The wheels are in motion—albeit at low throttle—for the construction of a new Santa Clara County Animal Care & Control facility, according to Amy Brown, the county’s Director of Agriculture and Environmental Management.
“It’s early in the process,” said Brown, whose dual role also places her as director for the county’s animal control and care unit. “I think it is a pressing need.”
The new location—off Highland Avenue on the same plot of land as the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office in San Martin where the old courthouse was situated—has already been identified. The price tag for a new shelter has been estimated at $20 million.
The holdup, however, continues to be funding, as is the case in many anticipated large scale projects, said County Animal Control Program Director Albert Escobar during a tour of the current 40-year-old animal shelter behind the South County Airport on Murphy Avenue in San Martin.
“The county is looking into different methods of funding for the facility,” said Escobar, who has worked for the county since 2000.
In February 2013, the county spent a little more than $65,000 for an animal shelter programming study. The county currently has an existing contract with a funding consultant—to the tune of $120,230 through 2015—to identify the best options to finance the shelter.
“We’re making the most of what we have (in San Martin) and really doing an amazing job, and that’s definitely due to the hard work of not only staff but an active group of volunteers,” Brown said.
As for a timeline on a new San Martin shelter, Brown added: “I’d love to see it happen in the next 5 (to) 10 years.”
Board of Supervisors President Mike Wasserman, who represents the district which includes South County, said he is “100 percent behind” the push for a new shelter. Wasserman added the county will look for corporate sponsorships and “individuals with soft hearts” to help fund the project.
“This is all about love of animals of all kinds,” Wasserman said.
In San Mateo County, the Board of Supervisors approved a $20 million funding agreement Sept. 9 for the construction of a new animal shelter to replace the 60-year-old Peninsula Humane Society facility. The funding will be split between the 20 cities within that county. Construction is scheduled to begin this fall. The county would foot the bill and the cities it serves would pay the county back over a 30-year period based on populations and use.
Brown explained that funding model does not apply to the San Martin shelter because it serves only the unincorporated areas and does not charge cities for its services as in San Mateo County.
In the meantime in San Martin, cramped quarters throughout the roughly 15,000 square foot shelter for the animals, staff and volunteers have limited natural light, poor ventilation and air quality, sanitization issues and an operating room that does not currently meet California Veterinary Board standards, according to Escobar. These are among a laundry list of shortcomings plaguing the antiquated San Martin shelter.
Escobar added that studies over the last four decades on how “stress affects the health of animals” were not yet established when the old county shelter was built. Thus, the existing shared cages for dogs, as well as smaller ones for cats, that face one another and are divided by chain-linked fences with a shared floor are not to the sheltered animals’ best health and comfort.
“It adds stress and limits their adoptability,” said Escobar, describing the adoption process as stressful as well with new prospective owners making their way through a middle walkway with dogs barking on both sides through the fences that separate them. They are able to take the animals outside in a small exercise yard and can even bring their current pets to see if they get along with one another.
Animal Shelter Supervisor Lisa Jenkins—who took over for former supervisor Brigid Wasson in July—agrees that a more suitable facility is necessary. Jenkins spent the previous nine years working with the City of San Jose, where a new animal care center was built in 2004.
“The way our dogs are set up, there is not a way to isolate them. They are always facing each other,” said Jenkins, who specialized in animal intake and behavior for six years in San Jose. “It can get very loud in there. It’s hard for people to want to adopt when they can’t hear over the barking.”
Even with its current setup, San Martin’s live-release rate is above 90 percent. The live-release rate is based on any animal that comes in to the facility for whatever reason and is either adopted, goes to a rescue organization or is returned to its original owner.
“What the shelter lacks in as a facility, it makes up for in heart,” Jenkins said. “The staff and volunteers have been fantastic and they show the animals a lot of care.”
Jenkins said newer facilities have sound proof walls and dogs are not facing one another. As for cats, new shelters use cageless rooms instead of individual cages, Escobar noted. The San Martin shelter, which is currently offering free cat adoptions, has three rooms dedicated to felines. It takes more than three hours each day to clean and disinfect, as well as perform a health check, for just one cat area.
“Our (cat) cages are pretty old fashioned cages. A lot of the new shelters have rooms where they can stretch out and play. Here, they only get to do that when the volunteers take them out,” Jenkins added. “It’s stressful for a lot of them having to be in such tight quarters with other cats.”
The animal control and care budget, which includes the shelter operations and 13 full-time employees, is about $2 million, according to Escobar. The animal care and control unit services about 94,000 people in the unincorporated areas of Santa Clara County with four full-time animal control officers for 24/7 coverage. After hours, one officer is on call each day for emergencies only.
At the shelter in San Martin, veterinarians performed 2,909 surgeries on animals last year, for which the county paid $111,000. The surgeries were also funded through other public and private donations. Procedures are done in a stuffy room barely bigger than a walk-in closet, equipped with an operating table, medical tools and supplies, and a limited number of cages to monitor the animals post-surgery.
Besides adoptions, the county animal care and control unit provides pet licensing and microchip tags, a spay/neuter program, educational field trips for students and a list of lost and found animals as well as animal control field services for the county’s unincorporated areas. Officers respond to any type of animal complaint from barking and loose in an area to welfare checks on animals to clearing carcasses from the county roadways to issuing citations. Along with cats and dogs, the San Martin shelter has a six-stall horse barn.
“We are an open door shelter,” said Escobar, explaining they take in any animal in any condition, including goats, sheep, pigs, chicken and rabbits. “You name it we probably had it here.”
County staff now wants to provide better facilities for all the animals in and out of its care.
“Everybody is so ready for it to happen,” Jenkins said. “It’s a large scale project so we’d have to get some committed donors in order to raise those kinds of funds.”
—Shelter is open 12 to 6 p.m. weekdays, and 12 to 5 p.m. weekends, at 12370 Murphy Ave.
—Go to sccountypets.org to donate and find information on animal inventory for adoption, volunteering at the shelter and other ways to help out, and county ordinances.
