Animal advocates who passed the Pets’ Trust Initiative referendum nearly three years ago and have been met with resistance from the county to execute what is basically the people’s will
finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.
And that light’s name is Commissioner Xavier Suarez.
Suarez will present the Metropolitan Services Committee Wednesday with a revised plan to fully fund the Pets’ Trust program without increasing taxes. If approved, it would move to the full commission just in time for budget presentation, although Mayor Carlos Gimenez has proposed other ways to spend the $120 million in extra property taxes the county will receive this year.
“I didn’t want to increase the millage rate. But we have $120 million in new revenue just in property taxes, without counting the enterprise funds,” Suarez told Ladra Tuesday.
He had staff review the additional $7 million the county has spent on animal services since 2013, in lieu of funding the full no-kill program mandated by voters that year, and found that it had not been used primarily for spaying and neutering services. In fact, it went mostly to new staff, which means more salary and benefits. Duh. Ladra could have told you that.
Read related story: Carlos Gimenez keeps rejecting voter-approved Pets’ Trust
Consider this: The Animal Services department was at $10 million when voters passed the non-binding question, telling commissioners that, yeah, we were willing to tax ourselves an additional $15 to get to a no-kill status, which can only be done through a reduction in the stray population in our county.
The additional taxes would generate $20 million that an independent trust of 13 unpaid board members would budget, subject to commission approval.
Instead, that year, Gimenez added $4 million to the budget, and it went to $14 million. Last year, he spent another $2 mil, making the animal services budget $16.5 million. This year, the animal services budget is projected to operate with $17.5 million budget.
Meanwhile, the Pets’ Trust initiative would cost $20 million the first year alone. That would go down to $15 million as quickly as the second year, because the clinics dedicated to low-cost spay and neutering would be built out and open already. Once the population is started to get under control, the budget would decrease further.
So why has this taken so long to finally see the light of day? Two different things: Veterinarians and control.
Veterinarians have lobbied hard against the Pet’s Trust plan, fearing that the low-cost clinics would syphon their customer base. And the mayor, and maybe Animal Services Director Alex Munoz, don’t want to lose control over how the millions are spent.
Because there needs to be an oversight committee in order to ensure that the county just doesn’t keep hiring people and misspending the money. Suarez’s plan calls for an oversight board. So do at least two other ordinances in the works separately by Commissioners Daniella Levine-Cava and Barbara Jordan, who chairs the committee meeting today.
Read related story: Politicos pose with pets; insult our intelligence with photo ops
But it’s not the money-grabbing board that Gimenez has painted it as. According to at least four separate sources, the mayor has repeatedly said that the Pets’ Trust wants to grab the $20 million and create jobs and contracts for their friends. I guess he suspects they’ll do what he’s done in the past three years, or maybe he needs an excuse for his complete 180-degree turnaround. After all, his first budget message in 2013 included a tax increase for the no-kill initiative.
”My Proposed Budget includes an increase to the countywide tax rate of 0.1079 mills, which generates $19.088 million to support a no-kill animal services facility and the efforts to improve animal care, which was approved by more
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