Public Testimony

	New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene Office of Communications

Good morning, Chairperson Quinn and members of the City Council Committee on Health. My name is Edgar Butts, Assistant Commissioner of Veterinary Affairs and Pest Control at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH). Thank you for this opportunity to testify on animal care and control.

There are many benefits of human-animal contact, including the unique relationships that exist between ourselves and the domestic animals that are our pets, our trusted companions, and the service animals that provide essential support and rescue or protective services for many New Yorkers. However, these human-animal contacts can also represent a significant public health concern, particularly in a region as densely- populated as New York City. Certain infectious diseases -- and in particular the reemerging threat of rabies exposure -- as well as the potential for injuries from animal bites and other human health problems associated with these contacts, necessarily place the responsibility for some major animal care and control functions with the local public health authority. As you know, DOHMH is charged by the City’s Health Code and other applicable laws, including the State’s Public Health Law and Sanitary Code and the City’s Charter and Administrative Code, with protecting the public’s health with respect to a wide variety of potential threats, including potential public health threats arising from animals.

Indeed, rabies, which is sometimes depicted as a bygone disease, is very much a current and resurgent public health concern. An epizootic of rabies moved inexorably up the East Coast in the 1990s and then spread downward, first arriving in the Bronx and Staten Island about 13 years ago. Just two weeks ago, a rabid raccoon was captured in Queens – the first rabid animal identified in that borough since 2001. The New York State Health Department is distributing raccoon rabies vaccine bait by hand and by helicopter in areas of Nassau County and the Queens location where rabid raccoons have been found. While there has not been a human case of rabies in the City for many years, we must be ever vigilant.

Because neither DOHMH nor any other City agency is equipped or trained to provide the unique services that comprise comprehensive municipal animal care and control, the Department has historically contracted out for those services. Beginning in 1994, when the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) terminated its contract with the City, the City established a not-for-profit organization that would be capable of providing the necessary services -- the Center for Animal Care and Control, Inc., which is now called Animal Care and Control of New York City (or AC&C). AC&C is managed by a seven-member Board of Directors that includes the Health and Parks Commissioners, the Police Deputy Commissioner for Community Affairs, and four members appointed by the Mayor in accordance with its by-laws. DOHMH contracts with AC&C to provide animal care and control services for the City.

For more than a decade, AC&C has provided these services for the City by contract. Animal care and control is challenging. However, the Department feels that AC&C has made very significant progress, particularly in the last few years, in improving these services both from the perspective of protecting human health, and in the humane treatment of animals. Following my testimony, Mr. Ed Boks, Executive Director of AC&C, will provide you with more details about the improvements that have been made.

One of the most pressing priorities shared by animal welfare advocates, AC&C leadership and management, and the City and this Department, is to increase animal adoption and reduce euthanasia to a point that no adoptable animal is euthanized. Continuing progress on increasing the adoption rate and reducing the euthanasia rate has in recent years been encouraging, and as you know, DOHMH has submitted monthly reports to the Council on the numbers of adoptable animals that are humanely euthanized at each full-service shelter. In calendar year 2001, 12,819 of the 56,131 animals received by AC&C were adopted, for an adoption rate of 22.8 percent; and 38,794 were euthanized, for a euthanasia rate of 69.1 percent. In the nearly four years since then, the rates have moved solidly in the right direction. Through August of this year, of 30,482 animals received, 11,559 were adopted, for an adoption rate of 37.9 percent -- that is a 66 percent increase in the adoption rate in less than four years – and 15,811 were euthanized, for a euthanasia rate of 51.2 percent – which is a 26 percent decrease in the euthanasia rate in less than four years. Unfortunately, some animals, because of health, injuries or behavior, are not adoptable. If we were to factor in that unavoidable reality -- and were to count only those animals that can possibly, and safely, be adopted, in our assessment of the progress AC&C has made, the current situation with respect to adoption and euthanasia would be even more improved than these statistics indicate, and the amount of progress made would be even more promising.

Assessment of the data over time also reveals that far fewer animals are “out there” to be received by AC&C -- whether abandoned, unwanted, stray, lost or for other reasons: From 1997, when 67,063 animals were received, to 2004, when 44,350 animals were received, the number AC&C received annually decreased for seven consecutive years, for an overall seven-year drop of 34 percent. While this decrease likely reflects multiple trends, one factor is undoubtedly integration of spay-neuter policies into the fabric of the city’s animal affairs culture at all levels – including legislation, education, promotion, and funding initiatives -- with a concomitant decrease in unwanted animals.

The more than a decade-long trend of decreased reports of dog bites is another promising animal care and control indicator that we are seeing. Beginning in 1994, when the number of reported bites was down nearly 200 from the previous year, the reported number has fallen every year for 11 consecutive years, from 10,739 in 1993, to 4,082 in 2004 – a decrease of 62 percent.

Over the past several years, one of the positive developments which has also contributed to improvements in abandoned animal adoption and reduction of euthanasia rates has been the building of an unprecedented partnership among the City, DOHMH and other City agencies, AC&C, and the animal welfare organizations that have long led the way in improving the plight of animals in our urban environment. This unique collaboration resulted in the creation of the Mayor’s Alliance for New York City Animals in 2002. The Alliance, a not-for-profit corporation, encompasses more than 75 animal welfare groups, all pulling together in a public-private partnership with the City to develop creative approaches to companion animal care and control, including raising public awareness and expanding the capacity to find homes for adoptable abandoned animals, as well as effective mechanisms for assuring the spaying and neutering of such animals.

The Alliance earlier this year obtained a much sought-after $15.5 million, seven-year grant from Maddie’s Fund, established to help communities nationwide minimize the unnecessary euthanization of healthy and treatable homeless animals merely because they do not have homes. That funding is in turn boosting a wide range of adoption activities taking place in parks, parking lots, neighborhoods, and shelters, public awareness campaigns, and spay-neuter surgeries, including needed assistance to low-income animal owners; and is priming the pump for additional volunteer help and financial contributions from corporations, foundations and individuals.

Likewise, the Alliance has worked fruitfully with the ASPCA, the Humane Society and a host of other organizations concerned with animal welfare, particularly animal rescue organizations, to galvanize volunteers, boost involvement of the citizenry, and simultaneously place abandoned animals while preventing the procreation of unwanted animals in the first place, with compelling results, during the first years of this effort.

The Alliance has performed admirably on many fronts, and has helped change the landscape of animal care and control in this city so successfully that its work has already become a model for other urban centers nationwide. This relatively new spirit of cooperation between the private and public sector has provided immeasurable benefits that support and complement the services provided by AC&C through its contract with DOHMH. The Department would like to give special thanks to the Alliance and its President, Jane Hoffman, to the ASPCA and its President, Ed Sayres, and to members of the pet rescue network New Hope, for their important contributions in helping AC&C and the City increase adoption and decrease euthanasia.

AC&C is currently in the final year of a five-year contract with the City dating from July 1, 2001, through June 30, 2006. While AC&C’s annual budget was impacted by the City's significant budget shortfalls during the period after 9/11 -- as were most of the Department's programs -- it has been stable at $7.2 million for the last two fiscal years. The FY 2005 and 2006 budgets were increased by $40,000 and $325,473, respectively, to provide for collectively-bargained salary increases to AC&C workers. City funding for animal care and control is never as much as we would like, and, as the Commissioner has advised this committee in the past, we would like to see more money for all of our public health programs. However, we live in a world where we have to balance our program’s needs against other public health needs and other City service needs. Among the services that AC&C provides the City through this contract are:

• Animal control and seizure, which includes seizing animals as directed by the Department and the police; responding daily on a prioritized basis with dispatched personnel to complaints regarding unlicensed and unleashed dogs and dangerous and prohibited animals; accepting lost, stray, homeless and abandoned animals; notifying owners of licensed animals bearing IDs when their pets are seized; developing a customer service quality assurance program; and immunizing its staff against rabies;
• Related services, which include operating animal shelters in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Staten Island and animal receiving facilities in the Bronx and Queens, including caring for animals humanely, which includes immediate first aid and isolation of sick animals, and professional care under supervision of a licensed veterinarian;
• Adoption services, which include promotion and actual adoption services at all shelters and receiving facilities, and requiring New York City adopters to obtain dog licenses;
• Providing spay/neuter services in accordance with City law;
• Rabies prevention, which includes providing rabies vaccinations for all adopted and returned dogs and cats, and preparing specimens for laboratory testing from all suspect rabies cases and other zoonotic disease cases;
• Humane euthanasia under veterinary supervision when necessary;
• Lost and found program services for dogs and cats, including an advertised phone number;
• Holding of animals suspected of being a threat to the public and assisting the police with dangerous dog sweeps;
• Enlisting volunteers in community education and outreach efforts; and,
• Coordination of animal intake, management and disposition through the Chameleon system, a sophisticated database, to accurately identify, locate and track adoption status and biting history, if any, of animals in its facilities.

In addition, the City's shelter facilities are in a long-term process of upgrading, renovation and modernization. The Manhattan shelter had lower roof work completed this summer, and capital funding of $3.25 million is currently available to cover replacement of the heating, ventilation and air condition (HVAC) system; the fire alarm system, the upper roof; and associated electrical upgrading. Design work for this phase has begun. The City Council has also very generously provided $500,000 to AC&C to renovate an existing garage to be used for TLC -- short for “Teach Love and Compassion” -- an innovative educational and job skills program for teens who work with animals to make them more adoptable.

DOHMH recently performed needed interim maintenance and repair work to enable adequate cooling at the Staten Island shelter. Additional renovations, modernization and enhanced maintenance are planned for the Staten Island shelter, including the building of a surgical suite. Approximately $493,000 in capital monies made possible by Staten Island Borough President Molinaro are currently available for this project.

As you know, the Department has been working diligently for a number of years to locate sites for full-service shelters in Queens and the Bronx. We are very optimistic that we have located an appropriate site in the Bronx for a shelter facility, and we have placed a bid for a consultant to prepare the ULURP application and the environmental impact statement and other preparation work required by law. Though we have made repeated efforts to locate an appropriate site in Queens, we have not yet been successful. Our efforts to identify a suitable Queens location will continue.

In summary, I believe DOHMH has learned a great deal in the last decade regarding how animal care and control functions can be managed efficiently, effectively, and with greater concern and compassion about the humane treatment of animals. The partnership with AC&C has been successful, and together we have made significant progress in addressing this challenging responsibility. I would like to thank the Committee again for the opportunity to testify on the important subject of animal care and control, and I would be happy to answer questions at this time.

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