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Pet people have sponsors in other cities, too. Coming up: Palmetto Bay, El Portal, North Bay Village, Coral Gables.
Among those that have already passed resolutions: Homestead, Doral, Key Biscayne, Miami Beach, North Miami, Surfside and, Wednesday night, Cutler Bay, where electeds used strong words for the county’s lack of action on what was clearly a mandate from the people, with 64% of the voters approving.
West Miami also passed a resolution Wednesday night — but not the one that the Pet’s Trust group has provided to all the cities in their efforts to convince commissioners to fund them this year. Theirs has differ
ent language that requests the county find the money within the budget to fund the no-kill program, not raise taxes.
Rosenberg thinks that was to placate Sosa.
“It was decided that they had better check to see what Commissioner Sosa thinks. Apparently they wanted her blessing on how to govern their city,” Rosenberg told Ladra. “They did not get that blessing.”
Rather, the city changed the resolution language to simply ask for the program to be funded “through the budget process, through grand applications and by educating the general public and by increasing the support to local SPCA.”
It is classic Sosa, especially that educating the public line. But the chairwoman told Ladra she did not interfere.
“Yo no me meto en nada,” Sosa said. “I don’t get involved in anything.”
Sosa said that West Miami Commissioner Rhonda Rodriguez, the newest elected in the bunch, came up to her during the last movie night and mentioned something to her about it. But Sosa insisted that she did not tell Rodriguez how to word the resolution.
“I am very respectful of the boundaries since I left West Miami. You can ask any of the commissioners if I have called anyone,” Sosa told Ladra. “I’m there when they need me but I do not get intervene. I always tell them, don’t get involved in my issues and I won’t get involved in yours.”
Rosenberg, who sat in a kennel cage to raise awareness of the issue and campaign for the 2012 vote, said the West Miami council was very supportive of the measure at the first meeting, but that it was Rodriguez who said t
hey should seek Sosa’s opinion before passing anything.
“Then they came back with this watered down version,” he told Ladra.
“It only encourage Animal Services to do what they have done for decades, what they do every year,” said Rosenberg, who actually asked the commission Wednesday night not to pass what he calls a “wimp out version” of the resolution. “The sad results of this traditional method were stated in the Pets’ Trust ballot question — ‘Historically we kill 20,000 animals a year.’
“This ‘revised’ resolution only insures the same as nothing changes,” he said. “The West Miami council went from supporting Democracy to playing politics, meaning the animals continue to die.
“They can believe they did something but they did nothing.”
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