As of Tuesday, April 24, 2012
© Copyright 2013
Gwinnett Daily Post
LAWRENCEVILLE -- A question over whether the police department should continue operating the county animal shelter has sharply divided a group appointed to review the processes of the municipal division.
"The police are the police," said Kelly Alder, a Gwinnett County Animal Task Force member in attendance at Tuesday's meeting. "Their job is code enforcement. Right now, there are officers who go to animal control just to bide their time until they retire."
Member Jon Richards disagreed.
"It makes sense for it to continue to be under the police department," said Richards, adding though, that the position of a new shelter director should be someone experienced running shelters "and not necessarily a sworn police officer."
Chairman Joel Taylor tried to guide the 17 people toward some sort of consensus to take back to the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners, the group's charge.
Whether or not to continue to allow the shelter to be operated by the police department as well as the role and membership of the Animal Advisory Committee were contentious points among the group.
"We owe it to the board to give them our views. We're not telling them what to do. We're recommending," Taylor said. "We should provide them with all of these views."
Recommendations could include the current animal-related ordinances and services, development of best practices and study of the role of the Animal Advisory Committee.
The animal task force's four subcommittees -- partnership, policy, program and structure -- presented all of its recommendations before the group during Tuesday's meetings, but found little common ground.
According to the county's website, the Gwinnett Police Department "operates the Animal Shelter to enforce animal control laws and to shelter animals that have strayed, gotten lost or been turned over for adoption."
The board of commissioners could review the Animal Task Force's recommendations at an upcoming meeting. The task force has until the end of April to make its presentation to the board of commissioners.
Taylor said there would likely be another meeting of the task force to make final edits and alterations to the list of recommendations prior to that.
For information about upcoming meeting dates and times, visit www.gwinnettcounty.com.
More like this story
- Residents push for non-police shelter leader ( April 10, 2012 )
- Task force: Shelter too quick to euthanize ( May 19, 2012 )
- County's new animal task force gets acquainted ( December 27, 2011 )
- Praise given for animal shelter changes ( August 29, 2012 )
- Shelter launches new animal rescue effort ( June 12, 2012 )
Comments
SqueakyWheel 1 year, 1 month ago
I attended a few of the Animal Task Force meetings and am sorry I didn't make it to the one Tuesday night. From what I saw at the meetings, member Jon Richards would disagree with nearly anything. It was pretty clear that he wasn't on the Task Force because of any compassion he has for animals, nor even an overall understanding of the issues we have in this county or elsewhere else regarding animals. He appeared to feel it was his duty to disagree with or shoot down others' ideas, so it's not the least bit surprising that he opposed what the other THREE committees agreed was a good idea.
There are many Gwinnett citizens who also think the police force should not run animal control. Certainly, the director of animal control should not be the next police officer in line for a promotion. Police are well trained to police, to keep the law, but not to run a professional animal shelter. That should be crystal clear to anyone who can think.
Gwinnett needs someone to lead the shelter who cares what happens to the hapless animals who end up there, someone who has experience running a shelter for a large county, someone who knows PR, how to reach out to the community, how to get the animals adopted or rescued. The shelter doesn't even have a Facebook page and their website isn't kept up to date. It's as if no one at the shelter cares if the animals live or die.
We have one of the best shelter buildings you'll ever see. Now we need the best director we can find. Gwinnett citizens need to demand that we hire a professional director and ideally, that person shouldn't report to the police where progressive and innovative ideas might be stymied by "we've always done it this way" attitudes, but to the county manager or the commissioners. We need a bold change. Gwinnett should have an animal shelter that others want to emulate and we can have that with creative thinking.
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