Correspondence - #52 - Laserfiche WebLink

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count. It's as if, in your bank statement, the initial balance plus credits minus debits just doesn't equal the final balance. The report, "OCAC bad Data on Animal Counts.pdf" and its companion documents show the pervasiveness of the mysterious appearance and disappearance of animals from the shelter's accounting. The discrepancies violate "Industry Standards" and any semblance of "transparency". How can it be that, in the entire OCAC/OCCR hierarchy nobody even took note of the discrepancy? OCAC is Suppressing its Strategic Plan Pop quiz: - Did you know there is a Strategic Plan for OCAC? - That it was put together with the full participation of animal -sheltering experts, county staff, and the community? - That it was approved by the BOS in 2018? This Strategic Plan was so well hidden that we only found about it at in the last week of May. It's nowhere to be found on the OCAC and county websites. Even a cursory glance reveals why: The goals and metrics set out by the Strategic Plan were quietly cast aside (or thrown with great force) in 2020. For all that and more read the preview report "OCAC BOS-Approved 2018 Strategic Plan.pdf". The Strategic Plan required daily play groups for large dogs as well as small ones. It required 100% tracking of animal enrichment activities. It required reduction of Length Of Stay (the very metric our first reports documented and OCAC/OCCR refuse to even study.) One would think that the Strategic Plan would be prominently displayed on the shelter's website. It is nowhere to be found. It was procured only by a PRA. Is this a rather implausible oversight, or did OCAC/OCCR hide the Strategic Plan because they did not intend to abide by it? What is certain is that OCAC/OCCR overthrew the Strategic Plan without consultation with stakeholders, experts, or the BOS. The Strategic Plan has spent too much time in the shadows. It was practically buried without a funeral. It's time for the BOS to restore it as OCAC's guiding document. OCCR is Part of the Problem Consider the totality of OCAC's misrepresentations, including the inconsistent statistics and the flat- out wrong bite counts. Consider the performance decline documented in the previous reports. Instead of intervening to identify and solve problems, OCCR devoted its energies on PR to cover up the shelter's shortcomings. It resisted outside information - as recently as in the last month. For several months it denied access to the data on bites that exposed OCAC/OCCR disinformation. If just a fraction of the PR effort had been directed at getting the facts, the county's animals and citizens would have been better served. It is reasonable to ask whether OCCR played an active or passive role in the misrepresentations. For example, it is difficult to imagine that the bite -count slide was believed unchallenged. It is equally difficult to understand how OCCR could ignore multiple efforts by citizens to inform it of the realities of the shelter. It seems that OCCR contrived a sequence of ever -changing arguments to justify policies that were decided for other reasons. Perhaps it was just to save money, but it didn't even do that. Longer stays raise costs. This falls way short of the high standards citizens and elected officials expect of Orange County agencies. Need for Action In 2022, OCAC received fewer incoming animals than in 2019 (i.e., pre -pandemic), yet it experienced higher kill rates, higher return rates, longer stays, and higher inventory which led to higher costs and declining level of care. In 2023 this poor performance is exacerbated by an external factor, a large increase in intakes. The OCAC Strategic Plan was put together with the guidance of top-notch experts and input from the community, and was approved by the Board of Supervisors in 2018. It laid out a plan for the new Bad Numbers and No Plan - Page 2 of 3