pet connection

For the mayor of L.A. to refer to the city as “no kill” is utterly bizarre. But … well, politics is politics, I guess. From the L.A. Times:

“I have given a great deal of thought to my experience as a general manager,” Ed Boks said in prepared statement. “As I depart, I would like to leave L.A. residents with a call to action that unites rather than divides.”

Boks recently reversed his decision to suspend a program to give low-income residents vouchers for free spaying and neutering of their pets, which prompted an outcry from animal welfare advocates and members of the Los Angeles City Council.

And this from Cleveland Indy Media:

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa hired Ed Boks the Director of Animal Services without checking out his references. He did not know that Boks had just been sued for racial discrimination and unlawful termination a month before he hired him. When the City was apprised of the lawsuit in January 2006, Boks told the Mayor that the lawsuit “had no merit.” Antonio did not investigate and took him at his word. Judge Kimba Wood in New York has ruled otherwise [in March 2009].

Anyway you look at it: Too much heat, out of kitchen.

Why not try something really, really new: Let a real no-kill  advocate take a crack at L.A’s problems.  Bonnie Brown of Reno, maybe?

Boks was all hat and no cattle on no-kill, despite the L.A. mayor’s statement. Here’s what no-kill flamethrower Nathan Winograd  thought of the Boks regime. Especially interesting excerpt: Bok’s comment in favor of statewide forced spay-neuter via the now-demised AB 1634:

Los Angeles Animal Services (LAAS) General Manager Ed Boks made headlines in his support last year of Assembly Bill 1634, California’s mandatory spay/neuter bill when he admitted that the legislation was more about expanding the bureaucratic power of animal control than saving animals. During a legislative hearing, a Senator asked Ed Boks, the General Manager of Los Angeles Animal Services (LAAS) and one of the bill’s chief proponents: “Mr. Boks, this bill doesn’t even pretend to be about saving animals, does it?” To which Boks responded: “No Senator, this is not about saving dogs and cats.”

Not content to wait for the state (which did not pass the measure), Boks convinced the City of Los Angeles to pass its own version. He also demanded more officers to enforce it. The end result was predictable. Almost immediately, LAAS officers threatened poor people with citations if they did not turn over the pets to be killed at LAAS, and that is exactly what occurred. For the first time in a decade, impounds and killing increased—dog deaths increased 24%, while cat deaths increased 35%. In the process, he also fed the backyard breeding market for more (unaltered) animals.

Now, Boks is adding another insult. As others have reported, he has abolished LAAS’ low-cost spay/neuter program, which allowed some poor people to comply with the new law. Despite increasing impounds, Boks has decided that subsidized spay/neuter is expendable.

The city council overruled Boks on the spay-neuter program. You can’t have no-kill without low-cost or incentivized spay-neuter.  Under Boks, L.A. was going no where. Time for a new direction.