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Find out how:
No Kill Houston has had many meetings with Stephen Williams and his Incident Command Team. We have heard many promises that gave us hope that Williams was sincere in his desire to make improvements at BARC. But, after many months of working hard on various committees but seeing no real improvements in the kill rate, the inhumane treatment or disease prevention, we have given up hope. On 6/29 I asked Mr. Williams point blank over and over what has been done to reduce the killing and the only answer I received was that it looks better and smells better. So, just as many animals are dying horrible deaths in a building that looks and smells better. We're not impressed.
We believe hiring of Mr. Sim only proves Mr. Williams lack of committment to real life saving change at BARC. Mr. Sim stays in his office with the door shut every day. He is being "mentored" every single day by Dr. Terasso but is still failing to do the most basic things such as reaching out to the community. Some of the kennel attendants are literally starving animals to death, yet there are no repercussions and these employees are simply moved to another Ward to torture a different group of animals. This must stop!
We must stand together and DEMAND change.
Contact the Mayor and City Council. Send a letter to them today.
Click here for a form letter you can download and send.
Feel free to add your own feelings
Contact Info for City of Houston / BARC personnel
UPDATE 06/2009
Winograd has sent sent the city 3 requests for information. The city said they will have all the information to respond to the 2nd request by the end of June.
Winograd just sent the 3rd request last weekend. It was pretty short. As soon as the city gets all the requested information to Winograd and he has a chance to review, then he can schedule his visit.
UPDATE 05/2009
Nathan Winograd has requested additional information from the City of Houston / BARC. We have not received confirmation of the date of Mr. Winograd's assessment of BARC.
UPDATE 04/2009
Stephen Williams, Director of Health and Human Services relayed the following information to me.
Williams is talking to Winograd about perhaps being involved in a more ongoing fashion. He said he was thinking about having Winograd on a retainer so that he could have him back in Houston periodically.
He said he was out at BARC recently and saw things he was not pleased with. He is seeing that there are supervision and accountability issues. I agreed because I'm still seeing issues that were supposed to be fixed some time ago. I'm not sure if this is something that Williams will ask Winograd to assist with, or if he will continue to try to solve it with his staff. I was just glad to hear that he is seeing some of the same things I've seen. BTW: I asked him what I should do when I saw issues a BARC and he said to report it to the manager on duty right then. If that didn't fix it, then I should escalate it to the next level. You all can do this as well, if you wish.
Williams visited the San Francisco SPCA (where Winograd was director) and a couple other shelters when they were in CA last week. I asked him what he thought and he said the first thing he noticed was a different attitude with the employees. He said there is a different culture there. That is something he would like to change at BARC. Last Monday, I had told him that one of the
things that I heard from many shelter directors at the No Kill conference in DC was that once a no kill director got to a shelter, there was a always big turnover in staff. Either they left on their own or were fired. That was the one thing that they ALL said.
He said they have been frustrated trying to change the culture and attitudes of current employees, along with trying to hire new people with the right attitudes.
UPDATE 04/2009
BARC's Mission Statement - Working towards a No Kill city.
UPDATE 10/2008
In October 2008, the City of Houston agreed to hire Mr. Winograd to perform an assessment of B.A.R.C. (Bureau of Animal Regulation and Care i.e. animal control or city pound). Citizens of Houston raised the money to pay for Mr. Winograd's fees.
After almost 4 months of negotiations, the city finally signed Mr. Winograd's assessment contract. There is still quite a bit of information that the city must supply to Mr. Winograd before he can come to Houston for the assessment. We will keep you updated.
Click here to view the Assessment Contract
Contact Info for City of Houston / BARC personnel
