Report: Miami-Dade Commissioners to Vote Today on Historic Resolution to Make Miami-Dade a No Kill Community.

MIAMI, July 3, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Miami-Dade County Commissioners are considering a resolution today mandating the programs and services of the best performing animal shelters in the country. It is the hope that Miami-Dade will join over 40 communities representing hundreds of cities and towns across the U.S. with open-admission municipal shelters saving all healthy and treatable animals. Not only is it ethical to do so, it is also cost-effective. Many of the programs identified in the proposed No Kill resolution for Miami-Dade Animal Services are more cost-effective than impounding, warehousing, and then killing animals. Some rely on private philanthropy, as in the use of rescue groups, which shifts costs of care from public taxpayers to private individuals and groups. Others, such as the use of volunteers, augment paid staff. Still others, such as adoptions, bring in revenue. And, finally, some, such as neutering rather than killing feral cats, are simply less expensive, with exponential savings in terms of reducing births.

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Does it make more economic sense to adopt out animals, transfer animals to private non-profit rescue organizations, and increase the number of stray animals reclaimed by their families, all revenue positive activities that save the costs of killing and bring in fees and other revenues? Of course it does.

At a time when dozens of communities across the country have achieved No Kill, including those with per capita intake rates higher than Miami-Dade, having MDAS continue to kill in the face of lifesaving alternatives is not only engaging in morally bankrupt conduct, it is negatively impacting taxpayer coffers. No Kill animal control not only makes good sense. It makes dollars and cents.

In fact, a national, 2009 multi-state study found no correlation between per capita funding for animal control and save rates. One community saved 90 percent of the animals, while another saved only 40 percent despite four times the per capita rate of spending on animal control. One community has seen killing rates increase over 30 percent despite one of the best-funded shelter systems in the nation. Another has caused death rates to drop by 50 percent despite cutting spending.

Nationally, per capita funding ranged from $1.50 to about $6.30. Save rates ranged from 35% ($2.00 per capita) to 90% ($1.50 per capita), but their lifesaving rates did not follow any predictable pattern. There were shelters with an 87% rate of lifesaving spending only $2.80 per capita, and shelters with a 42% rate (less than half of the former) spending more than double that (at $5.80 per capita).

In other words, the difference between those shelters that succeeded and those that failed was not the size of the budget, but the programmatic effort of its leadership: the commitment of shelter managers to comprehensively implement a key series of programs and services––the same programs that are now being considered by Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners in the No Kill resolution.

Although costs vary somewhat, impounding, caring for, and ultimately killing an animal and disposing of his/her body costs approximately $106.00 ($66 for impoundment and $40 for killing and disposal). The process is entirely revenue negative to the municipality in contrast to the No Kill approach which transfers costs to private philanthropy, brings in adoption revenue and other user fees, and supports local businesses.

In just one community, a No Kill initiative yielded $250,000 in increased revenues from adoptions at a time the shelter also significantly reduced expenditures associated with killing and disposing of animals. In addition, the positive economic impact to businesses due to subsequent spending by adopters on those animals totaled over $12,000,000 in sales annually. Over the course of the lifetime of those animals and subsequent adoptions, it is estimated that these animals will generate $300 million, bringing in over $20,000,000 in sales tax revenues.

The people of Miami-Dade are caring, compassionate, and generous. They deserve an animal services program that reflects those values.

Visit www.nokilladvocacycenter.org/shelter-reform/no-kill-equation for more information.

SOURCE No Kill Nation, Inc.

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