the Northeast Valley shelter as a fully functioning facility.
Under the Best Friends deal, the $19 million shelter will only serve as an adoption center and spay/neuter clinic.
SPCA's Bernstein says ignorance reigned as Garcetti and Koretz pushed the item on the agenda."The council members did not know of any other bids," Bernstein says. "People that could have bid were not aware."
Barnette says she privately reached out to two large groups — the Humane Society and the Heigl Foundation — but neither was interested.
Best Friends has been in L.A. for 20 years on a small scale, holding well-publicized adoption events. It's far better known for its 36,000-acre animal sanctuary in southern Utah, the largest no-kill sanctuary in the country.
Austin of Amanda Foundation says with its intense focus on Utah, Best Friends doesn't “have a great history of bringing money back into the community” in Los Angeles. Best Friends co-founder Francis Bautista said that he splits his time fifty-fifty between L.A. and Utah.
Alarcon, the lone naysayer on the City Council, thinks Barnette wanted Best Friends to manage the shelter in Mission Hills all along. He says that when Santana issued the RFI to the 3,000 groups, Santana's wording did not make clear that the city was very close to seeking bids. Thanks to this "bogus RFI," Alarcon says, no major group with a local track record — not SPCA-LA, Amanda Foundation or Actors and Others for Animals — bid to reopen the city's closed-down shelter.
"Best Friends knew exactly what to apply for," Alarcon says. "Essentially what Best Friends did is they offered $1 million to the city and got a contract."
Local animal organizations were not informed about the opportunity to finance banners for animal services, either. Susan Taylor of the longtime group Actors and Others for Animals says she has the money to help the city advertise, but she was never told of the opportunity.“It is one thing if you are private organizations, but this is city-run,” says Taylor. “The public is supposed to know.”
Barnette said that her department has no budget for marketing, but could use it. (Banners with Best Friends logos stamped on were also hung at the West L.A. and South L.A. shelters.)Taylor asks why, if city department head Barnette needed advertising help, she failed to seek it more widely. Taylor knew of three other groups, including Actors and Others for Animals, that would have loved to finance advertisements for the shelters — and get their logos printed on large banners as did Best Friends.
Barnette said she didn't think it was important to throw out a net seeking proposals from competing groups for this project.
But when Barnette put her trust in Beverly Hills attorney Bernheim — the first person to offer to pay for the advertising banners — it resulted in a deciduous disaster at the East Valley shelter.
It also caused a problem all the way over in Chinatown. There, the people hired by Bernheim screwed up again, putting two large pet-adoption banners on a private building on the corner of Lacy Street and Avenue 26 to direct people to the North Central shelter half a block down Lacy. But nobody asked the building owner if that was OK, according to a shelter worker. In the middle of the night, somebody ripped down the city's illegal banners.
Taylor believes requesting proposals from more qualified animal organizations would be relatively easy for Barnette. She says she receives holiday cards from Animal Services — and that the department can easily reach all of the local animal organizations through its existing email list.
10 comments
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Since the shelter sat generally empty it was not serving anyone. The city has a history of not fairly asking for and analyzing RFPs. This should have been done and ALL groups who were interested and had the budget should have been looked at. The other issue that should have been included is the shelter should have been limited to taking animals out of other city shelters that were due to be euthanized or owner turn ins (thus keeping them out of the shelters.) Public departments partnering with private organization have a long history of success all over the country and can serve the public and the animals well.
Those in the animal rescue community who opposed the Best Friends arrangement did so because it will essentially be recreating what Madeline Bernstein did at spca/LA: cherry-picking animals and leaving the rest to take their chances.
However, I would rather have Best Friends in charge than Bernstein. The thought that she will ever run a city shelter makes me shudder. ANYONE would be better than her. She only wants to get her face on TV and her quotes into newspapers.
She set up a system at Long Beach that required all impounded animals to go through Long Beach Animal Control. Then her staff would cherry-pick the most adoptable animals and transfer them to the spca/LA side of the divided shelter. The rest were left behind to be killed in the Long Beach Animal Control side.
Even those chosen for adoption weren't necessarily safe. If they weren't adopted or rescued, they were killed too.
It took years but finally Long Beach Animal Control has its own website and posts animals rejected by spca/LA so at least they stand a chance of getting out. Before, when Bernstein operated her go left and you live, go right and you die method of selection, the only way people could find their lost animals was to go to the shelter in person.
"Koretz's personal staffer Jeff Ebenstein, who handles many Animal Services issues, said the plan came from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's personal staff and city chief administrative officer, Miguel Santana, and was endorsed by Animal Services chief Barnette."
The plan came from the Mayor's office. Mayor's girlfriend, Lu Parker handpicked Barnette and pushed her through. Parker's "pet" animal organization (no pun intended) is Best Friends. Connect. The. Dots.
It's too bad that other groups were not given the opportunity to bid for control of the Northeast Valley Shelter, but Best Friends is an amazing organization that has completely changed the face of animal adoptions in this country. Their efforts have resulted in millions of pets being saved, they are not an extremist group, and I have 100% confidence they will do an amazing job with this shelter. As for Ms. Ferdin, extremism is never a good idea, and it's a damn shame she thought it was okay to cut down trees for her signs. Clearly, this woman gives animal rights activists a bad name.
"an amazing organization" and "not an extremist group", did you actually say that, Animal Lover? The only thing amazing about Best F(r)iends is how they get money from gullible people. Not an extremist group? They are one of the original extremist groups. Formed because they realized that collecting donations for animal rescue is easier than collecting donations for a group that worships any and all, including Satan. http://www.opposingviews.com/i...If you think Best F(r)iends is in this for the love of animals, think again. They will use this opportunity to solicit more church members. They will use this opportunity to get donations that might otherwise go to our local non profits. This is nothing more than another of Breeder Barnette's dirty deeds toward animals.
None of this surprises me, I have been following the Breeder Barnette fiasco for about 4 years now. She was part of a group in Seattle who were trying to undermine animal control there. They almost succeeded except for a lawsuit filed by the ACO Guild. When Barnette was confronted with showing her emails to back up the theory of the ACO Guild of a conspiracy, Barnette suddenly resigned and was hired in LA. She didn't come here to help LAAS, she was hired to destroy it so then the Mayor could yell "let's privatize". We can run her out of LA just like they did in Seattle. Barnette has to go, Mayor, suck it up and get rid of her.
It's not that Mssrs Garcetti or Koretz didn't know what was going on. We specifically called these matters to their attention. There was no reason for the City Council to move forward with the vote that day; especially considering the fact that they finally came to learn that no RFP was ever issued.
But this is what happens when you have a dog BREEDER (yes, Brenda Barnette is a dog BREEDER), to allegedly help curb the never-ending population growth of unwanted animals in Los Angeles. $200,000 per year to someone who previously made a living BREEDING MORE animals; who has boldly declared that she does not believe in mandatory spay/neuter, which is the LAW in the City of Los Angeles; and who neither has experience nor desire to do licensing, cruelty or s/n enforcement.
It's too easy to blame it all on Villaraigosa. It's also on a City Council which simply rubber stamps issues because they feel they know better, even though it's quite obvious that in numerous things, they don't....such as selling off a valuable property without competitive bidding. Knowing this, is it any surprise that the City is so far in debt and dealing with billions in pension losses and Housing Authority scandals.
Shamefully, these mistakes mean more dead animals in more shelter dumpsters than we had before. Yes, by her own stats, killing is up 11% in Barnette's time here. And that assumes that the animals she is shipping out en masse actually get adopted. We'll never find out, though, since she's not keeping track of that, either.
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