Possible layoffs in L.A. city shelters
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They are the people who take care of the animals that people don’t want.
Across L.A. city’s seven shelters, animal care technicians calm traumatized animals, feed hostile ones and clean out kennels. They administer the euthanasia drugs that kill the ones that never get adopted, and, in a last act of comfort, hold the animals close as they succumb. And sometimes, at night, they take into their home kittens not yet weaned -- like the tiny one above, being bottle fed by a technician at the North Central shelter last year.
And they are the ones who take in the dead strays and house pets alike that get delivered to the shelters at all hours. ‘I have to take a bloody bag and open it, not knowing what condition the animal is in,’ Brita Gorman, a technician at East Valley shelter, tearfully told the Los Angeles Board of Animal Commissioners this morning.
Gorman and other shelter workers along with union members, animal rescuers and shelter volunteers packed the meeting room at L.A. City Hall to protest the city’s proposal to eliminate 28 animal care technicians, or ACTs, for budget reasons.
But the crisis, they argued, was not that they, themselves, would lose their jobs -- which pay from $38,000 to $46,000 -- but that the animals in already understaffed shelters would lose them.
‘East Valley is exploding with animals,’ said Gabriel Romero, a technician at that shelter. ‘Cutting ACTs, I can’t even comprehend what will happen.’
The proposed cuts are part of a citywide budgetary slashing.
However, the City Council’s Budget and and Finance Committee, scheduled to meet this afternoon, may consider an alternative that would save the 28 animal care technician jobs. We’ll keep you posted.
-- Carla Hall
