By Popular Demand, NYC Council Reps Pledge Action on Spay-Neuter
By Popular Demand, NYC Council Reps Pledge Action on Spay-Neuter
But offer no help to cats and dogs suffering at NYC ACC.
Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn
It’s September 20, 2024. This is The Weekly Poop.
This week, New York City Council members were digesting hours of public testimony from last Friday’s NYC ACC oversight hearing.
The eight-hour health committee session drew input from scores of New Yorkers, including those who submitted written testimony but couldn’t make it to City Hall in person.
Most of the public speakers were cat rescuers straight from the front lines — New Yorkers whose physically exhausting, emotionally devastating work keeps the city’s homeless cat epidemic from being worse than anyone wants to imagine. And most of them called for the same thing: high-volume, low-cost, city-funded spay-neuter.
That’s a lot of hyphens, no doubt, but commensurate with the crisis. A proper response from City Hall would be 100,000 city-paid surgeries a year — sofa cushion change for NYC — according to live testimony from Will Zweigart, founder and executive director of Flatbush Cats, which recently opened its own non-profit vet clinic. Zweigart said the clinic intends to handle 10,000 low-cost spay-neuter operations annually.
“Spay-neuter is surrender prevention,” Zweigart told council members. “We built this clinic as a model, to show you what is possible.”
Not only does ACC release intact animals to rescues, it has no trap-neuter-return program. By way of explanation, ACC CEO Risa Weinstock told council members that TNR is “not in [ACC’s 2019, $1B+] contract.”
Please read that last sentence again, then tell me: How on earth did the people running the agency responsible for homeless outdoor cats in the country’s largest city sign off on a long-term high-dollar contract with no provision for addressing the homeless outdoor cat population?
This should have been a humiliating admission for Weinstock. The incompetence! But Weinstock and other ACC bigs have been allowed so much latitude for so long that one wonders if it even registered that the hearing itself was in large part a product of her own management failures.
It didn’t seem to register with health committee chair Lynn Schulman, who at one point during the hearing declared, "ACC does the best that it can."
That’s not a compliment as much as an indictment. If it’s true that ACC leadership is out of ideas on how to use the system’s massive budget to reduce animal suffering and death, it’s time for new leadership.
But the council, as a body, isn’t about to go there. Instead, Schulman and other reps indicated interest in working around ACC.
During the hearing, Schulman agreed that the Flatbush Cats clinic could indeed serve as a prototype for new facilities elsewhere in the city, and said she plans to work with fellow Queens council reps to bring a low-cost clinic to the borough. Schulman encouraged council members from other boroughs to do likewise.
Council Member Schulman said new bills could result from the hearing as well.
“Our committee staff is reviewing the over 150 submissions of public testimony,” Schulman’s office told TSNY this week, “and will begin working with the chair to figure out the best course of action with regards to potential legislation.”
A September 13 AMNY op-ed from Brooklyn council rep Justin Brannan, Allie Taylor of Voters For Animal Rights, and Will Zweigart echoed the call for widely available low-cost vet care.
“City-funded affordable veterinary clinics will keep pets with their families,” the editorial reads, “and reduce the burden on independent rescue groups and our overcrowded shelters.”
It apparently hasn’t occurred to the city health department, which is supposed to supervise ACC, that an exploding homeless cat population is itself a public health issue. As is the psychological torment suffered by New Yorkers who in some cases devote every waking hour to caring for the cats ACC has left to wander the streets.
New York City taxpayers hand Risa Weinstock over $200,000 in salary each year. You could fix a lot of cats with that.
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Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:
Whoa: Billionaire business dude Thomas Golisano announced millions in grants for upstate animal orgs, which is great news given Albany’s longstanding disinterest in animal welfare.
Here’s how ABC and AMNY and Gothamist and Queens Chronicle and Crain’s covered the NYC Council ACC oversight hearing.
Related: Queens City Council rep Robert Holden says NYC needs “a top to bottom review of how the city cares for homeless animals.”
Related: Hell’s Kitchen news site W42ST went deep on the history of successful citizen-led TNR efforts in that neighborhood — and how pricey vet care could make those efforts impossible to replicate.
Related: A third “low-cost” ASPCA vet clinic is coming to NYC — this one close to public housing in Queens.
A Brooklyn rescue saved an abandoned malnourished pregnant dog, Gracie, just in time to help mama with her puppies.
Authorities are investigating animal killings and mutilations near Jamaica Bay in Queens, following a New York Post report.
A private club for dogs and their people is coming to a Brooklyn rooftop.
The ASPCA next month will Hoover a bunch of money that could be going to actual no-kill orgs.
No-kill trailblazer Nathan Winograd reports on the “shelter” backsliding trend that threatens homeless companion animals nationwide.
New York adoptables
NYC ACC will hold mobile adoption fairs in Manhattan and Queens this weekend.
There’s a major adoption event tomorrow in Williamsville, outside Buffalo.
Cortland County SPCA will have adoptables at a local Starbucks on Saturday afternoon.
Also tomorrow, the Town of Hempstead will have dogs at the annual Somerset Brewing Company adoption soiree.
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Food recalls
The FDA issued no new pet food recalls this week. Check here for info on earlier recalls.