Jim Bickhart              Ed Boks

Forwarded from Edward Muzika:

I just talked today to Carl Friedman, head of San Francisco's Animal Care and Control—a municipal, not a private shelter. He said last month they had an 85% real live save rate. By that, he meant 85% of live animals that came in made it out alive, including neonates.

He says they do not use any of the bull-speak about adoptable, treatable or other ways to artificially decrease the kill rate. Live in--live out. He said he could come to LA and within hours prove he saved 115% of all animals coming in just by use of words and statistics. He said he could prove they brought animals back from the dead if he wanted to.

Boks and Bickhart have repeatedly said their biggest stumbling block to turning the department around is the union and civil service. Bickhart used to say Boks turned a 2 cylinder dept into a 4 cylinder dept during 2006. When I asked him why that didn't translate into a higher save rate in 2006, his response was that I'd probably know better than he.

I do, Boks is incompetent.

Friedman's response to the claim of union and civil service hindrances to reform was that there are seven different unions representing employees in his department and he says his dept has every conceivable civil service protection and regulation possible. He said Boks or Bickhart can call him at any time to discuss anything, but he'd prefer them not talking behind his back downplaying San Francisco's success.

SFACC is a full service municipal shelter; they cannot refuse any animal. They turn over a fair proportion of their impounds to the SFSPCA which has an even higher save rate of 94%. Friedman's municipal shelter save rate increased from 80 to 82%, so the combined live save rate may be as high as 89% now (excluding 3% for owner relinquished euthanasia).

ADL-LA Notes: (Boks' and Bickhart are like the blind leading the blind. They're both so inept, fraudulent, fallacious and deceitful, it's a wonder that either are still on the pay roll; the only excuse is that we have a Mayor whose more interested in unzipping his pants and following Hillary Clinton around brown nosing her, rather than doing what's right for the lost and homeless animals of our city.)