You can tell what’s important to any governmental entity by the quality of its leadership and what money, if any, is allocated to fund its necessary issues. Is the Bureau of Animal Regulation and Care (BARC) important to the City of Houston?  Are we supporting and managing BARC like we care, and are we sufficiently funding it? 

Is our treatment of BARC a band-aid solution to an emergency room problem? BARC has been consistently and persistently criticized for its treatment of animals.  This treatment can be boiled down to two crucial factors—leadership and 2) funding. 
 
These two factors have had a direct impact on BARC being able to provide humane treatment of its residents, our homeless animal population. The City admits that there are so many fundamental flaws in way BARC is organized and managed that it believes that basic organization-building is necessary prior to hiring a bureau chief.  I don’t understand that logic. 

How do you field a successful team without a leader that will be around for a sustained period?  Over the years, BARC has found itself at the center of a number of controversies. The City’s own admitted challenges are 1) not responding to police calls; 2) not picking up animals; 3) quality of care in the shelter; 4) high euthanasia rates; 5) low adoption rates; and 6) lack of community-based education concerning spaying and neutering. 

Specific examples of these challenges are complaints of animal starvation; puppies dying in drains; animal cruelty; and knowingly giving individuals disease-ridden animals without complete notification of their true condition.  Striking is the City’s admitted statistic of euthanizing 16,438 of the 24,681 animals taken in.  Only 6,745 were released alive. 

Common sense and nature show us that animals in the wild don’t use the restroom where they live, sleep and eat, yet animals in BARC are sometimes made to live and feed in their waste.  This is not humane.The Department Director, in an effort to build the BARC organization, made a judgment call to hire a “change agent,” who has no experience in animal welfare programs. 

Can a consultant, who doesn’t have specialized experience make needed and sustainable changes to make BARC a state of the art and humane shelter?  If he doesn’t, the animals will pay for it with their lives.  The biggest surprise however is the price tag for this organizational change:  $200,000 for six months. 

Prior to the City’s expenditure of approximately $49,000 to the “change agent,” I made a specific request regarding Council’s voting on the payment of $200,000 on someone to oversee BARC.  I had received anonymous information that Council was about to hire someone to oversee BARC for $200,000. I was led to believe that there were no BARC items on the agenda for us to vote on.

Although this was technically true, it did not answer the intent of the question.  How can we guarantee with certainty that the “change agent” will make sustainable change?  City Council Member Jarvis Johnson held a specially called meeting of the Human Services & Technology Committee, for the express purpose of discussing issues at BARC. 

This meeting took place the first week in August.  The change agent, who was a hot topic, was thoroughly discussed with many noting his lack of experience in animal welfare arena.  The total proposed contract price of approximately $200,000 for six months of consulting was another discussion. 

Department heads don’t usually make $200,000 per year yet for this amounth, the “change agent” will head up the bureau for six months, although subordinate to a department.  More troubling was the Department Director’s decision to enter into a contract with the “change agent” by paying an initial installment of a little over $49,000, which allowed him to be hired without the approval of City Council.  There was an uproar over the appearance of an intent to sneak something past the elected governing body of the City because any expenditure of $50,000 or more, has to come before City Council for approval. 

Many argued it was a waste of tax payer dollars.  How can we pay someone, who is not the equivalent of, but less than a department director, what translates into a $400,000 per year pro rata allocation?  How can we justify this amount of money when all other departments took cuts? 

Does BARC need a consultant or does it need stable leadership with equitable pay? Concerning under-funding, in 2008, San Antonio, Dallas and Austin, all spent more money on animal control than Houston.  San Antonio spent about 2.5 times as much as Houston and Dallas spent more than twice as much as Houston. 

Although Houston has a larger pet population, San Antonio and Dallas take in more of these animals.  We don’t have anywhere to house them.  This probably has something to do with San Antonio, Dallas and Austin having more full time animal service employees to handle the high volume of these needy animals. 

We also don’t have a good educational program which teaches the importance of spaying and neutering animals.  How can we hope to solve the problem if we don’t fund it equitably and sufficiently to implement change which is sustainable and which can be successful?    We have to put our money where our mouths are.

BARC’s customers, volunteers, and even employees have all shared disturbing photos, horror stories of inhumane treatment of the animals, and tales of families having to put down their young children’s dogs after a few short weeks. We can no longer afford to remedy this emergency room problem with band-aid solutions. There must be a sustainable change, which includes clear and complete behavior modification. End pt. 1.



The Bureau of Animal Regulation and Care (BARC) must do better by its residents—our homeless population.