This weekend the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control (DACC) marked its 75th anniversary by having Marcia Mayeda, the disastrous head of the county shelter system, spend the taxpayers money on a self congratulatory video.
During Marcia Mayeda’s 13 year reign of error one million pets have been euthanized in our shelter system— many because they were injured and unwanted, but far too many because of Mayeda’s disdain for dominant breeds, or because of her poor leadership.
It’s been nearly four weeks since Mayeda revoked the “one-time pull” policy which enabled accredited 501c3 Rescues (Mayeda refers to them as “adoption partners”) to deputize individuals on a one-time basis to pick up impounded pets for the rescues.
Without the one-time pulls, only one of the limited number of people holding permanent pull privileges for that rescue can physically retrieve the dog from the shelter— which often requires a drive of several hours, attendant gas expenses and time taken off work, and which must happen within a very limited window of time—sometimes hours.
We already know of 10 dogs who were wanted by rescues but died needlessly as a direct result of the revocation of one-time pulls. This is tragic for the dogs and demoralizing for the rescues, whose resources are already stretched thin.
This is but one of the ways that Marcia Mayeda shows her absolute disdain for the animals entrusted to her care. Under the Hayden Act all municipal shelters must make all pets available for adoption. Yet every day hundreds of pets are euthanized without ever showing up on the county’s website as being available for adoption!
Why? Because Marcia Mayeda has steadfastly refused to authorize a fix to the county’s website so that pets are automatically moved from the “Stray Animal” section to the “Available Animals for Adoption” section; this fix literally entails the insertion of one line of computer code and would be a one-time charge of less than one hundred dollars.
The community never knows that these pets are available and they die needlessly, but Marcia Mayeda does not care.
If the DACC were a private company where accountability and performance are the yardsticks of measuring success, Mayeda would have been shown the door many years ago.
However she is a bureaucrat serving at the pleasure of the five members of the Los Angeles County board of supervisors – Gloria Molina, Mark Ridley-Thomas, Zev Yarolavsky, Don Knabe, and Mike Antonovich. All of us must act together and let these politicians know that allowing Mayeda to continue her tenure as head of the DACC is tantamount to their running on the immensely popular “Dead puppies and kittens platform.”
I am asking for your active support in making your opinions known. Please phone, email, and fax the board of supervisors and have your friends and acquaintances do so as well. Please show up at their meetings and demand accountability, integrity and leadership from the head of the DACC, which can only come from finding a replacement for Marcia Mayeda.
Ric Browde
