Villaraigosa set to name new head of the L.A. Department of Animal Services

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is expected to announce Thursday that he has chosen Brenda Barnette, chief executive of the Seattle Humane Society, to be the new general manager of the L.A. Department of Animal Services, a City Hall source has confirmed.

Barnette follows in the footsteps of the embattled Ed Boks, who left the position a year ago.

Barnette heads the privately funded and operated nonprofit Seattle Humane Society, which, among other things, runs one shelter campus in Bellevue, Wash. and opens it to the public for adoptions seven days a week. It is also known as the Humane Society of Seattle/King County. It is not the public shelter system for that area of Washington state.

The organization’s website indicates that the group aggressively promotes adoptable animals through local media of all kind -- print, TV, blogs, radio.

Two members of the Los Angeles animal welfare community said that the Seattle Humane Society’s euthanasia rates were considered impressively low. According to the statistics on the society’s website, in 2009 the shelter took in 6,937 cats and dogs and euthanized 923, only for reasons of being unhealthy or untreatable. According to the statistics, that total includes 368 animals that owners requested be euthanized for being untreatable.

The Los Angeles shelter system, on the other hand, took in 54,129 dogs and cats in 2009. Almost a quarter of the dogs and more than half the cats taken to the city's six shelters were put down -- for untreatable illness, intractable behavior or dearth of space.

The job of managing the city’s system of public shelters while trying to reduce the euthanasia rate and working with a community of impassioned, often critical animal welfare advocates and shelter volunteers proved to be a crushing task for the last two general managers. The new general manager will also deal with a city agency struggling with budget cuts.

The city spent months on the quest for a new general manager, hiring a search firm, polling so-called stake holders -- members of the animal welfare community -- and setting up an informal advisory committee to meet with the mayor. According to sources, the eventual finalists were questioned by a panel of interviewers before a group of four or five were interviewed by Villaraigosa.

The mayor will present his new general manager at noon Thursday at the city’s North Central shelter.

-- Carla Hall

Comments

[What Law]

Finally, Senor Villaraigosa will have a BOSS!!!!

[curiousprl]

villaraigosa = LOSER

[Vince]

"The mayor will present his new general manager at noon Thursday at the city’s North Central shelter." He's not going to present her at the Laker Game tonight??? How will he be able to attend the game for FREE???

[Bobby]

I agree Villaraigosa "LOSER"

[Fed Up with Villaraigosa]

Villaraigosa hired someone who was the legislative liaison of a PRO-BREEDING, ANTI-SPAY/NEUTER organization? That's what the AKC is, and its mission is 180 degrees opposite of what the city's shelter's mission is.

Villaraigosa is a genuine idiot.
Ask Corinna, his ex-wife.
Ask Mirthala, his ex-girlfriend
Ask the voters

[araknid]

All I have to say is "good luck LA". She created quite a mess up here.

[David]

Ms Barnette's shelter was a private shelter and did not take open admission. Open admission is when you can bring an animal into a shelter to surrender that animal into the shelter. Brenda Barnette's shelter had you make appointments. I believe that many people then went to the WA COUNTY shelter to dump their animal ...so yes Barnette's numbers can stay low that way. Also, for those dumping their pit bull I wonder how long those people were told they would have to wait to "get an appointment!"
I hope she will support the spay and neuter law here as well. Spay and neuter is our only way out of this mess.
Also I hope Ms Barnette will continually make the rounds at the shelters as it seems most GM's are never in them to see what is really going on! Why the killing continues when loads of cages are empty?
I wish you luck Brenda and hope you will be advocate for the animals.

[Walter Moore]

This woman is making three of the biggest mistakes of her life, and will regret them deeply within a month after arriving:

1. Leaving Seattle for Los Angeles.
2. Getting Antonio Villaraigosa as her new boss.
3. Taking the job as head of Animal Services.

Time to form those office pools: How long will she last? How much will she get paid in the form of a "golden parachute" when she leaves?

[Gwen Lebec]

Ed Boks had been asked to leave New York and was looking for a job when Villaraigosa hired him without doing any serious checking of his track record. It seems the Mayor may have used the same approach again. The Seattle animal agencies have been in crisis the last few years, not a success. Running a private limited access shelter is nothing like taking on an open access animal control agency, and using those statistics is comparing apples with cars - they are so far apart. Unfortunately the animals of LA continue to be unimportant to the Mayor.

[JSue]

Why in the world would they hire someone who opposes everything that LA City has done right for animals? Brenda opposes legislation that would help end puppymills and help spay and neuter more animals. Look her up! Look at her shelter. She is very pro breeder protection and not into mandatory spay and neuter!
Breeders of LA have a friend but do the animals?
Hey Brenda...we like spay and neuter in LA!
We hope you do not hide under using false kill numbers by calling everything "unadoptable!" Either an animal is dead or saved. It is that clear cut and should be. Stop using unadoptable and sick as a way to NOT count that animal!

[NWhappycamper]

I'm glad to see she's leaving Seattle. she has done nothing but bad mouth and lie about the county run shelter here. She and a group of people tried to get the public shelter shut down so her group could then take over. She spent millions to renovate her private shelter but didn't increase capacity, she also promised her board of directors whe would raise money for a new building. When her campaign to shut down the public shelter and get the contract those dreams went out the window so now she's running away. Good luck LA and watch out to see if a consulltant named Nathan Winograd comes in you'll really be in trouble.

[MudBaby]

Seattle area animal lovers are thrilled that Brenda Barnette has left Dodge. She did a lot of damage during her stint as Executive Director of the Seattle Humane Society by fomenting organizational chaos and bad-mouthing other animal welfare agencies. She also trashed legislative efforts to initiate a modest tax on pet food to help pay for spay-neuter operations for pets owned by low-income Washingtonians. It was not helpful that SHS imported hundreds of small dogs from shelters in SoCal while refusing to accept surrendered big dogs locally. It won't be easy to clean up the slime trail Barnette left in her wake.