Orange County Supervisors are claiming their animal care center is fully staffed after OC Grand Jurors questioned how well the county was taking care of abandoned animals last year.
The discussion comes to a department that’s had three different directors in the last five years and has faced mounting criticism from activists for not being open to visitors much of the time.
The animal shelter has also faced scathing reviews over its work for decades.
[Read: Grand Jury: OC Animal Shelter Needs Updated Policies to Stop Killing More Animals]
In a report released last year, OC Grand Jurors highlighted an understaffing problem, especially for Animal Care Attendants.
“Staff vacancies, which have been as high as 23%, negatively impact shelter operations and have taken as long as six months or longer to fill,” the report reads. “Delays in filling staff positions disrupt shelter operations.”
OC Supervisors Debate Shelter Staffing
On Tuesday, supervisors publicly discussed the grand jury report again as they were looking to wrap up their response to all the grand jury investigations from the 2022-23 year.
It was a seemingly routine procedure until Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento asked staff to remove a line claiming the shelter was now fully staffed.
“That’s always an elusive number,” Sarmiento said. “Striking that language would make it a little more accurate.”
But other supervisors disagreed, highlighting how the current staffing met guidelines laid out by the National Animal Care and Control Association for staffing, with Supervisor Don Wagner saying that needed to stay in to answer the grand jury’s questions.
“We found out our staffing needs are sufficient,” Wagner said. “You need that last sentence to say ‘We are on the right track.’ None of this stops us down the road from reevaluating.”
Supervisors ultimately voted 3-2, with Sarmiento and Supervisor Katrina Foley opposing, to move forward with telling the grand jury they were fully staffed, with acting CEO Michelle Aguirre saying the department’s staffing could be reviewed as part of the next budget cycle.
The shelter is also facing criticisms from State Senator Janet Nguyen, who’s currently running for county supervisor.
“It’s with sadness and anger that I’ve seen our new $35-million state of the art animal shelter turn into some gulag where healthy, happy would-be pets are secretly killed for no apparent reason,” Nguyen wrote earlier this year in an opinion column published by the Orange County Register.
A History of Scathing Reports
Grand jurors released the report last summer calling for OC Animal Care in Tustin to reopen kennel areas to the public, reduce kill rates and reinstate a trap, neuter and release program that officials shuttered in 2020.
“Previous reports cited excessive euthanasia rates, poor leadership, inadequate numbers of animal care attendants, a lack of cooperation between staff departments, the exclusion of kennel staff from euthanasia decisions, the lack of proper assessment of animals chosen for euthanasia, and low morale negatively impacting operation of the shelter,” jurors wrote.
Last year’s report was the sixth in a long line of grand jury investigations.
“Recent public outcry citing conditions at the shelter, recent litigation, and publicly circulated petitions calling for changes at the shelter suggest the previously expressed concerns remain,” they continued.
On Tuesday, OC Animal Care Director Monica Schmidt publicly told supervisors the grand jury report failed to take into account the number of volunteers at the shelter and that many more employees beyond animal care attendants worked with the animals.
“We do have a number of positions that handle animals … about 90 out of 137 (staff),” Schmidt told supervisors. “Animal Care Attendant is just one of many classifications.”
Animal Care Attendants are responsible for keeping kennel areas clean, among other responsibilities.
After the report was released last year, county supervisors narrowly approved an initial response disagreeing with a majority of the findings.
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @NBiesiada.
Angelina Hicks is a Voice of OC Tracy Wood Reporting Fellow. Contact her at ahicks@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @angelinahicks13.
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