good afternoon members thank you for being near the meeting of the housing human services and transportation committee we're now come to order it as one thirty two p m on thursday september first the sixteen i'm calling a brief recess before going to a further p m on thursday september first twenty sixteen before we begin maglis requests that we all turn off or silence our cell phones or other noisemaking devices at this time i'd like to introduce thank you we have a full thank you very much for being here at this time i'd like to introduce our administration representatives director of housing and human concerns carol reiman morning good afternoon started with public testimony assisting us this afternoon from the hon a district office is  for public testimony for individuals who would be testifying in the chamber please sign up at the desk located in the eight floor lobby just outside the chamber door if you will be testifying from the remote testimony locations specified on the meeting agenda please sign up with the council staff at that location testimony will be limited to the item listed on the agenda to be pursuant to the rules up to counsel each testifier will be allowed to testify for up to three minutes per item with one minute to conclude if request it when testifying please take your name and the name of any organiz ation you are representing do we have any testifiers in the chamber i'm just going to double check again with our district office is there anyone wishing to provide testimony from we will look at on our agenda eighty h t dash one per end seven pursuant to rule seven per be of the rules of the council the committee intends to receive a presentation from representatives from the animal management program department of housing and human concerns on topics such as resources and services available through the county for animal care for animal matters and other related services so we'll have today's presentation on resources and services provided by the county's animal management program department of housing and human concerns the committee may receive a presentation from the mo we humane society and other service providers and discuss related matters no later legislative action will be taken members at this time i'd like to ask if the department of housing and human concerns have any comments before we introduce our panelists thank you chair yes we have some opening remarks so pursuant to title six of the my we county code in section seven one one one one zero nine of the why the vice statutes regarding the shelter care and prevention of cruelty to old homeless abandoned sick or injured animals the more we county is mandated to establish and maintain animal management shelter and supplemental program services for fiscal year two thousand and seventeen the maui county council has appropriated the department of housing and human concerns budget a total of one million six hundred eighty four thousand nine hundred forty six dollars for the animal management program funding was awarded to the following agencies to accomplish the proposed services the most humane society receives eight hundred sixty three thousand two hundred fifty five dollars for animal shelter to accept animals such as stray abandoned or victims of neglect or cruelty the lanai animal rescue receives fifteen thousand dollars to assistance support the community and increase the value and perception of cats through intervention collaboration and humane population management of homeless feral cats the most humane society receives one hundred thirty seven thousand six hundred thirty four dollars to keep the large population of stray and feral animals off the streets and by preventing unwanted looters to spay and neuter ing and strengthening the bonds between the people of and animals through education advocacy and humane sheltering and veterinary care of animals in addition we quest for proposals were solicited for the animal enforcement and spay neuter programs grant funding was awarded to the mo humane society as follows for the animal managed excuse me for the animal enforcement program five hundred sixty one thousand and fifty seven dollars for the enforcement of laws and regulations governing animal control for the spay neuter program one hundred thousand dollars was awarded to promote the availability and provide a no cost spay neuter service for my wee county animals cats dogs and feral cats we are here to answer any questions along with me is our deputy director john thank you very much thank you director as our director stated this afternoon we have representatives from the department of housing and members of demoing humane society humane society and ken cat sanctuary in attendance all of these agencies are grant recipients steps you've heard of county funds and provide animal related services throughout the community so joining us this afternoon i will like to introduce the executive director of the humane society and cio introduce her staff and her experts on t different programs thank you for being here ok better thank you committee chair carollo and council committee met miners thank you so much for having us we really appreciate the opportunity to come in today and share some more information about the humane society and the services and programs that we offer i also very much appreciated the opportunity to bring in some of my key staff over the last couple years since i took over at the shelter you've heard me speak about now a humane society several times so i thought it was great that we could mix it up a little bit today and that my staff had the opportunity to speak to you directly about the services and programs that they directly oversee i also want to take this opportunity to thank you for awarding humane society the spay and neuter our f p that was very much appreciative and appreciated and very forward thinking and because of this we are now able to offer our community a service that really gets the people who needed it the most and that instead of coupons for spam neuter it means free speech and neuter so there's that should be no more barriers no more excuses so i'll just take a moment and introduce my staff and i think i've asked them to keep their overview brief and i wasn't sure how much time they would have but of course we welcome any questions so first here next to me is our director of humane and for smith mark wilson and he has been at the shelter with us now on over a couple years and came to us with over thirty years of  human enforcement experience so we were happy to have him and next to him is dr lisa loeb rec and she is our director of community and spay neuter programs so she is the one who will directly  close really happy to help her and then next to her is dr meo cam and she is director of veterinary services at the shelter and she's been with us over twenty years now so we appreciate her very much and then last but certainly not least is jamie fitzpatrick she is our director of animal and client services she's been with us at the shelter now i think over three years and came to us from oregon  with over ten years of animal sheltering experience so she brings a wealth of knowledge with her to the shelter and we really benefit from that so thank you and again we welcome any questions that you might have and i don't know if we society thank you for being here this afternoon really appreciate your the presence and hopefully we can hear and get an overview from you both of you also so at this mr bryant will just have your presentation and overview from your manners and stuff ok i think jamie we're going to start with you all right my name is jamie fitzpatrick and i'm the director of animal and client service animal and client services for the maui humane society i oversee our customer service our animal care and our adoption teams at the shelter so that's a big chunk of our of our operations and our customer service team we handle all animal intakes that include strays pet surrendered by their owners and also animals who are coming into the shelter receiving end of life services families who are bringing their pets in for owner of quest to do thin asia or cremation services last fiscal year this included just under eight thousand animals that were received into the shelter and what that looks like for us is an average of twenty two animals coming in the doors every day each and every day all year that percentage is on that that's fifty five percent of those animals are cats thirty percent  dogs and fifteen percent are others like rabbits birds wildlife other domestic pocket pets in thing like that our customer service team also handles the issuing of dog licenses and cordoning coordinating efforts to get animals returned to their owners through tracking identification like licenses or microchips and also searching our lost and found reports that are submitted by customers who are missing pets our animal care team focuses on meeting the daily needs of animals who are in care in the shelter and at max capacity that might be up to two hundred animals at the facility at a time and so our animal care team is primarily responsible for meeting their needs and seeing to their basic basic care our adoption team focuses on marketing our animals of both in our facility and on line to help maximize our lifesaving efforts we also courtenay transfers to other organizations whether it's to other government agencies like the ellen are when we get in wildlife who they would oversee or transferring of adoptable animals to other organizations who help find more homes than our community can find homes for humane society we care about the challenges that are prevented by free roaming feral cats and we have a dedicated staff member who serves as the community liaison to assist community members to get them information and resources to help them mitigate the impact of these populations even in just my department we do so much more than those quick highlights i just went over but i do want to make sure i stayed in time and passed the mike on down and i'm happy to answer questions at any time ok thank you jamie i think next we have a mark if you wouldn't mind giving us an overview on the humane enforcement department thank you good afternoon chamber chamber members my name is mark wilson i am the director of humana foresman and now human society in my department we have nine people assigned to it one director seven officers one of which is a supervisor one dispatcher coordinator we have combined experience of my to perm to forty two years of law enforcement sixty three years of  humana force meant three officers have completed academy training and four schedule to complete their second phase this year we have three certified cruelty investigators and one equine investigator we have island wide responsibility and we respond to calls twenty four hours a day seven days a week three hundred sixty five days of the year four days a week we have two officers and one dispatcher working during the day and one night shift officer three days a week there's one officer working and one dispatcher working during the day and one night shift officer to staff the dispatcher position during the three days we pass the pull an officer off the road to staff the phones and dispatch officers patrol and respond to all calls in central maui country  in that order to the staffing levels the hyaena and honna are called based responses generally emergencies only we will respond to if the public calls in and they capture or they have an animal that they need to turn over to us i'm sorry line we will respond to hon and also if there is an emergency even though we don't have an officer down there we will go down for an emergency our office is dry we're sixty five thousand miles a year to parma receives over four hundred calls from the public our officers handle an additional five hundred  know our department receives over four thousand calls to the public from the public per year or officers to handle initial fifty five hundred officer initiated calls these are follow ups proactive on view violations and beach and park patrols that's over seven hundred  ninety calls a month that these officers are handling my department carries over no less than twenty five to thirty open cases from month to month as a department due to staffing levels thirteen percent of the non emergency or non immediate calls may not be handled at that same day it will be handled next they are a process of layer the services we offer as to the public for my department we investigate reported animal crimes such as cruelty and neglect cases dogs off leash in humane living conditions from the public and trap cats from government agencies who provide emergency services in the field for injured animals we pick up straight domesticated animals we pick up deceased dogs and cats from our roadways as well as remove them from private property or officers thank you thank you mark doctor  aloha good afternoon council chair and council members my name is kim and i'm the director of it mary services at the mo humane society i've been there for a little over twenty years as julian said and my department provides the medical needs for the animals at the shelter we evaluate all animals that are entering the shelter we will do health exams which would include necessary vaccinations warmings for internal parasites treatment for extra parasites such as fleas and ticks and laboratory tests such as checking for heartworms all or adopted animals are spayed or neutered and also receive a microchip before leaving the shelter if animals are found to have medical issues then we will address them many animals receive daily medication and care for their conditions by my staff we make every attempt to have our animals leave the shelter healthier than when they entered so they can have a fresh start in their new home we also provide complementary medical rechecks on all adopted animals within their first two weeks of adoption we attend to all injured and sick animals that might be brought to the shelter providing hospitalization and supportive care as needed some of these are reclaimed by their owners and they would be then take their own private fit for follow up care but unfortunately the majority of them are not reclaimed so then we would provide follow up care in our hospital and we have our own privately funded programs to help provide for this these can range from simple wound care and infections to major surgeries were a hardworking dedicated group of professionals that truly believe in what we do we are committed to improving the lies of the animals in maui county thank you thank you thank you dr kam dr lisa quality high volume spay neuter surgery and i was hired to oversee the spay neuter services at the humane society for the community at large rather than the shelter animals these services are provided both in our clinic five days a week as well as at our outside mash clinics that you may have heard about that have been going on since april of two thousand and fifteen we have had ten clinics so far and four thousand three hundred fifty six animals have been spayed or neutered at those clinics alone thanks to the recent funds from you all thank you so much we are now able to provide for you spain neuter every day in our clinic to the community with this grant we expect to spay and neuter one thousand five hundred thirty eight animals this fiscal year in addition to that we have other private grants that allow us to do  we are undergoing an expansion right now of our veterinarian facility at the humane society so that we can offer even more spaying neutering help the community more over the coming year we have some other grant applications in the works as well to provide additional funding for community spain neuter and thanks to all of this as julian said earlier we are now able to provide free spain neuter for any dog or cat in maui county and that is huge  it's a very exciting time it's exciting for me to be part of such a progressive organization that's committed to reducing overpopulation and is committed to working with the community to take the lead in animal welfare in mallee county thank you thank you thank you dr lisa do you have anything else to spread oh i'm really proud of my team and that we have made you know prior to a couple years ago when we made our big changes at the shelter the humane society was doing a good job and i never want to make it seem like it wasn't it was it's just bad with new new leadership comes new perspective and fresh eyes and we took a close hard look at our agency and how effective we were being and we knew we could do better and that was in two thousand and fourteen and since then we haven't left anything on the table and we're trying every day and evaluating our systems our policies our protocols and we're not complacent we we want the community to be proud of their humane society i think they i'd like to extend a special model for supporting our organizations throughout the years and currently this year fifteen thousand dollars grants has really helped us continue to do what we do we are the only animal welfare organization on the island we provide a humane solution to the feral cat problem our work benefits not only cats but also native endangered birds on the island our work also benefits the entire community so whether you're a cat lover cat hater or a conservationists we are removing approximately one hundred fifty cats a year off of the landscape and molly county helps us do this we are a small staff of four managing the needs of five hundred and one cats every day of the week yes it's challenging in addition to our your grant de trippers from maui and other tourists play a big role in helping us find excuse me helping us fund what we do for the first six months of this year we've had over three hundred thirteen hundred visitors we get very little financial support from local and the residents so we have come to rely on donations from visitors to the island as well as your grant we have gained the attention from other local animal welfare agencies as well as national one such as a humane society of the united states and best friends animal society we have also been recognized but conservation emerging american bird conservancy and have been in discussions recently with the state department of land and natural resources i didn't courage each of you to stop by and visit us one day soon and thank you very much today my name is holiday this and i'm the executive director of the humane society were a small organization there are five staff members and you know congratulations to them our humane society i'm kind of overwhelmed with what they've you know achieved over the last few years our goal has always been span neuter that's our number one priority last year we did about five hundred sixty spander surgeries and we only had a veterinarian for half the year  is a double that we keep our services at thirty and twenty dollars for dogs and cats perspectively and that is with the funding from the county of maui and we've also incorporated are incorporated free to low cost clinics which are its pricing based on a first come first serve basis for cat surgeries once a month and that allows people to get free surgeries so that there isn't any financial burden for community cats our goal with this year is to target the larger population of unknown cats in the community and we are going to be hosting some large scale spaniard or clinics as well later this year we're also incorporating a free vaccine clinic four of them that we're going to be holding th community outreach we are also shifting a larger focus to education this year we've always gone out into the elementary schools and focused on that age group this year we're providing more trainings to targeted groups such as our hunting communities which would bring in both groups like the nature conservancy as well as subsistence hunters and with that we're going to stress the importance of span neuter as well as proper animal care  and then one of the biggest add on for this year that we're able to provide to the community support for animal control officers animal control to separate entity from the i'm sorry the molokai humane society but what we found is that it's difficult to place animals into forever homes when they are sick when their mouth nourished when they have been coming from either abandoned neglected or abusive households and we are able to provide the support and care and medication that they need to be placed into you know forever homes and hopefully that will also limit the burden of having to transport animals off island and send them here to maui and beyond and none of these things would be available to you without the support from the county so thank you so much thank you members you've heard our panelists all the wonderful services  panda at the mouth humane society about fifteen percent of our intake is made up of non cats and dogs the majority of that is going to be domestically pocket pets rabbits guinea pigs parakeets love birds those guys little bit of livestock a little bit of wildlife spam neuter we also provide for rabbits and then we also have outside programs beyond what animal management covers but we are working with everything on the island from large animals livestock tortoises birds whatever comes  n thank you unless you we recently changed our name we were formally called the animal rescue center and that's simply because the founder kathy carroll when she first founded it had the vision of kind of handling all lot of animals running lose you know all over the place growing or is it staying pretty steady generally and maybe you have a good idea thank you well jamie can speak to our stray numbers as far as our intake numbers at the humane society we see them thankfully gradually decreasing what we i guess probably  would associate that with our aggressive spay and neuter efforts and the efforts that have been going on over the years but i don't know if you have a percentage of what animals come in a stray or not for dogs still over half of the dogs who are coming into the shelter arriving as strays and for cats it's vastly more than fifty percent it's a much higher percentage of cats were coming in ours and thank you jamie so you'll probably notice as you drive around that you don't see a lot of dogs crossing the street and running  you know you don't see if our if our intake is quote is about seventy five hundred you're not going to see thousands of animals running around throughout the year and that's because we have quick response with humane enforcement and i don't know marc if you have any comments that you want to add because it's his officers that would be going out and picking up those straight animals and bringing them into the shelter more people can form a leash law here on our numbers would drop to see stana most strays injured all that would drop last year last fiscal year we picked up five hundred twenty four stray animals now that is actually a decline over the last two years of the injured animals we picked up it was one hundred fifty four which is also decline and only fifty of deceased dogs off the road so we're showing a definite decline as far mileage and our patrol hours are going up in the community that's one that's wonderful there we don't have the stray dogs you mentioned something that i was going to ask  who is responsible for animals that are injured or killed along the side of road if it's an injured animal normally a dog or cat on the road the humane society handles out for non dogs and cats depending on which roadway if it's a county roadway then county roads picks it up or the state highway department picks it up if it's an injured we're going to pick it up unless it's wildlife and we're not equipped for every day and i'm always on the road i'm a real road runner and you see this is animals and you see them and they're there and they're there and they're there and they run over and then they're there and it kind of makes you feel really bad i mean every time you have to see this and i don't know if everybody knows who to call to have it picked up we get more we get most of the calls ninety nine percent of the calls we get if we go to the police department he gets transferred over to us and then we will refer them or call during what we do is call the county or the state ourselves and let them know that dam is out there and i have no idea what the response time is for that we thank you very much i think it's a good thing for the public to hear so that they know more or less if they see one  up from our enforcement department we do have concerns concerned citizens in the community who do pick up the strays and bring them in and then we have the ability to receive them twenty four hours a day and then one other thing i apologize i was remiss earlier i do have one other director here today and that is my director of finance and that's doris mcfarland and so if there's any questions regarding budget have heard a lot of discussion about people who don't want their neutered or spayed how do you handle that and are there other locations that require that whoever wants to yes we do have a few we try to educate people first of all to explain that there's a lot of medical benefits to getting your animal fixed there's also some alternatives we have sometimes men that don't want their dogs neutered and there is alternative sterile chemical sterilization that is available most of all i think we would just really emphasized education there are so many reasons why they should spay and neuter and i kind of wanted to add to you know the spices question about just the stray animals a few years ago we had a special initiative or we went out into hanna and we offered free spain neuter free microchip being and free vaccinations for the animals there we did that for about two years and we watched our statistics on animal intake and it was amazing how much it dropped it literally dropped for cats like sixty over sixty percent of intake of cats from hon over as soon as we started the program and i think it was more than just the spay neuter i think it was when we started to provide for their animals i think people took more pride in them and had more responsibility for them and when we would go out  subsequent trips we had a lot of people that would just stop by and say you know we used to always have dogs come and bother our cats or bother our house and now we don't you know we don't have that problem anymore so i think that spay neuter also is so important in really encourage people to spay neuter in other words you're like we right now i think it's only seven dollars if your animal is fixed and i'm not sure thirty one but there are some counties that you might have to pay one hundred twenty if your animal is it's  higher price if you're going to have a breeding animal and oftentimes that's enough to convince people that it's cheaper for me to just fix them rather than pay that higher price so it's called differential licensing and sometimes that helps so we do have the differential licensing right now but it's just what you mentioned about education you have somewhat of a platform right now is there something that you can tell people yes watching because there's a lot of reasons so ok so for for females if you spin that or your dog lists then before they come into their first teeth you basically eliminate any chance of breast cancer once they've come into heat and there's a higher risk for breast cancer and that's the most common cancer of female dogs for male dogs well actually any dog you get a lot of roaming a lot of dogs hit by car are out there because they're roaming and they're roaming because they're either in heat or they're smelling a dog in heat and the hormones are really dogs would do anything to get out of even a fenced area to go in search of a female in heat or if they're female in heat they will go out themselves too so it just having them fixed behaviors is a lot of dog fighting and cats too if you knew it or a male cat they will tend to stay close to home and they won't fight as much there are a lot of diseases of cats feline leukemia and  immunodeficiency virus these are often spread by fighting we find the highest incidence of human immunodeficiency virus or if i in a neutered male cats because they are spread by fighting and they're the ones that are the primary ones fighting out there very high incidence of pyometra or infection of the uterus we see a large percentage of that even routinely on a routine spay people bring their animal for routine spay will open them up and their uterus will be filled with pus and they don't even know that the animal was sick until we talk to them and they say oh you know we noticed they were feeling a little poorly or we'll get the call from someone that says i just took my dog to the vet it's going to cost me two thousand dollars because they said my dog's got a pyometra can you help me and that's an emergency because sometimes if you let it go it'll rupture and you'll have have to unfold with us so yes you definitely want to if you're not if your dog is not going to be a breeding dog there's no reason to not fix them because you will end up with a pile meacher we have a lot of people that will say oh my dogs too old they're not going to get pregnant they can if they can get up and i've seen some old dogs get pregnant and when they're that old twelve years old and pregnant it's a real toll to comment on what's kind of going on lanai and to answer both questions so our nation's relatively new it started in two thousand and four and roughly from two thousand and four to about two thousand and thirteen there were about fifteen hundred cats that were spayed and neutered on the island and at that time the organization didn't have the resources to be able to house them all so we were spaying and neutering and releasing in two thousand thirteen we made a big organizational shift and decided not to return cats to where we either got them from or where they came from and as far as i know i think we're the only organization that is done that and we made that shift primarily because of the native birds and endangered species on the island so what we've done is we every cat that is brought to us in every cat that is is trapped we also work with the island's natural resources department and they bring cats to us we agree that we will not release the cat so what we had to do this past year is basically extend our or expand our facility so we were fifteen thousand square feet from two out well december november december of two thousand and fifteen and we just expanded to twenty five thousand square feet we are at five hundred and one caps right now and our capacity we're thinking it as well out of five hundred seventy five dealing with the few feeders that are left for example there's an area called the community gardens over the past year we have brought in over one hundred cats from these gardens and that's simply because of the unmanaged colonies that were happening so we were able to make that connection with the feeder and you know convinced him to allow us to bring the cats into our care so just a little different dynamic thank you they keep thank you you thank you for that information you guys it's really good stuff now comes the hard part you have a feral program for feral cats i'm assuming there aren't that many feral dogs that we've heard some stories you know lots of hero dogs but we also have a lot in a lot of feral chickens and i thought we had put some money in the budget at one time and again i remember for a feral chicken program have been discussed and got removed or it was just talked about you know ok what if there was any funding for a fairly chicken program what kind of things would you do or is it something that you guys don't want to tackle at this point wow that's a hard one there's not i don't have a quick or easy answer to that  one point a couple of years ago we attempted to try to find a feral chicken expert to come to maui to do an analysis on the feral chicken it we were unsuccessful at finding that individual and we tried hard and what i do know is it would take a lot it would i mean to give an example here is one example of the you know i'm not sure how many feral chickens there are on this island i don't know there's a lot i don't know if anybody has that has even a guess as to how many but  did meet with an individual who was an expert chicken trapper because it's not like trapping cats or dogs and there's only certain times of day that you are successful in trapping because the chickens roost and you have to watch your traps because if you leave them there vandalized and me we we have that problem unfortunately when we put traps out for to catch some of the stray dogs that we are having a hard time if if we're not watching oh yeah absolutely if we're not watching them so the chicken expert explained to me that you know there's only a couple times a day that a couple times of the day that you're successful in trapping and he has to watch the traps so it was a lot of information and i and i said what on a good day how many chickens can you catch in one day how many feral chickens and he said maybe thirty and that would be so i looked at ok what if i had one person full time doing nothing but trapping feral chickens it wouldn't make a dent and that's the information that i can share today i don't have it would take a lot more research and i don't is there any as anyone here from my team that has anything to add to the feral chickens and this is this one of the reasons i asked is because on my way home over by their will to the store there's somebody who actually feeds feral chickens and there were hundreds literally hundreds in that area back and she was just feeding them is there are there any restrictions on that or should there be restrictions on the what would you guys recommend because you can always make laws but if you can't enforce them exactly thank you for recognizing that no recommendations i've this is the hot seat today i think i don't have any recommendations because it does every there's consequences to every anything that we would put out there and it would take enforcement and we are stretched thin truly doing a good job with with the incredible number of calls that we receive i can't imagine if we were responsible for yeah mark do you have anything you want to add about feral you make claim to the chicken hawaii law does not allow you to kill any animal that's not your own and then it has to be done mainly so you just can't go on arbitrarily kill chickens so that creates an issue for them what to do with them in their yard so we suggest trapping them and bringing them to us which we will accept chickens ok thank you chair thank you members any other questions  comments is the victory no turning on you know it thank you very much for the information you have been able to share with us i believe you have made ma major improvements and thank you very much in that respect still not where we need to be but getting a lot closer and i think that's important what is fair or chickens feral cats fair or anything the child the chances unless the can't take ever can't afford to or whatever than the necessary challenges they may be facing my question to you is looking at these various issues until we and get a community effort maybe get a community associations involved and really look at some real true solutions for very serious because every area is a little bit different you know what i can do you know why and i talk about feral chickens chickens running free for as many years as and more years than i've been on this earth they never had mongoose they never had a mongoose on that island they never brought i mean thank god for that i think we've had a decimation of our monkeys population because you don't see them around as much but that's another story but what can we do more law is not going to solve the problem i know that unless we enforce and that means more money could we take that same money and put programs incentive programs and i think the one thing i  like differentiating making it much more much bigger seven dollars twenty dollars thirty dollars nothing to people hundred fifty dollars bam all of a sudden you get their attention so that might be an alternative and i'll look into doing something like that before his advice and i leave and see if we can get something like that for next year so the budget chair has something to work with but more importantly the bottom line is what do you think we could do and spend money and really gain the public to yes thank you well you know there's so you're question there was two parts in your question i believe the first one i'll answer i think that everyone here is hearing a common theme up here between for our for our spay and neuter program to give you an example at the college years ago a doctor came in you might want to add in on this but i just thought i'd bring this up years ago there was a cat colony there and there was two hundred cats and there was a very responsible colony caretaker and responsible means that they don't just throw food out it means that they're trapping they're removing their sterilizing if the animal is sick they're removing it they're there conscientious and they're responsible today that colony has twenty eight cats spay and neuter works trying to get people invested in spain neuter sometimes is more difficult but i'll say over a year ago we launched our mash clinics and since then as dr lisa mentioned we've sterilized almost five thousand animals and of those i think we are at about twenty eight hundred or so cats somewhere in there do you know the exact number ok lots of cats probably the majority of those were feral cats that were trapped and brought in and those cats are no longer reproducing and we might have a clinic where dr kim you might want to jump in where we would have twenty five female cats and there's some times of the year where out of those twenty five cats twenty of them might be pregnant and the other and four of them are in heat and no longer are those cats going to be reproducing and adding to the population on maui so i want again i want to thank you because in part you are helping that spay and neuter ground is a step in the right direction education absolutely i we're always looking for ways to try to educate the community unfortunately a lot of times if they're not willing to receive the message it's just a lot of blah blah blah and talk they don't hear it but we're looking for ways to to really try to communicate that message in a way that they might receive  kim dr lisa do you have any thing to add know but i just thought of something talking about laws we've often talked about the three strikes in your where if an animal is found loose and comes to us as a story by their third if we usually try to encourage people when they come to reclaim their animals to fix their animal will do it for you free and some people still resist but three strikes and you're out is on the third time you have no choice doesn't have to be three times but that was another way to really try to differentiate making it much larger where it makes good economic sense for people to do the right thing and not just having animals around because my son when he got his pit bull immediately ok and i was eleven years old and actually dying of cancer right now and the good thing about it is you got they got hospice care up there you think a hospice care flat for dogs and i don't i mean well you know what that being said yes you know being resourceful and i also being a good citizen is important and i've only found the only two ways it works is either you give an incentive or you penalize them and i think we give them the incentive by saying we'll do it for free day don't want to do it then maybe the boring issues that we should at least be aware of what's happening is there any issues that we need to be aware of for this county as it were guys to animals mosquitoes and help issues mosquitoes the vector for heartworm disease in dogs heartworm disease is an endemic problem in hawaii and that's why all dogs are recommended to be on heartworm preventative it can also be found in cats it's not as common cancer aren't the natural host but there is also heartworm preventative in cats now the question people ask is can heartworms get into people and the answer is yes it's not very common we aren't the natural host but i believe there have been many reports of people getting chest x rays and then finding a spot they think it's cancer and then they go in surgically and they find it's actually in a bear and microphone area heartworm i don't know of any dogs or cats being sources of any of those birds life stock birds and have gotten with mosquitoes no i know there are the  avian flu you know of course they're always worried about that and there were periods when they used to ask us to collect all any wildlife bird wildlife that were found dead but i don't know of any other when it comes with county funds i don't like the word free i would request that you consider what if it's a sprain order and being paid for by the county you say it is supported by the county paid for by the county sponsored by the county but i would like the individuals research we see me serious to know somebody speaking the bill is not really free we are asking taxpayers to support this program and that individual so we we refer to because our funds for spay and neuter come in a variety of ways fortunately we receive the spam neuter grant that is fifteen hundred will allow us to do fifteen hundred thirty eight surgeries  we are looking to do several thousand more through funds that we've acquired through grants we say free here because we're not jargon for it however and i i would ask jamie because she  oversees customer service that messaging is shared with and when somebody books an appointment well jamie actually if you don't mind i can't say i'm going to have you answer and then i am sorry it is so that typical messaging for something like this is someone calls asking to get their pet fixed right well great news there is a program that is subsidizing the cost of the surgery at this time so when can we get you booked and that may and we in fact we are in the process of trying to come up with a name for it's been difficult for a name for and neuter service that we're able to offer through county funds and its account and we openly share that that you are receiving this surgery today at no charge due to a generous grant from  owner from my elementary days a very low tolerance for irresponsible pet owners he knows almost no tolerance so i don't have a problem lookin at punitive measures the county can consider say i think we need that revenue we can put it back to you more personnel for enforcement or other things but i'm open to what you think is our professionals on how to well  or court dismisses it if they do certain things but a lot of r s fifty hundred dollar fines and that says it's really not cost effective or it's really not going when it crossed i would also like to see a unfit for owner law own to fit their own animal law to take those animals away from them i did five hundred eighty one cruelty in the glass cases last year rather all the time same people if we just there was a law which we could just say you know enough and take them then we could they would actually generate money and a fine with going out our front door get adopted to a family that needs them and the citation of the court within oppose you know we're happy to get citations and you know they're actually finding that the owners of these animals most of the i would say all of that goes to the judiciary and they pay these fines what's your percentage of i guess convictions that you have right now the cases that you have let's say you have one hundred cases how many of that is actually getting convictions specifically this just look at dangerous dog i don't have an actual percentage but they're very high because the procedure in which we file those is very narrow from the prosecutor in the court so identifying the dog  plane the owner and once we've done that the pretty much the case is made for us and they generally i've been here two years we've never been to trial on one yet so they're somewhere along the line they're getting pled out you know well yeah administratively cause we made an amendment to the to the dangerous dog laws so how's that working out in terms of that i guess the decision kissers the board dangerous dog board and i have we amended that law so it was more in the strait of lee you know last year we had one hundred forty dog attack investigations looking into it though eighty nine of them really weren't attacks based on the description of the attacks so we really really only fifty three actual dog attacks in which we could go forward with and out of that thirty five or sixty seventy percent of those were deemed dangerous the other twenty four were surrendered we were going to actually deem those and the people chose to surrender their animal instead of which then we euthanized and then there was only eight which got cited out of the actual cases that were true dog bites comparison to ten percent of the dogs that were deemed prior to you guys children legislation so it was very effective yes very good and then getting back to here on issue on the cruelty to animals laws to our you don't have the ability to confiscate the animal at some point we have the ability to take them initially if they can't correct the problem but once they correct the problem we have to give the dog back only two sections if we do a cruelty investigation we will hold on to the dog until court cases been decided but for that most of them are really cases and we have to give the dog back once vet care if we think for vet care once vet care been done and we send them to their own bat the dog has to be returned if it's just strictly water and food once the violation of the take care of we have to give the dog back there is no law on the books allows us to just take their dogs i thought there was but ok so then you do cite them for cruelty to animals so as a petting mr mean here the cruelty ones we absolutely cite for the neglect differential licensing and the three strike type method how would the animal community react to that because sometimes as you know we get a lot of pushback when we start you know looking into amending the laws and would this be a type of you know you know cry out to look you're preventing animals for procreating you do spayed or neutered or your animal or we do the three strike method which we are we going to be in the hot seat at that point you guys can be well i can give my initial answer and then i'll ask my team or anybody here that if they have any other comments i think anytime we implement anything that means stricter regulations or more money we're always going to have a few people there's going to be some people who are going to protest i personally don't think that that would that having a larger differential would create a big backlash and that's you know you never know until you do something that's my opinion i don't think so i think a lot of many people do the right thing many people do spay and neuter their animals many people are on the fence yeah we want to but it's not the right time or it's not convenient or got to talk to my husband again and i think that if you're faced with paying seven dollars for a license for your sterilized animal or for two years or paying whatever it is one hundred twenty dollars that that feels that's painful and i think that i don't i don't know you know we might have some grumbling but i don't see a huge backlash do you james anybody  t i was just going to say as someone who works in the front office at the maui humane society shelter i would agree with what with what your lien is saying there there would would be grumbling there would be upset but it's the very few and the very vocal and it's those animals that are actually causing part of our problems it's those those dogs who have come into the shelter because they were running straight because they were at large because they were causing problems who are now here  with us and we're imposing the fees and forcing the licensing and everything and that's when i get called up to a sort them out if they need that calming to happen so yes absolutely there would be voices raised about that but that is the very few the very small and often that's where the problem is coming from i'd like to just entertain a different perspective and i and i come from about thirteen years of animal welfare experience primarily on a wall who working for i mean city which is very very large shelter when i was working there is about twenty five thousand animals coming in a year i think that i'm a firm believer in holding pet owners accountable  far to responsible pet ownership but i would urge a little bit of caution and raising fees a little too high because if you get to the point where people cannot afford that license they will surrender their pets and indirectly that will increase possibly intakes to them oh you mean saudi increase euthanasia because they can't find homes increase all kinds of hidden costs i think there's a there's a fine balance and i think with talk into it i definitely agree that the current fees are really low however entertaining something a couple hundred dollars i personally just from my experience would be a little extreme davis i'm so i just wanted to comment really quickly on a couple of things is so small that we you know we know who's coming in and out the doors and we find a box of puppies we can pretty easily figure out who the culprit is  but i have a feeling that it probably the same it's the repeat offenders it's the same people every six months we can pretty much bank on the fact that a we're going to find a litter abandoned or left somewhere if we're lucky they're brought to maybe not if we're lucky but if they're brought to our facility you know we can guarantee that we can get them in the doors and taken care of so you know absolutely if there is any way to increase the enforcement of those people that are being negligent and they are it's easy for them they're not getting in trouble for it they're getting a slap on the wrist if they even do get cited it's difficult for us because we don't have the enforcement capability it's a separate agency but i would suspect that even on the maui humane society and possibly on the nih it's the same people that you see words it's recognizable the litters are the same people that are continuing to do it and on the flipside a lot of the puppies especially puppies that we find are the leftovers for litters that are being purposely bred and these people are selling them anywhere from five hundred to fifteen hundred dollars per puppy and when you have a litter of you know say ten pit bulls and you sell six we get the loft over the four left over so holding those breeders accountable if there is a way to do it without punishing you know because we do have people that are trying mistake in litters we work with them but then we are constantly being left with the burden of cleaning up other people's messes and if the county can receive some funding from that to help at least pay for the spanners and we should do that church thank you kara follow up on mr davis yes and mr bryant has a  oh i was just quickly going to respond to keown he's statement i absolutely agree and the last thing we need is incentive for more people to surrender their animals to us we don't want that and that would be why i would be in support of keeping the low license fee for sterilized animal of seven dollars that that just rewards doing doing the right thing and not creating more of a burden for our community and then of course increasing the non sterile the fee for non sterilized mini i'm not sure what it is on a wahoo but that's not you that wouldn't be unique to us there are many shelters that have that differential that model society because in our budget we have two separate line items and two you know i guess maybe this is dorsey's question is well how do you interact or how is your subsidiary of the main corporate or you society so they have basically been our fiscal sponsor and intel this fiscal year now we are line items on the county grants so we are separating we still you know we're still a trial county so the partnerships are still very important but as far as you know now the funding is separate we in the past we have just expanded the funds the same way any of your other recipients w story so is a stand alone this fiscal year but i believe there is still outreach to the mom humane society is as resource and they've they've been most it wouldn't seem like it would be enough you know property you're going yeah you know so i really appreciate the question and there's many answers to it so we have five hundred one as of  probably three days ago where capacity is about five hundred seventy five i have current plans right now to seek funding for an additional expansion of about another twenty five thousand square feet which will allow for another five hundred cats we adopt out the past two years last year we adopted out thirty eight the year before that thirty five ninety five percent of those adoptions believe it or not are from visitors so off island i mean we've had a cat go to canada chicago kind of all over it's a real unique set up we care for once a cat is brought in to us whether we trap it and bring it in or community members surrenders it or it comes from the natural resources we keep it for the rest of its life or until it finds a home the only caviar it is with the natural resources department because they are capturing these cats from  areas really high sensitive areas where federally endangered native birds are kept we have an internal agreement that we will not adopt out those cats to anyone on the island of with the remote chance that the cat gets adopted the owner lets it out and it finds its way five miles up in the mountains and finds that nest we don't want to take that chance so we take real we take a lot of pride in in protecting our birds on our island so it's a little different set up but yes so we are in in plans to expand again before we get to that point where we are full but by no means do we label ourselves a no kill organization i personally feel that it is extremely divisive term we do euthanize to end the suffering of any county thank you  misplace thank you thank you madam chair a couple of follow ups for some of the other members questions when mr hall comma talked about you know he doesn't like free and you guys are saying well county subsidize people think that that county money is free too so it would be really good if you could say taxpayers subsidize because where do you get your other grants from you get grants from federal and state or  of being the recipient of this funding and we want the community to know where why why they're not having to pay for their surgery for their animal because their name is so if you have a particular way you would like us to to share that information about our own county taxpayers ok that's my opinion anyway and mr wilson you said  you had some ideas for lies please by all means through your organization send them to us we will work with our corporation council come up with something that that will help because i like mr obama's idea to make it sting a little bit my concern is and mr okama thought that you know we find out more and it goes back into you guys it's my understanding that the fines actually don't go they go to the state judiciary i think mr griffin mentioned that is the way and maybe this is for a corporation counsel is there a way we can set a series of fines that you know since we have the animal control board or is it yeah i believe it's the animal control board that does the dangerous animals  are they allowed to set fines and if they do set fines do they come to us so we not only don't receive the funds for the  fines but reclaims when somebody pays the pays the boarding fear the reclaim fee to tap it to take their animal back we don't we don't keep those those do not stay with the humane society they go to the revolving fund i'm trying to see if we can avoid that and keep that at least circulating in our funds is that something we can i don't know if that's something that we can further discuss and have the some sort of i'm a cat lover not long enough but realistically our since two thousand and thirteen we've really spent a lot of time and money increasing our standards of care by and we don't have any electricity for one at our place and please feel free to come out we have running water we do everything by word and excel and dropbox but we spent a lot of time analyzing our population our average age within our sanctuary is anywhere from seven to nine years unfortunately we received twenty six kittens within the last two or three months so most kittens that we've received since i've been there and so that's not really a good sign but  yeah so i think you know they say of all the reports i've read for a feral cat that has lived in the community that has never received any medical attention the average lifespan is anywhere from three to five years obviously once we bring that cat into ours environment you know i fly a veterinary team from a wahoo twice a month to tend to our cats so that's going to increase the the length of its life hopefully so but we have cats there that are fifteen sixteen nine had some structural issues so we had to redo the fencing so we're going to basically be duplicating the main area and by the way just so everyone's really clear this is at no cost to the so the county this is solely through donations but i think the issue is not so much you know will there be a role we can we through our lease we have three and a half acres you know on our or in our little map and so we can continue to expand but the real hardship for us is the staffing you know we've had an open position now for two and a half months two applicants two of which weren't qualified so when we start getting into you know six seven eight hundred cats we can provide the medical care we can provide the food and those sheltering it's that it's that actual staffing to support for those cats that are going to be the biggest problem for us if they get out of the kid you have to walk them oh my gosh this is a total open environment oh it's only five thousand square feet of you know i get teased but i call it the first season it's really the cat so they're not trying to get out you know it's really relaxed over there so yeah it's all open and it's really interesting it might be something to visit when i go to have you know i can't imagine that many cats yeah and it doesn't feel like it right i mean that's that's the beauty of it when it starts feeling like five hundred cats we know we have to expand the perimeter and don't get me wrong my first pet when i was a child was a tabby and i loved a kid like you would not believe and unfortunately it was poisoned by somebody and came home and died and my father never told me he made ran away but when i was a much grown up girl they finally told me what they wanted had been never got another one since it's rough and we so we take a really big stance in trying to educate the cake if we can get the kids to buy into the animal welfare and the importance of taking care of cats and the the spear neuter component and how quickly animal control fund fifty thousand dollars a year what do you guys use that for that's correct so we have a dedicated feral animal specialist that we don't use the whole fifty thousand dollars on that  she will have jamie jamie directly supervises that position so jamie if you want to jump in sure so our feral animal specialists we have one full time employee who we look to to serve our community members who have specific concerns about feral animals be they cats chickens whatever they might be so this person is our resident expert on trapping techniques and information information on how people can and again you know mitigate the potential nuisances of those populations and help program so people can come free of charge and traps from our shelter and use those for what time they need to help do whatever they need with those feral animals to bring them into us for sterilization or to bring them in to drop off they don't have other options for them as julian said not that whole fifty thousand dollars is used for that position remainder are used for tools that help us do our jobs with feral animals so that is purchasing more traps for that trap on our program equipment that our staff and others would need in order to handle feral animals appropriate housing units for those animals safety gear like pull syringes gloves things like that to help keep people who work with those animals safe thank you members any more questions or comments there being none i'd really like to extend our appreciation for you taking the time and  extending such valuable information and i think it i can appreciate to that the humane societies can remind our customers the customers that you have that it this wonderful panel that we've put together i know thank you terry i just wanted to thank everyone for being here today and i really appreciate all the hard work that they do you know communities i myself have a rescue dog so i especially hope i hold you guys dear to my matter thank you brief recess reconvene from the county clerk referring the matter relating to licensing animals other than dogs the matter is to explore whether it would provide health and safety or other community benefits to authorize licensing for other household pets the matter includes reviewing the extent to which other animals create demands on animal rescue or other public services and whether the county should collect fees for associated costs currently licenses is limited to dogs only the committee may discuss the matter and no legislative action well will be taking so i'd like to know if the department of housing and human concerns have any comments and will follow up with a follow up from our humane society of material thank you know we have no comments we will defer to the experts hum another challenging topic for sure i think i don't know that we are that we have researched this at length we didn't unfortunately have enough time in our schedules when we knew this meeting was coming up to really do the research necessary to have an educated opinion about this what we do know is that it's not as as i'm sure all of you know it's not as simple as just licensing additional animals there would be we would need an increase in our resources to handle the licensing of additional  animals the enforcement aspect of it certainly is something to consider i think we touched on that earlier doesn't do any good to pass a law if we can't if we don't have these staff in the resources to enforce  t i think it would affect our implementing mandatory straight holds for our for our for cats if we were talking about cats and i'm going to ask jamie to expand on that what our current policy is and what it would mean if we had cats come in to us as a stray that were licensed so currently with with dogs since there is licensing for dogs we observe the ordinances about mandatory hold time first times hold times for dogs so if a dog comes into the shelter it's hold held for a minimum of forty eight hours before any disposition can be determined for that dog if the dog comes in wearing a current county tag that minimum hold period is nine days so it vastly changes the holding times for animals who are brought into the shelter which obviously has associated resources that are dedicated to those animals because they are licensed for search is no licensing for cats at this time and there are no county ordinances on minimum mandatory holding periods for time we as an organization are not required to follow certain we are not required by law to follow cat holding times we do however because it's the right thing to do and that's what we as an organization work into our protocols but changing how considering licensing for cats would change that completely so that we would have to consider very different holding times lengthen holding times and i don't know exactly what that would look like as i'm not sure what the county would be considering but it would have vast implications on the housing in the resources required for housing at the humane i really appreciate your comments this afternoon we would like you to have the time to consider and come up with some considerations that we can these have a discussion on but is as stated earlier creatures especially if you can buy it from a pet store obviously has value so why wouldn't any animal or pet from a pet store be considered for licensing has value and i wouldn't i wouldn't want the council to have the impression that we are taking a stand that we're opposed to it that that certainly is not our position i just hesitate  because anything more that we take on with our current two resources and just it would be difficult and also we understand yeah very much miss bray but by right now i think we should just do what makes sense for outside of the revenue portion of licensing from my department licensing and tattooing which we're not do anymore we're still out there or microchip him is hugely important to us because if we pick up an animal on the road and yours is a license we don't know who belongs here now goes to the shelter and who knows how long it'll be there if you can find it happy ending on this is because the shelter implemented a system it's cloud base or a sari club database the officers have access in the field to look up your license on your dog again return it  quickly that's how i look at the license and i've been trying to come up with a scenario for how cats would work because we really don't deal with cats that often other than people call it is here i found this cat and that would help  return them to the owner but bring in revenue on my portion of it it would be we would be citing these people you know to court which nobody gets any money from the forcing them to go get the cat license or chipped and i would go more with a microchip versus a license you know anyway least for the cats for the dogs no we're good with that because the law was in my favor for life in the dog the dog doesn't show a license the dog is considered license it always circs me that it's only about the dog and i have enough issues with the other that all horses on the road cattle to the fence line about i came from a agriculture area before i moved here and working in the street we had mandatory brand of cattle and horses and that kind of stuff humane society there didn't control that it was controlled by the state i can see where that would be beneficial be because we do run across the livestock in the field that we don't know who belongs to the whole why he has a unique law that says if you have an animal on your property that's not marked it's yours ok so it can go either way it's just not our trade if it's not marketed you find it on your property and it's not branded or tattooed in any way an animal not a pet animal livestock then it becomes yours because we get calls all the time of course loose or sheep or cattle and we get there and now we have no idea who it belongs to markings on that if we had a you know branding or piggyback on mark's comments and getting back to where we started with licensing and what not for for me personally since i oversee the animal care at the shelter and reunify working on reunification efforts to get animals back to where they belong because that really reduces the burden on the shelter the faster we can get animals home the fewer homeless animals are in our community vying for resources to get back into homes and tying up valuable space in the shelter so the more animals who come in who have permanent identification that they can't lose like they can lose a collar tag helps us do our jobs better and helps us serve the community better so identification itself as a broader topic and less so about specific licensing is where my my preference  microchip is and how about microchip works it's about the grain size of a grain of rice and it's embedded into the animal and and we could always update and change information if somebody moves and whatnot it's not g p s we have many people now why don't want everybody knowing where my animal is ok we can't it doesn't work like that so so we oftentimes we have we call them frequent flyers are repeat offenders and the the stray that gets the dog that gets out all the time and is into the shelter all the time and the people come in reclaim well if they're frequent flyers we usually know who they are but oftentimes pets come to us and they have an owner somewhere but there's no identification on them and we have no way of reuniting that pet with the owner and you would think that being the only animal shelter on the island it would be easy people would come to us to find their animal and it doesn't necessarily happen like that it could be days later days and weeks later and yet we have had to care for that animal and use our valuable resources to care for that animal and tell the whole nor does show up so thank you original reason but it sounds good i think it's possible but i don't i think mr cox you know we can further that discussion with the committee looking into it further and and working with  magic i'm sorry i do if we're talking about ways that are mutually beneficial for the humane society and then also generating revenue when an animal is does come to us as a stray and is i think i just want to clarify and the owner does show up to reclaim if there was a mean if if it was mandatory that that animal must leave with a microchip and we could charge for that i mean we would charge for that microchip and then other than our cost that that revenue maybe could go on to to the county mr holcombe would any of you know how the state at stores because they've got to report the harvest you know if the reef has to be some kind of permit process and licensing fees they're paying the state of hawaii i don't i'm sorry perhaps we can as stuff to look into that for us or if at the next meeting you would maybe information that might be something you could consider please thank you we'll take that into consideration this fits better the other point i wanted to make about dog licensing and why dog licensing is such a big deal in our country is in most in all states except ours it's tied to rabies vaccination so that is the hold over communities to ensure that the dogs of their community are vaccinated against rabies to protect not only the dog population but the human population in their communities so dog licensing is a critical piece because you can't get your dog license without that proof of vaccination of rabies that's not a thing for us here so we don't have that as a hold over people to get licensing done or so it's  linked so for us it is much more about the identification piece and then the county revenue generated off of that but it loses its tie because we don't have the rabies vaccination issues here good information thank you m you and thank you for that information that's a good point but cats don't have rabies cats certainly do and in some parts of the country where rabies is much more prevalent that that is definitely a concern and there are some some counties who do license cats and do have rabies vaccine is required for cats i'm just not super familiar with those counties and how they set it up and everything but yes  bryant asked about you know if they could if we get something if you have the reply frequent flyer come back as from our last discussion anything you guys can say this is what we'd like a lot and let us know you know i would rather it's better to come from you to say what you need as opposed to saying this is what we want to give you so you let us know what you want then we can get the proper language and everything taken care of but something like that you know i can certainly understand it and consider thank you thank you thank you members if there are no further questions or comments i'd like objection i will like to defer this matter thank you members who have completed today's agenda i'd like to thank the representatives from the administration and also like to thank our