Staffing thin at Los Banos Animal Shelter

The phone kept ringing at the Los Banos Animal Shelter as Kathy Wilber, a volunteer for 13 years, prepared canine distemper vaccinations for dogs brought in the night before.

Wilber darted around the office preparing the vaccinations while looking at records and answering calls from an animal sanctuary for the Los Banos Volunteers for Animals organization.

A short while later, Jason Martin, the Los Banos Police Department’s animal control officer, came in to help Wilber fill needles with the vaccination.

“It does get busy in here,” Wilber said. “Jason comes to help when we’re shorthanded.”

That happens often at the shelter, said Cmdr. Ray Reyna, who heads animal control operations.

“He comes into work, goes to the shelter quite a bit and sometimes listens to 15 to 20 messages.”

While Martin’s duties involve helping the shelter with daily operations, more of his time could be spent doing tasks the volunteers don’t do, such as trapping animals and solving issues related to pets and animals.

“There is a need for volunteers who are able to devote considerable time,” said police Cmdr. Ray Reyna, who heads animal control operations.

Reyna and Chief Gary Brizzee said the shelter is a success, showing improvement and good “save rates,” a measurement of the percentage of animals handled by the shelter that weren’t euthanized.

The save rate for the shelter rose from 77 percent in 2014 to 83 percent in 2015, according to police data. The shelter handled more than 2,400 animals in 2015.

“The animal shelter is doing very well based on the extraordinary efforts of the volunteers and our staff,” Brizzee said.

Officials have praised those numbers as the result of the 15 to 20 volunteers who work at the shelter. The results come in spite of the need for more volunteers.

The issue isn’t so much with the number of volunteers – Reyna said every volunteer and volunteer hour is valuable – but with the need for volunteers who are available to dedicate a significant amount of time to the shelter.

“When it comes to animal adoptions, feeding, cleaning, paperwork … a lot of work needs to be done,” Reyna said.

Volunteers such as Wilber don’t come around very often, and it’s hard to replace them when they leave.

Wilber said she has worked almost full-time in the past. But these days she has to spend more time at home.

She said she would like to see the city add another full-time animal control officer to help handle shelter operations.

The city recently approved a part-time position to help with that after the original part-time volunteer was promoted to a full-time code enforcement officer, Brizzee said.

“The council supports us and sees our need for more for the shelter,” Brizzee said, noting that he wouldn’t be opposed to hiring three to four more employees for the shelter if there was room in the budget and there wasn’t a need for more officers on the streets.

Pretty soon, the City Council will see a new animal-control ordinance that is aimed at helping the shelter’s goals and operation.

The current ordinance was created in 1952, with updates through 1996.

Cmdr. Jason Hedden has been leading work on the change in the ordinance and has led three public meetings gathering input on proposed changes.

Proposals include requiring a certificate for breeders with a limit of one litter per year, restricting the number of pets per household to three dogs and/or three cats over 4 months old, and rules about barking dogs among, other changes.

“We’re looking at hopefully having it ready for City Council in February, March at the latest,” Hedden said.

This story was originally published January 12, 2017 at 5:23 PM with the headline "Staffing thin at Los Banos Animal Shelter."