INCOMPETENCE REINS SUPREME AT FAAS

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Editor:

I was very glad to see that people are finally speaking out about what is happening at FAAS. As a person very involved in the animal community, I have been hearing heartbreaking stories from many informed sources about the policies that have been enacted at FAAS “behind closed doors”. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to get this information to the public and to the board without causing donors to stop giving to the deserving animals, but now that it’s out in the open, ALL needs to be said. The Peter Principle of people reaching their highest level of incompetence in business is reining supreme at the Alameda Animal Shelter. So much so, that the people in charge are entirely unfocused on animal welfare and are very busy making sure that it’s “politics as usual” in their “handling” of the board and the public. One can’t help but be reminded of the Nazi concentration camps and what went on behind the walls with people being killed by the thousands while the “face” of the politicians were front and center telling people about how wonderful everything was. Mim Carlson, who LOOKS good in the paper with her photo hugging a dog, has NO contact with the animals and no concern about what happens to them other than how it affects her bottom line. The so-called animal assessment expert is euthanizing animals left and right and is more concerned with that than she is in making sure that animals are properly and legitimately assessed to get them out of the cages and able to get some much-needed attention and exposure so that they CAN be adopted. The stories about her incompetence in animal assessment methods are becoming legendary, and certainly not in a good way!  The Volunteer Coordinator doesn’t even return phone calls from people wanting to volunteer to help the shelter and get the poor dogs out of the cages and treats people like they’re beneath her contempt. It is truly a fiasco of enormous proportions over there! If Hayden’s Law requiring that shelters never euthanize an animal when there is a chance that a rescue will take them is not being broken regularly, FAAS is certainly on the precipice of it almost daily! Way too many wonderful, caring animal people have chosen to join the ranks of the unemployed rather than stay in this jaw-droppingly appalling regime! That is nothing short of criminal. Something needs to be done by the board about it before there is no shelter to govern.

Mair MacKinnon, N.D.