Dear Editor,
I wish to comment on the erroneous statements made by Santa Clara County Agriculture Commissioner Greg Van Wassenhove in your June 25 article about the San Martin Animal Shelter’s public access being cut back an extra day per week.
He said the 1.5 positions already cut were “being covered with contract employees and overtime.” That is an absolute lie. There are no contract employees, and staff is not working overtime.
We volunteers are offering our help to the staff and animals as we always have.
He seems to indicate that we should increase our efforts, but he obviously has no knowledge of what we do.
I work at the shelter three to four days per week, doing laundry, cleaning dishes and any other work requested of me. I have fostered puppies and kittens, adopted two rescue dogs am currently fostering a mother and five puppies for eight weeks. I honestly don’t think I can increase my efforts.
All volunteers are busy doing the most they can do to help the animals. And we do these things at our own expense on our own time.
Van Wassenhove was told to cut $200,000 from his budget. The $90,000 cut at our small facility is almost half of that. He is closing the only animal shelter in South County one more day and cutting positions in other areas while adding a position in his office – a new secretary for himself.
He says he’s begun meeting with shelter staff. There has been one meeting, at which he took no suggestions and merely said, “Make it work.” I sense no feeling of cooperation in that statement. He says, ” I will continue to work with the FOSMAS group to minimize impacts to the shelter.” Continue? The only person he spoke with was Nicole Leanos, our vice president. He has never met with us as a group. I suspect he has no plans to do so.
Why do they want to close our shelter an extra day when we have the highest adoption rate in 100 miles? The true goal here is to eventually close the shelter altogether to make room for the airport expansion the Board of Supervisors wants.
They probably won’t admit that right now, but that is the agenda.
They will then have all strays and lost animals taken to San Jose, where they have an abysmal adoption rate and an extremely high kill rate. They also don’t accept any livestock, which we do.
Animals can not speak for themselves. It is the responsibly of humans to care for them and give them a descent life. The payback we get is unconditional love and loyalty.
The staff and volunteers at the shelter truly care about the animals, and I hope that the public in our area cares enough to investigate this situation and help us help the animals.
Elaine Jelsema, FOSMAS Volunteer
