Home > The Alliance in the News > 2004 Alliance News Items > Great Expectations! New Mayor's Alliance Comes to the Rescue of New York Animals

Great Expectations! New Mayor's Alliance Comes to the Rescue of New York Animals

by Julie Richard, Best Friends Magazine, July/August 2004

It's a sunny day in New York's Central Park, and tents are going up. People swarm excitedly, setting up displays, shouting hellos, holding dogs steady as they strap bright orange "Adopt Me" vests on their furry backs. This is a major event — the Mayor's Alliance annual adoption extravaganza.

In itself, that isn't ground breaking news. Super adoptions happen regularly in towns across the country. But what makes this happening different is what it symbolizes — a cutting-edge direction, unprecedented cooperation, and a new vision for animal welfare in America's most trend-setting city.

"Start spreading the news"

The Mayor's Alliance for NYC's Animals — the mayor being Michael Bloomberg — started with a germ of an idea born from years of frustration.

At the millennium, New York may have been on the cultural cutting edge, but for animals time had stopped in what seemed like the Dark Ages. Years earlier, the ASPCA (which has its base in New York) had run the city's animal control operations. But they had tossed off the reins, declaring that the country's premiere humane organization shouldn't be in the business of killing animals. The transition wasn't a smooth one, and what was already an outdated infrastructure fell deeper into mire.

On 9/11, Mayor Rudy Giuliani emerged as a national hero. He led the city in a manner hitherto reserved for movie heroes. So much so, that it's practically taboo to criticize any Giuliani policy. But while he shone in that shattering time, animals had suffered during his reign. And although he approved an increase in the operating budget, animals simply weren't a priority for him.

With Bloomberg coming to office, a triumvirate of enterprising lawyers saw the opportunity for change. Jane Hoffman, David Wolfson, and Mariann Sullivan have the kind of legal credentials that make head hunters salivate. With backgrounds in corporate law, mergers and acquisitions, and an appellate court, the three had already put together many animal-related conferences through the New York Bar Association.

Recognizing that Bloomberg was a different kind of mayor, one who valued private-public partnerships, they had an idea. What if the independent groups who toiled on the ground rescuing animals could be brought together to work with the city?

"The first thing that had to be overcome," says Hoffman, "was the dysfunctional relationship between animal control and the rescue groups. The problem wasn't getting all the groups in the room. I knew them all, so I could do that. It was getting them to realize there was something that we could all do if we worked together."

The idea of rescue groups helping the city to build spay/neuter and adoption programs is both wickedly simple and brutally complex. Bringing so many independent groups together to agree on how things should be done is a bit like facing a climb up Everest wearing flip flops. And there was an entire city bureaucracy that had to be persuaded to let the outside in.

"As a whole, you're stronger than as the sum of your parts," says Hoffman. "The concept was to make each group stronger and better at what they do, to centralize some of the work they had each been doing independently, and to network efficiently. By doing that, they could operate more effectively to help the animals in the city's system."

The attorneys started on tiptoe. Rather than call every group in the city, they began with a handful of the best known.

"You have to come to the government with a solution, not with a problem," says Hoffman. In New York post-9/11, that means you can't expect government funding. But they realized they might be able to tap into Maddie's Fund, a California foundation, as a potential funding source for spay/neuter and adoption programs. And that was a big carrot.

Getting the groups on board was one thing, getting the government was another. But sometimes you get lucky and reach just the right person on the phone.

Terri Matthews is the legal counsel for New York's deputy mayor for operations, Marc V. Shaw. And when she happened to answer the phone for her boss, she was shown the lawyers. proposal on a website.

"I read it and thought, this is beautiful," Matthews recalls. "The Bloomberg administration was just coming into office. There was all this noise in the system about Animal Care & Control. The New York City comptroller's office was in the midst of an audit documenting problems there. Even if the activity did not occur on your watch, you still must respond. We thought that if at least we could come up with a plan for going forward, if we could just put a little piece about this fledgling idea in the response to the audit, it might make a difference."

To that end, she met with the lawyers to explore their ideas. "I thought what they had to say was genius," she says. Once the Department of Health [which oversees Animal Care & Control] agreed to put it in the response, we just kept going forward."

Matthews arranged a meeting with the legal counsels of all the relevant departments that provide city services. The Parks Department agreed that the city's parks could be used for adoption events, and the Department of Transportation agreed to provide much needed parking spaces in front of shelters. Every conceivable asset that could help was brought to the table — resources available to the general public but never pulled together on behalf of animal welfare groups. Of course, as lawyers were involved, a "contract" resulted — the first time a legal agreement was formed between an entire city and a private animal welfare group.

"New York City was broke," adds Wolfson. "And it's still broke. The beauty of this was it wasn't going to cost the city any money. And it made them look good."

Next came Animal Care & Control (AC&C). What the new coalition wanted was communication. They wanted a relationship with the city whereby they would know about animals that were logged into the system, and be able to take them out and get them adopted.

"The challenge was to get animal control to understand what the coalition was," says Hoffman. "To realize it wasn't some great new financial resource that was going to take all their problems away but it was a way to do things more efficiently." And it worked. The coalition reached an agreement with AC&C, and New York's animal control department became part of the coalition.

Together, the lawyers had gotten the deal done. And the coalition they had formed now became the Mayor's Alliance for New York City's Animals.

"I want to be a part of it"

There are five boroughs in New York, and there is meant to be one full-service city shelter in each. But funding for building shelters was put on hold after 9/11, so Queens and the Bronx still don't have one. Brooklyn does, but it's in a tough and inaccessible part of town, making it a challenge to attract people who might adopt the animals.

That's where BARC steps in. Vinny Spinola and his partner Tony Spoto formed the group 17 years ago and were founding members of the new Mayor's Alliance. With the improved relationship with AC&C, they remove as many animals as they can, placing them in BARC's adoption program. The animals in their care certainly don't seem to mind the upscale elevation in their accommodations. Cats loll on sofas upstairs, while dogs romp below.

"I need a feng shui expert!" jokes Spinola. He's referring to the fact that years ago the brick warehouse that is BARC's home was the site of a breeding facility for laboratory animals. Spinola wonders if the energy of its nefarious past might affect the cats in his charge. There seems to be no worry of that. Cats cuddle in contented sleeping balls or curl affectionately around visitors' legs. On a tour of his facility, Spinola eagerly points out the benefits of Alliance membership.

"Look. Look at this!" he says excitedly as he points to a parking permit that's posted just outside the kennels. "We can park right here now. We don't have to get the dogs out and then drive around the block."

And then there's the Pet-Ark Kiosk. In the BARC pet supplies store sits one of the major benefits of the Mayor's Alliance: a blue computer terminal that lists every animal up for adoption from participating rescue groups and shelters. Spinola taps a few buttons: You can select size, breed, color, age, any criteria one might have, and the pictures flash up, along with details on where the animals are located. Potential adopters can print out a ticket with all the information. So far, the kiosks are in the alliance's seven "brick and mortar" shelters, and the plan is to place them in high traffic locations throughout the city, including Grand Central Station.

Perhaps more than anything, the Mayor's Alliance has brought a sense of optimism — the real possibility of a no-kill future. And that realization makes more and more groups eager to become part of the solution.

"We needed to start small to bring in a group of established animal welfare groups to the table that the city could recognize," says Hoffman, who is now president of the Mayor's Alliance. "Then as we became more solid, we started approaching all the other groups and said, "Come join us." We didn't want to leave anyone behind, but at the same time we had to get the whole thing going. Some were hesitant at first. But I thought, make the offer and they'll either take it or they won't. And if they take it later, we'll welcome them with open arms."

And the alliance has welcomed them all. From the initial half dozen, it's grown to over 70 groups, with more joining all the time . breed rescues, feral cat groups, they all play a part. And the collaboration is having an impact on the public.

"It's an amazing thing," says Marcello Forte of Animal Haven, another founding member. "When we have an adoption event and there are 25 groups with their tents and their banners, I overhear people walking through saying, 'There are so many groups here!' And I think it makes a big impression on people when they see us in the city's premiere parks."

It has a positive effect on the small groups, too. "For breed rescue it's terribly important," says Joan Garvin of the Maltese Breed Rescue. "As people in our group get to know we're part of a larger movement, it increases the interest."

And it's had a tremendous impact for those with one of the hardest jobs in animal welfare: the feral cat people.

Brian Kortis's Neighborhood Cats is the feral cat group in the city. The motivating force in bringing the plight of ferals to public attention, Kortis spent years operating on the fringe. "It's a new thing for us to be able to come under the umbrella of something like the Mayor's Alliance. It adds an air of legitimacy to the movement."

While the alliance presently brings only a modest amount of direct funding to the groups, it provides a host of resources that none could marshal on their own: workshops that help increase adoptions; a media organization called Rational Animal with professional photographers, artists, and filmmakers who help create ad campaigns; and a uniformity that has seen makeshift signs give way to presentations that give events an air of success and sophistication.

Still, the process of working as a fully cohesive team hasn't been without its bumps in the road.

"And make a brand new start of it"

The relationship between animal control and rescue groups has been tension-filled in many cities across the country. Only recently have the two factions begun to forge relationships. New York is no exception.

"Before the alliance, animal control felt threatened by rescue groups," says Janelle Granier, who operates the bull mastiff rescue. "When I approached them and offered to take animals out, they'd say, 'No, you can't take them.'" Now I get a steady flow. It's not perfect but it's getting better."

The relationship is yet to be cemented, but a couple of important new players have been added to the mix. New York City landed a new head of Animal Care & Control in January 2004, for the first time from outside the city itself. And the ASPCA, which had in the past decade turned its eye away from New York, has a powerhouse new president whose vision is firmly planted on the city that never sleeps.

The best way to describe Ed Sayres is "Zen-like." His office in the "A," as the ASPCA is generally known, is minimalist. That suits him fine. Meanwhile, downstairs, cats lounge in state-of-the-art accommodations. For Sayres, that's the way it should be — the money should be spent on the animals.

With a master's degree in psychology and a lengthy list of professional achievements in his pocket, Sayres is in a powerful position. The combined fundraising force of the entire Mayor's Alliance can't match the financial might of the A. When he accepted the position last year, he did so on the basis that the organization would pay greater attention to New York. Sayres believed that for all its high national profile and solid financial resources, the A had to start paying attention to what was happening to animals on its own doorstep.

To that end, the A's board recently voted to increase space for cats by 50 percent and almost that much for dogs. That's a start, but Sayres knows that the A can't solve the city's animal problems on its own. "The solution is not for the ASPCA to build the mecca of adoption," he says. "All the bagels aren't in one location. The solution lies in the alliance."

Sayres is putting the A's pocketbook behind that belief. He has just orchestrated a $5 million grant for the Mayor's Alliance, providing them the seed money they need to secure an additional $15 million grant from Maddie's Fund for spay/neuter and adoption programs. But even with the excitement that New York is generating, tension has been brewing in recent months.

"To find I'm king of the hill, top of the heap"

Along with Sayres, earlier this year New York acquired another star of the animal welfare arena in Ed Boks, the new head of AC&C. When he headed Arizona's Maricopa County shelter system, Boks was credited with turning a dire situation into a model of how a government facility could enter the no-kill arena.

In Phoenix, Boks envisioned a future where animal control was not simply following but leading the charge toward a no-kill community. "I think that in every community, animal control is uniquely positioned to be the leader," he says. "This is where the killing occurs. This is where the baseline is. So the real focus of every community should be on driving down the numbers at the local animal control facility."

With new arrivals come new ideas, but they aren't always immediately in sync. Alliance members note that New York presents unique challenges that cannot necessarily be addressed with programs retrofitted from elsewhere. The rescue groups view their role as helping the city move toward a "no healthy animal destroyed" policy. For his part, Boks wants to build AC&C into a charitable organization in its own right — even with its own fundraising arm, as he did in Phoenix.

"Being animal control director for New York is the most difficult position of that kind in America," says Sayres. Ed is trying to make AC&C a viable fundraising, donor-attractive organization to help animals. "You want to have pride in that and say 'We can do it!' At the same time, that image is ahead of the reality, which is that it's a very compromised environment."

"I believe we're going to make this work, so animal control doesn't have the pressure of creating a viable charity and dealing with this intake and facility deficit all at once. Let's get the basics going first. You don't have to hit this home run all in the first year. But people of Ed's caliber are wired for achievement, so it's very hard to take a high achiever and say, 'Achieve a little less.'"

The centerpiece of Boks's vision is the same New Hope adoption program he began in Arizona, along with a Big Fix low- or no-cost spay/neuter service. None of his plans or goals differ from what the Mayor's Alliance wants to achieve: helping all the groups increase adoptions and expand spay/neuter. The programs in place are the same design — it's merely the perspective that's a bit askew.

"New Hope is designed to maximize the resources of all the groups," explains Boks. "It provides a host of ways in which we can meet the needs of the animals in our care and match them with the resources in the organizations so everyone is not running around willy-nilly, frantic to do good things. It reduces duplication of efforts. It has people excelling with their strong points so we're a community wide effort."

"Are longing to stray"

Nor would anyone in the alliance disagree with that sentiment. The difficulty lies in putting it into practice. Right now, the alliance's almost 70 participating groups seem to be in a better position to help animal control than the other way around. The reason is no fault of Boks. It lies in the facilities and funding he's inherited.

A problem with shelters everywhere is that it's hard for people who love animals to deal with the depressing atmosphere of these shelters, and to see so many animals whose situation is so desperate. Rescue groups have had better adoption rates partly because they're able to present animals in happier surroundings. So the groups are anxious to take as many animals as they can out of the shelters to give them a better chance.

But this collides with Boks's New Hope program. His approach to how the groups can help the city shelters is for AC&C to distribute a daily list detailing only those animals due to be put down. But the breed rescue groups don't want to have to wait until the very last moment. They say they're better qualified to take the animals, particularly purebreds that often suffer emotional problems early on in shelter stays.

The rescue groups also point out that many animals arrive at city shelters injured or sick, but the shelters only have rudimentary medical facilities.

On a recent day, for example, vets at the privately funded Humane Society of New York were scrambling to respond to an urgent call from a city shelter. A small, white poodle had been hit by a car and needed treatment for a serious eye injury and chest wound. The society raced to pick him up and rushed him into surgery. But he had been in the city system for days with only limited treatment before the shelter had called them. The poodle lost his eye, but was still both adorable and adoptable, and he became the Humane Society's star at the chic Town and Country/Tails in Need benefit.

Episodes like these are troubling to the rescue groups, many of which either have their own medical facilities or are attached to animal hospitals. They want all animals that require medical care transferred to them immediately. But the overrun and understaffed shelters don't always contact the groups as soon as they have an animal in need. Boks is aware of the communication problems and says he's working to solve them. Meanwhile, he says, he has assigned a coordinator at each shelter specifically to work with the groups.

All of these issues put Boks under pressure. If he is to remake AC&C as a charitable organization, he needs to be at the forefront of adoptions, since good adoptions make for good fundraising. And that means proving that the city shelters can successfully place their own animals. And that, in turn, means having more attractive shelters.

The current shelters aren't up to snuff. And the city, still trying to cope with financial realities post-9/11, can't provide more cash. If he is to build the facilities that he wants, Boks knows he'll have to raise funds outside the city's pockets. Some of the boroughs have already jumped in to help themselves. Staten Island is providing $375,000 to upgrade their shelter, and Manhattan is giving $2.5 million to improve theirs.

"That money will have to be used to fix everything that's breaking," says Boks, "so unfortunately it will have little aesthetic value. The shelters are pretty dilapidated."

But Boks has commissioned a master plan for what the shelters will need over the next 20 years. And he's set up a fundraising charity, the Friends of Animal Care & Control. "So we hope to do a campaign for lifesaving programs that the city can't fund," he says. "The need for facilities is dire, and the city doesn't have the resources [we need], so we may launch a capital campaign. I think New York wants to see humane shelters, so if a group of volunteer citizens would rally around the cause, I'm confident we could raise the money to build them."

Boks says that creating state-of-the-art facilities will cost about $15 million per shelter for each of the five boroughs.

And it's because that vision seems so far in the future that it has caused tension.

"You have to think about human nature," says the ASPCA's Sayres. "The groups want to get the animals out of the shelters to safety where they can be adopted. But animal control has to be involved in adoptions because they want to be involved in the beginning and end side of it. The problem is they have to wrestle with the limitations of the facilities. So right now, early on, you have to think, 'Let's get them in and get them out. until they can build better facilities.'"

As the man with the most resources, Sayres is in the unenviable position of moderator. But that's fine with him.

"I'm here for the long haul," he says with a shrug. "I hope to do at least a 10-year stint with the A. And I can be objective because I'm not the one that's coping with everything at once."

"All of us want to help the city. Ed [Boks] is committed to it. The Mayor's Alliance is committed to it. And I certainly am. Whatever the growing pains, the reality is that at the global picnic we all sit at the same table. You have an ethic that you have compassion toward animals. And it's shared by everyone in the alliance, from the A to animal control to the rescue groups. That puts us at the same table."

With that knowledge, Sayres is confident that in the end, everyone will play together. Some of the tensions seemed to ease when alliance members, including AC&C and the A, met to discuss how they could work more effectively to help the city's animals. And Boks, Hoffman, and Sayres were enthusiastic when the session was over.

Sayres believes it will take a decade to achieve a no-kill reality for the city. So for the next 10 years, the eyes of all animal lovers will be trained on New York. After all, as the song says, if they can make it there, they can make it anywhere.

So it's up to you, New York, New York.

Reprinted from Best Friends Magazine, July/August 2004, pp. 12–17, with permission from Best Friends Animal Society

Copyright © 2004 Best Friends Animal Society