If one is concerned about the possible straying of a pet, I would think that looking into microchipping might be a good start.
No one wants to think about pets who might have got out of their yard being put down. But there are a lot of strays, a lot of dumped animals, and a lot of puppies and kittens born who don't have good homes filling shelters and needing food and care.

I don't think the answer for a city or town or private shelter on a strapped budget is to force them to feed and keep all these animals for a long holding period without also addressing the group's financial needs.

Would you vote for a tax increase to cover these expenses?
A possible answer is to raise redemption rates, but this would not be popular. If little Fido gets out of the yard and Dad has to pay $500 to get Fido back, that would outrage a lot of people.

But the money has to come from somewhere. In these economic times, the costs of having strays in a shelter for more than a few days runs into substantial sums.

There's no question that loud collective action gets results. If everyone descends on the governor it is possible that there will be results. But without more, those finances to cover the expenses at public shelters will be taken from another program. And private shelters may simply close due to budget shortfalls.

It is a given that the program to hold these lost critters costs money. It would be both effective and responsible to look into the financial picture and help propose an answer to the shortfalls that's good for the critters but doesn't force closures or take funds from equally needed programs.

Generally animal shelters are not state-run; they are county operations and the county makes these decisions. Is it different in California?

I will protest, too, Leah, but is there anything else we can do, other than sending money and calls of protest?

So many perfectly wonderful and loving animals caged in fear there. It makes me so sad when I look at my kids and think how close most of them came. Some are quirky but they're all so very awesome.

Posted by graywings: "Generally animal shelters are not state-run; they are county operations and the county makes these decisions. Is it different in California?"

My understanding is that CA gives funding to shelters and when a shelter accepts funding they must abide by certain rules and regulations just like any other business that accepts government funding.

A shelter can refuse the money and set their own rules. This proposal by the governor only affects those shelters who apply for the state money.

It is a very unfortunate situation but the state does not have a bottomless pit of money to hand out. CA is cutting back on so many things and this is just one of them.

They are shortening the school year for children and eliminating tens of thousands teaching jobs and eliminating health insurance for nearly 250,000 needy children. Right now they are laying off 1,700 state firefighters, They are cutting $2 billion that goes to local governments to fund police and EMT services.

To save money there are plans to free 38,000 inmates and sell San Quentin prison.

Some 235,000 state workers are being given a pay cut. Of the states 279 state parks, 200 will be closed. The Cal Grant program is being eliminated making California the first US state to eliminate student financial aid while raising tuition. They are even cutting WATER SUPPLY to certain areas. OMG.

IMHO these cutbacks are much more important than making animal shelters a priority regarding monetary cutbacks. The animal shelters are not being closed - they just have new regulations. Cutting education funding, healthcare for children, fire and police services, and utilities to certain areas are of greater concern. Go ahead flame me.

*Maybe this should be moved to *Hot Topics Forum*?

Dilly Dally I agree and that was what I was trying to say, but you said it much more clearly.
When short money is an issue that is funding health care, education, fire and police, perhaps the weight of responsibility for lost dogs can be shifted somewhat onto the owner, because changing behaviors that result in less lost critters are properly the realm of those people who own them.
IMHO unless you have a ranch, most cats should be inside. I can't imagine, again excepting agriculture and stables and so on, a dog or cat going missing for three days without the owner knowing it and taking action.
Microchip. Lock the back gate. Keep Ms Kitty indoors. If you know your dog digs or jumps and can dig or jump himself out, invest in a six sided kennel.

Pets are worth taking the time to see that they won't stray, and we should expect that we the owners should bear most of that responsibility.

I'd like to hear about some of the Fat Cat cuts that are being made at the top. There is also sooo much waste and inefficiency in government and/or other large organizations. Somehow, I doubt they're running a really tight and scrupulously organized and managed ship in other ways. It's faster and easier to just start slashing the budgets.

Individually, we animal lovers should spare what funds we can to support our animal shelters, as well, in this time of economic hardship for all.

You know, this isn't the Hot Topics board. Leah only posted this to let her friends here know about something she is concerned about. A cause which she felt others might also want to support. It was not intended to be turned into a hot debate. Everyone knows that money doesn't grow on trees.

CA has a 24.3 billion dollar budget deficit. Many, many programs, maybe jobs, salaries, will have to be cut. It's really hard to choose where and which ones to cut because you are always going to get someone upset. So the governor makes some proposals to sell some land or make some cuts and the voters turn them down. I do agree that holding a pet only 3 days is ridiculous. Even 6 days is too short a time.

CA is a mess, financially and in many other categories. I hope the whole state does not go broke. The rest of the country will probably have to pay for like a 50 billion bailout for CA. It ain't going to be pretty.

Every time a budget cut is brought up, a response one can count on is the point that some parts of the budget are bloated. And there is no doubt that is true, and no realistic doubt that if they are protected enough to be bloated now, it's gonna be an uphill battle to slim them down.

The problem is, we aren't the ones wielding the knife, cutting the budget. It makes sense to look at the situation, just for a moment, not as the pet lovers we are, but through the eyes of someone in the gov't that has to make cuts to match what is in the government purse.

Think. Write. Propose. I believe those are effective steps and ones to model to your children and family.

BTW Squirrel. If someone posts here, followup posts detailing how a more effective response will help the OP's cause should not be criticized.

I think the lives of animals should have the same priority as anything else. We're talking about killing companion animals. I know millions of pet owners would much rather take a pay cut then have their animal killed.

They should raise the fee for licensing and charge fees to back yard breeders. If it comes down to having to kill animals or stopping the senseless breeding of so many, people will chose to tax back yard breeders. There are always solutions to these problems but they take work and lets face it, killing the animals is so much easier, right?

If they start taxing back yard breeders today, by years end they'd make enough money to fund the entire shelter operation.

Dilly, do you live in CA?

followup posts detailing how a more effective response will help the OP's cause should not be criticized.

Lucille, I agree, posts like that are surely useful, constructive, and rounded. I didn't mean quite that, or find your posts anything but. It's the Hot Topics or 'flame me' approach that I was referring to. I don't think Leah wanted to wage a war around animal rights or politics, starting more trouble here again. I think that's also something good to keep in mind. Aside from the general peace and respect for her intentions aspect, I've had a thread I started around animals go very bad here and it's not fun, nor does it feel good, to have your thread take a turn like that.

Boy is CA in big trouble. I found this today:

SACRAMENTO What budget crisis?

As California faces what one official this week called a complete meltdown of state government, some lawmakers have their minds on other matters.

Such as creating a blueberry commission. Or standing up for pomegranate juice. And, in what passes for health reform in the nation's most populous state, ensuring that the name tags of medical workers are in an 18-point font.

Those are among the hundreds of bills being debated in the Legislature as the state faces a $24.3 billion deficit and the prospect of running out of cash by late July.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has urged lawmakers to act swiftly so the state can pass a budget before the fiscal crisis deepens.

The lawmakers' attention on less pressing issues some of them much less pressing earned a rebuke from the Republican governor. He even endorsed the idea of converting the Legislature to part-time status to focus lawmakers' attention on only the most important topics.

If lawmakers worked part-time, he said, "they would probably concentrate more on the serious work and not some of the bills that come down . . . for creating a blueberry commission and so on. There would not be time for that," he recently told the editorial board of The Sacramento Bee.

Among the more eyebrow-raising bills pending in the state Legislature are ones that would:

# Ensure that juice sold as "pomegranate" is 100 percent pomegranate.

# Teach ninth- and 10th-graders about the value of organ donation.

# Ban toy cigarette lighters.

# Require day cares to serve only healthy food to children.

# Mandate 18-point font on health workers' name tags.

Assemblywoman Fiona Ma, a Democrat from San Francisco, is the author of the name-tag bill and another that would establish a commission to promote California's growing blueberry industry. The commission's $1.2 million annual budget would come from a surcharge on blueberries.

A spokeswoman for Ma declined to comment on her bills. In a written statement, she said the Legislature is working on measures to improve education, increase access to healthcare and keep jobs in the state. She did not mention blueberries or directly refer to the name-tag requirement.

The leader of the state Senate, President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, said he is not "spending a moment on any of those measures" as he concentrates on the budget problems.

"I understand the perception. But at the same time, this is a body of 120 members, and the members are entitled to bring forward their ideas," said Steinberg, a Democrat from Sacramento. "I would hate to see the day where any leader or any system said to people, 'You can't introduce the following idea.' This is democracy."

Legislative leaders said they are having daily hearings on how to close the budget deficit, even if individual lawmakers are promoting their own bills.

They note that nearly all bills with multimillion-dollar price tags are off the table this year as California faces deep spending cuts amid a sharp decline in tax revenue.

Schwarzenegger has proposed eliminating healthcare for 1 million low-income children and the program that helps welfare recipients find work. Billions of dollars are expected to be cut from education, and 5,000 state workers face layoffs. Nearly all government employees have been ordered to take furloughs and salary rollbacks that amount to a 15 percent pay reduction.

Not all legislative action has been easy to mock, said Shannon Murphy, a spokeswoman for Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles.

The Assembly has passed bills to help California collect billions in federal stimulus funding, offer financial help to counties hit by last year's wildfires, and place tighter regulations on mortgage brokers.

"This is not business as usual," Murphy said.

In a typical year, California lawmakers introduce about 2,800 bills and approve about a third of them, slightly ahead of the national average, said Brenda Erickson of the National Conference of State Legislatures. There also are limits: 50 bills per lawmaker per session in the Senate and 40 in the Assembly. That's far short of the five-bill per lawmaker limit in Colorado, but stricter than most states, Erickson said.

The 455 bills the California Assembly approved last year cost the state's general fund $5.9 million, compared with an eight-year annual average of $644 million. In the Senate, which passed 964 of the 1,726 bills introduced, the cost to the general fund was $3.6 million, according to the Senate president pro tem's office.

How many bills Schwarzenegger will sign into law is unclear. Last fall, he rejected 35 percent of the bills sent to his desk, explaining that the record-long budget impasse over the summer left him time to evaluate only the highest-profile bills.

History could repeat itself this year as lawmakers try to set aside deep ideological differences and find common ground to balance the budget.

Time is not on their side. On Wednesday, state Controller John Chiang released a statement saying tax revenue in May was $827 million below projections. The state is "less than 50 days away from a meltdown of state government," he said

Schwarzenegger could use his authority to call lawmakers into a special session that would prevent them from taking up any items unrelated to the budget but so far has not done so. While the governor has made clear his frustration with the slow pace of negotiations, he has expressed confidence that will change as the financial deadlines draw near.

"I know they will speed up and they will take this seriously," Schwarzenegger said.

"Please join the battle cry. Call the governors office at 916-445-2841 or e-mail him at http://gov.ca.gov/interact#email.";

When a thread calls out to rally support from board members to contact a governor for taxpayer funding for an elective program - it is a political issue. It belongs in the *Hot Topics Forum* or in this particular case in the *Animal Debates Forum* for discussion.

The state of California is also cutting funding to a number of other programs. Since this is the *Decorating Forum* I would never think to start a thread asking members to "join the battle cry" and contact the governor to indicate my displeasure in the cuts to funding to abortion and family planning services which is also going on right now. Dispite the fact that the vast majority of board members here are women who would/should have a strong interest in the matter and how it proceeds, how well would that have gone over??

From article:

"Now that California voters have overwhelmingly rejected a package of budget measures and the state faces a more than $20 billion deficit, Planned Parenthood affiliates in the state are sending out urgent email alerts to their supporters pleading with them to contact the legislature to prevent any reduction in the millions of taxpayer money Planned Parenthood receives each year......... We're talking about the nation's largest abortion provider losing 90% of its funding in the State of California."

http://www.calcatholic.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?id=980a175c-f9e9-4432-b988-0036a433049f

--------------------------------------------

Posted by love2decorate : "Dilly, do you live in CA?"

No. No, I do not. But I do read the news a lot.

The financial crisis CA is facing may affect all of us Americans if the Federal government has to bail out CA which has been talked about. I am concerned where my money is going and why. As a PP has already pointed out, CA is going broke, and the Federal government is not going to allow any state to go broke and secede from the nation. This whole CA thing going on right now is going to have repercussions for every American. If CA is going to continue to toss taxpayer money towards limo rides for politicos and no kill animal shelters, there is going to be a huge backlash from the other 49 states when they are asked to pony up.

We all have our concerns whether it be education, senior meal programs, health care for children, whatever. As I pointed out before, the animal shelters are not being closed down and those that do not receive taxpayer funding can run them as they wish with their own rules. They will just have to find the money to run them, from sources other than the taxpayers. A rallying cry to prompt donations to animal shelters and make people aware of the funding cut is a great idea! Starting a political movement, for any cause whatsoever, is rather out of place.

Not trying to start another "hot topic" but I find it interesting how they use the words "planned parenthood" in the same sentence with "abortion". It sounds like they are using abortion for birth control. It might be a good thing for people to realize abortion should not be used as a method of birth control. That's what they make pills and other products for to prevent pregnancy.

So far we have animal rights and abortion. We still need homosexuality, legalizing drugs, open marriage, prostitution, and painting one's home lavender.

Three days is ridiculous. When you start with cuts, wouldn't you put cutting life at the bottom of the list?

They could just legalize pot and tax it and that would pull California (and the other states as well) right out of that ol' financial hole. It's estimated in CA it would fatten the coffers by over a billion dollars in taxes collected, plus it would create lots of new green jobs.

Three days is ridiculous. When you start with cuts, wouldn't you put cutting life at the bottom of the list?

Ditto. I believe they can do better.

I can't believe the irony. He should be the last person to want to go on record as advocating killing off more imprisoned beings...