While I’m sure my dad would love to take credit for animal control as his “pet project,” I think that the hundreds of volunteers of the Friends of the Culver City Animals and the thousands of residents who signed their petition, might take offense.
Alan Corlin has hated this project since it was first proposed. However, his logic (see today’s Editor’s Essay) makes absolutely no sense.
1. I have heard no one talk about changing the shelter arrangement right now. So that issue is moot. All we're talking about tonight is adding 1 full- time or part-time employee to supplement the work being done by the County. Regardless of whether we have a new shelter, the animal control officer has a lot of other work to do (they don’t only impound animals). They need to deal with dead or injured wild animals, take calls for service from the community and do canvassing for dog licenses.
2. This person WOULD NOT only do canvassing, although the canvassing that they would do would likely pay most of their salary.
3. Obviously 1 officer would not be able to work every hour of the day, but their work would be supplemented through cross-training with others in the Police Dept. Right now we are getting almost NO services from the County. So even a qualified individual who worked 40 hours a week would be 40 more hours per week of service than we are currently getting. But this is all getting ahead of ourselves because, once again, we would still retain our contract with the County to back up our officer.
4. Mr. Corlin’s last comment relates to animals who leave Culver City and go to L.A. I assume that he is suggesting that a county-wide officer would be better equipped to deal with this as a regional issue, given the fact that our city is surrounded by L.A. A fair point, but only if Mr. Corlin also supports contracting out our police services to the County Sheriff. Obviously, all of our city’s staffers have to interact with their counterparts in L.A. and all neighborhood cities. But that’s a ridiculous reason to get rid of any of our local services and use County officers instead.
I look forward to tonight’s meeting and hope that the opposition brings better arguments than these.
Mr. Silbiger is the son of Vice Mayor Gary Silbiger.
