The Trouble With NYC ACC Lies Right Here
The Trouble With NYC ACC Lies Right Here
Hint: It isn't New Yorkers. Or the economy. Or the pandemic.
Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn
It’s September 15, 2024. This is The Weekly Poop, Belated Edition.
This week, at the New York City Council ‘s long-delayed NYC ACC oversight hearing, an unexpectedly sizable contingent of New Yorkers made plain as day the root of the current crisis faced by the city’s homeless companion animals and the people who care for and about them.
It’s not the economy.
It’s not expensive vet care.
It’s not onerous landlords.
It’s not the vet shortage.
It’s not the pandemic.
And it is not that New Yorkers have somehow decided they no longer want cats and dogs in their homes.
The number one obstacle to caring for New York City’s homeless companion animals is — surprise! — the contractor paid by New Yorkers to care for New York City’s homeless companion animals. More specifically: the unfathomable incompetence and unearned arrogance of the bureaucrats and board members charged with running the organization presently known as Animal Care Centers of New York City.
If NYC ACC were a baseball team, it would have jettisoned the manager and gutted the front office long ago. If it was a for-profit corporation the board would fire the CEO, the CFO and, for good measure, the CPAs. If it was a New York City mayoral administration — you get the idea.
More on Friday’s hearing is forthcoming. For now, some lowlights:
ACC has no plan to handle overcrowding at its facilities, though intakes are down by about half since before COVID
ACC has no TNR program to speak of, instead dumping that labor- and cost- and emotion-intensive job onto private citizens
ACC releases intact animals to rescues, forcing the small and often-struggling orgs to cover spay-neuter costs
ACC discontinued many rescue- and public-oriented services during the pandemic and to date has not brought them back
NYC devotes about a fourth as much to animals per capita as other major U.S. cities
ACC and the city health department, which supervises the ACC system, insist ACC does not need additional funding despite all of the above — in part, one supposes, because ACC doesn’t spend all the money it is currently allocated
To be clear, the buck does not stop with ACC or its board of directors. NYC ACC has failed to fulfill its mission over the course of three decades and four administrations because the city’s elected officials and their appointed bureaucrats want it that way. See: Eric Adams health commissioner Ashwin Vasan, a typical non-entity as far as ACC reform is concerned, who dispatched a deputy to Friday’s hearing rather than show up to listen to the New Yorkers who are taking up his slack.
Never — as in not ever — in three decades has ACC not been a horror show, for animals and New Yorkers alike. The name and the propaganda may have evolved, but the ACC through line from last century to right now is the same.
It’s the incompetence.
It’s the incompetence.
It’s the incompetence.
It’s the incompetence.
It’s the incompetence.
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Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:
CASE IN POINT: One New Yorker stands between a decades-old stray cat colony and bulldozers primed to level Willets Point, in Queens, for new development. Where is NYC?
The NYC parks department wants to start fining people who dump animals in city green spaces.
The city-run Rochester pound has its first new director in 25 years.
Rock n’ Rescue has opened a “rescue and community therapy center” in Westchester’s Bedford Hills.
A large Syracuse vet clinic is again open around the clock after two years of reduced hours due to staff shortages and “burnout.”
A Suffolk County studio is raising rescue funds by teaching Irish step dancing.
People who abuse and kill horses upstate donated some money to help homeless dogs in Puerto Rico.
Petco is again selling rabbits after the company pledged to not do that any more.
A Nassau County vet hospital will host a kids’ open house next weekend.
Don’t fool with venomous snakes is apparently a thing that must be said in 2024.
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Food recalls
The FDA issued no new pet food recalls this week. Check here for info on earlier recalls.