Yes to this.
Judge Ed Emmett
Harris County Judge Ed Emmett called Tuesday for a summit of county and Houston city leaders, along with animal welfare organizations, to address the region’s “outrageous” problem with stray animals.
While the details are still being developed, Emmett said one focus would be better collaboration between Harris County, which focuses primarily on unincorporated areas despite having a shelter located inside the city limits, and the city of Houston.
Last month, Harris County shelter employees drew criticism for apparently refusing to pick up and euthanize a German shepherd mix that lay dying from a gunshot wound across the street from the facility because it was not in the county’s jurisdiction.
“I’m going to try and call everybody together, get everybody in one room and say ‘What do we really need to be doing here’ so we’re more coordinated,” Emmett said.
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner “looks forward to hearing from Judge Emmett,” said Janice Evans, a spokeswoman for Evans. She said the city and county have successfully worked together on road projects, including Precinct 1 Commissioner Gene Locke’s plan to invest up to $45 million in city roads that fall within his precinct.
“It’s probably worth exploring similar arrangements for other areas,” Evans said.
The city and county shelters run at or above capacity almost every day. The county shelter takes in some 23,000 animals each year from unincorporated areas while the city shelter accepts 25,000 to 27,000. Both generally only take in animals from their respective jurisdictions, though both also report making exceptions, especially when an animal is sick or injured.
On most occasions, people are asked to take an animal to the appropriate shelter. Sometimes they don’t, choosing to dump animals near one shelter rather than drive the seven miles to get to the other.
There are things that the city and county do separately that make sense to do separately, and there are things they do separately that really ought to be done jointly. This is a clear examplae of the latter. There’s probably some savings to be had, but more importantly it’s about delivering the service more effectively. If you’re dropping off an animal at a shelter, you shouldn;t have to figure out if you’re inside city limits or not. Kudos to Judge Emmett for pursuing this. I feel confident that Mayor Turner will be willing to work with him on it.
This is a step in the right direction, but the problem will continue, because many cultures in our city don’t know and/or don’t care a whit about spay and neuter, even though there are low cost and free options for this in the hood. They have kids they can’t afford and can’t control, why shouldn’t they also have animals they can’t and won’t be responsible for, too?
This is the real problem that no one wants to talk about.
Sure, but I don’t think we’re going to get much support for rounding up and deporting white Protestants, especially those radical Quiverful folks, so we have to address the problems that com with tolerating their presence in our society.
It would’ve been nice if Ed came to this conclusion BEFORE the city started dropping 10+ million on expanding BARC and BEFORE the county bond issue last year for 24 million. Better late than never to combine duplicative services but no matter which angle you look at it, there really aren’t a lot of areas where each governmental body should do things separately in terms of animal control/shelters. Most Houston residents still reside in Harris County so I imagine being told they can’t drop an animal off there would be a huge slap in the face, no shortage of puppy mills located in the county but selling animals to city residents either.
@Robbie:
Cute, but inaccurate. Drive around town. Where do you see dogs running wild, dogs chained to car bumpers, and dogs basically being neglected on a widespread basis?
We can’t even get those folks to stop dumping trash everywhere. What are the chances we can get them to take responsibility for their animals?
We won’t get anywhere by ignoring the obvious.
We need more than just conferences on how best to ship dogs between two facilities to be euthanized, what the city needs is mandatory spay/neuter laws and laws tightening breeding restrictions in Houston and Harris Co. I am not being naïve enough to say just making laws will solve the problem, and of course it takes resources to do the enforcement, especially on backyard breeders who won’t necessarily care about the law. Even still, a journey always begins with just one step. If there are cultural roadblocks to the idea of spaying and neutering, a responsible society commits itself to education, instead of just handwringing. There are hundreds of rescue groups in the city that I would bet my life would be happy to send volunteers into the schools for a special presentation once a year or so, trying to start kids thinking differently than their parent may have about spaying and neutering.
@Sandi:
Your idea to teach kids about proper ethical and responsible treatment of animals is racist and xenophobic. All cultures have value, and you want to belittle kids and disrespect their families by telling them that what they are doing is wrong. Beyond that, it really doesn’t matter what pogroms you try to foist on the schoolkids to change societal behavior. A steady stream of new undocumented Americans coming here will continue to bring their culture of not spaying and neutering with them. Animals running out of control and trash dumped everywhere are proud cultural symbols and it’s shameful that you would want to change that.
Bill’s tongue in cheek response aside Sandi, kids aren’t the problem. Many view their breeding efforts to be wonderfully humane and a way to supplement their already low income, the great unwashed not likely to comply with any governmental efforts to stop their back yard efforts no matter how much effort you throw into it. I actually met the deputy in charge of HCSO’s efforts to prevent the increasingly popular dog fighting of the area that many of the poor have enjoyed forever, either here or in their native countries. I believe the term he used was “pissing in the wind” because they can’t even control all the animal hoarders, never mind the idiots that pit animals against each other to the death.
And mandatory spay and neuter sounds fine except a great many people take exception to it, most people in the city and county not even registering their animals as required by law. But if any of those rescue groups want to go to schools or make outreach efforts to educate, there is nothing stopping them from doing so now. The ISD’s are full of animal lovers so there’s no need to involve other governmental bodies, right?
I do not want to end up like California, where the SPCA goes door to door asking if you have a dog, and then tickets you if the dog isn’t registered.
I am tired of the County denying benefits to those of us who live in the City. We pay the same taxes as everyone else in the County, and should be able to use whatever facilities the County provides.
@Ross:
So you don’t want to end up like California, huh? How about ending up like East Germany. The City of Houston years ago went to the veterinarians in the city and demanded customer lists of who owned what kind of animals, for the purposes of collecting the pet license fee (read: tax). The vets were threatened with $ 1,000 a day fines for not turning over those customer lists, and all this without a warrant or probable cause of a crime.
My old vet (retired) told me all about it, and said they were threatened, but as far as he knew, no one actually got sued by the city for the lists. That might have changed. And in my little slice of Heaven, the local dog catcher went door to door looking for unlicensed animals, knocking on doors, peeking in windows, and even looking over fences into the back yard to see if they could find evidence of unlicensed (read: untaxed, illegal) pets.
I complained to the city manager and to the dog pound director that that was a violation of people’s 4th Amendment rights to be free of unreasonable search and seizure without probable cause and a warrant, but they both told me they felt they were within the law to do so, since the visits were “informational” only, even though I ended up with a nasty demand letter after my “informational visit.”
I think we finally found something we agree on here.