The Bids Are In: What Type of Animal Control and Services Are Appropriate for Fulton County?

In Fulton County, Georgia, a vote on a new provider for Animal Services is imminent.

WE MUST ACT NOW because the formal contract with the previous provider is over and our animals are in danger.

Are you tired of: Your tax dollars in Fulton County going to the killing of our lost, healthy and adoptable pets? Paying for failure to reunite pets with owners? Mismanagement of funds?

http://www.change.org/petitions/fulton-county-government-select-lifeline-animal-project-to-run-fulton-county-animal-services PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION RIGHT NOW!

Recently, Fulton County reopened the bid for Animal Services. Two organizations answered the request for proposals. One is a progressive, renowned, dedicated, non-profit animal welfare organization, LifeLine Animal Project, and the other is a for-profit company called The Siwel Group, LC, with zero experience in animal welfare that promises a return to the dark ages of disastrous, regressive sheltering with Ron Totten affiliated and as the prospective shelter director.

THE COMMISSIONERS HAVE STATED THEY WANT TO MAKE THIS DECISION ON WHOM TO CHOOSE AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE SO YOUR FEEDBACK IS ESSENTIAL IMMEDIATELY!

Lifeline Animal Project has been in existence for over 10 years and a leader in progressive sheltering and spay-neuter initiatives in Atlanta. Rebecca Guinn is the Executive Director of LifeLine and is nationally recognized as an animal welfare hero. Rebecca is has dedicated her life to humane treatment for companion animals. Also skilled as an attorney, she wrote the legislation that ultimately banned the use of gas chambers in Georgia shelters.

The community must speak up now and demand that the Fulton County Commissioners select Lifeline, the provider that will work toward the goal of saving all healthy and treatable animals and servicing all County animal welfare needs.

• PLEASE share, call and write County officials and the Commissioners immediately and express your support for LifeLine at every Commissioners’ meeting until the vote. The next meeting IS CRITICAL AND will be Wednesday January 23, 2013. THE COUNTY WILL MAKE A RECOMMENDATION AS TO WHICH VENDOR ON THIS DATE and you must sign up to speak (2 minute limit) or donate your time to another speaker by 10:00 a.m that same morning. Contact info (phone and email) for the commissioners below.

REASONS to insist the Commissioners select LifeLine:

• LifeLine has 10 years of experience in humane sheltering in the Atlanta area.

• LifeLine already performs veterinary services under a contract with DeKalb County Animal Services.

• Executive Director Rebecca Guinn was recently honored by DeKalb County CEO W. Burrell Ellis, Jr. for a decade of work in animal advocacy and rescue when May 17 was proclaimed“Rebecca Guinn Day”in DeKalb County.

• LifeLine is an expert at improving municipal animal shelters, and counties such as Douglas have hired LifeLine to perform shelter evaluations.

• LifeLine has partnered with DeKalb County to drastically lower the euthanasia rate for cats.

REASONS why are our animals are in danger with the other bidder, The Siwel Group LC:

• Siwel is a for-profit company with zero background in animal welfare affiliated with Ron Totten.
• In 2003, Ron Totten left FCAS in disgrace after the community became aware of his record of killing over 80% of the pets in his care and other deplorable conditions during his tenure as shelter director.
• Totten made an unsuccessful bid to takeover the shelter in 2003 when he used a shill for-profit company, Synergy Management Systems, LLC, to try to get back into power. Synergy had only a Mailboxes Etc. address and was organized by a cosmetologist friend of Totten.
• Totten’s company was actually recommended as the FCAS vendor in 2003, allegedly due to cronyism and back door politics.
• Ron Totten was quoted in Atlanta Magazine discussing euthanasia performed “30 times a day” under his “care” and “brightened” over the prospect of getting his own incinerator to cremate the pets at the shelter instead of transporting them to landfills.
• Totten’s entire adoption strategy consisted of picking a few puppies out and calling Atlanta Humane Society to see if they might want them. The rest were killed. When asked how he determined whose lives he would spare from the mass euthanasia he performed daily, he said, “I don’t know how to describe it. I guess you would call it ‘cuteness.’”
• Under Ron Totten’s leadership, the vast majority of all animals (over 80%) were systematically killed after only 3 days without ever being put up for adoption! The public was literally not allowed into the shelter to even adopt an animal. 
• When Totten, using Synergy, bid to run FCAS in 2003, he proposed reducing staff, cutting training programs, halving the hours the shelter was open to the public for adoptions, and killing pets prior to the expiration of their County-mandated minimum hold time if it suited him.
• Totten holds no professional or college degrees and hasn’t worked in animal welfare since 2003, but instead has been working at a tax return preparation company.
• Totten has a history of proposing to eliminate services and simply catching and killing the majority of our lost pets.
• Siwel is a FOR-PROFIT organization and intends to profit off of the homeless and neglected pets of our city.
• A For Profit will lose opportunities for more funding via donations/grants = loss of more services

Our voiceless animals deserve this chance to have a humane progressive shelter, in our world class city, instead of a disgrace. Zachary Williams, outgoing County Manager, and the Commissioners have stated they wanted to award the contract to a more humane organization, but selecting Siwel will be a return to an inhumane debacle just as when Ron Totten was in charge ten years ago.

100′s of communities across the country now have modern life affirming shelters. A movie will be released in March regarding this successful type of modern shelter that LifeLine can provide. Atlanta needs to move forward not backwards and choose the only obvious competent provider, LifeLine.

PLEASE share, call and write the decision makers and Commissioners immediately.

You can forward this letter and/or use suggested emails and phone scripts.

Remind them that you are a taxpayer and that YOU DO VOTE. 

The meetings of the Commissioners are held in the Assembly Hall on the ground floor of the Fulton County Government Center, 141 Pryor Street

CONTACT INFO OF THE DECISION MAKERS:

Interim County Manager, R. David Ware, 404-612-0246,
David.Ware@fultoncountyga.gov

Department of Purchasing & Contract Compliance:
Felicia Strong-Whitaker, Interim Director, 404-612-7981/4204,
Felicia.Strong-Whitaker@fultoncountyga.gov
Charles Leonard, Chief Purchasing Agent, 404-612-5823,
Charles.Leonard@fultoncountyga.gov

Department of Planning & Community Services:
Randy Beck, Director, 404-612-8053, Randy.Beck@fultoncountyga.gov
Tony Phillips, Assistant Director, 404-612-5347, Tony.Phillips@fultoncountga.gov

Commissioners:
John H. Eaves, PH.D., Chairman, District 1 (at large),
john.eaves@fultoncountyga.gov, 404-612-8206
Robb Pitts, District 2 (at large), robb.pitts@fultoncountyga.gov, 404-612-8210
Liz Hausmann, District 3, liz.hausmann@fultoncountyga.gov, 404-612-8213
Tom Lowe, District 4, tom.lowe@fultoncountyga.gov, 404-612-8218
Emma I. Darnell, Commission Vice Chair, District 5,
emma.darnell@fultoncountyga.gov, 404-612-8222
Joan P. Garner, District 6, joan.garner@fultoncountyga.gov

, 404-612-8226
William “Bill” Edwards, District 7,
commissioner.edwards@fultoncountyga.gov, 404-612-8230

You can also contact members of the PRESS who have been reporting on Fulton County Animal Services:

Randy Travis randy.travis@foxtv.com

David Wickert dwickert@ajc.com

Visit www.petadvocatesnetwork.org for more information and the latest updates.

* Artwork generously contributed by anactofdog.org – dedicated to saving the lives of all shelter pets.

Update: *Video* Alison Hector At Fulton Commissioners Meeting 1/9/2013 -

Watch Alison Hector,Esq. inform the Commissioners about this petition and why LifeLine is the only competent choice to gain the bid for animal services.