Steve Gruber, Mayor's Alliance remarks to City Council Sept 13, 2024

Steve Gruber – Director of Communications Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals

Hearing before the New York City Council’s Committee on Health Friday, September 13, 2024 T2024-2365 Oversight - The State of Animal Rescue in New York City T2024-2364 A Local Law to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, in relation to the regulation of pet dealers and prohibiting the sale of dogs and cats in retail pet stores, and to repeal section 17-1706 of such code, relating to the exemptions for shelter and rescue partners

My name is Steve Gruber. I’m the Director of Communications for the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals. I’d like to thank City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and Health Committee Chair Lynn Schulman for the opportunity to speak today about the state of animal rescue in New York City.

This week we received a call from a concerned pet owner in the Bronx. He reached out to the Mayor’s Alliance on behalf of some of his neighbors – seniors on fixed incomes – seeking free or at least affordable spay/neuter services. Their landlord has been pressuring them to get their cats altered because other tenants are complaining about the yowling and urine odor coming from the intact cats’ apartments. Frustrated by their inability to find affordable spay/neuter services, one neighbor released her cat outdoors. Another neighbor relinquished her cat to a shelter. Now, Yardia and Crystal, the two remaining pet owners with intact cats, are desperately trying to find an affordable spay/neuter provider so they can keep their cats. We’re working with the ASPCA to try to secure appointments for them.

To me, the plight of these pet owners pretty much sums up the current state of animal rescue in New York City.

Today we’re facing a crisis. Far too many pets are being abandoned or surrendered to our overburdened shelters and rescue groups. Why? Because too many New York City pet owners’ do not have access to affordable vet care, including free or affordable spay/neuter services. They can’t afford to care for their pets, in some cases struggling even to feed their pets. And those same pressures that drive people to give up their pets also discourage potential pet owners from adopting. So our shelters continue to overflow.

An unsolvable problem, right? I don’t think so.

In 2003, New York City was facing another crisis. At that time, three out of four animals that entered our city’s shelters didn’t get out alive. But we didn’t just throw up our hands and say wow, this problem is just impossible to solve. No. In response to that crisis, the rescue community came together, many becoming part of a citywide collaboration spearheaded by the newly created Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals. Eventually more than 150 shelters and rescue groups, including ACC and the ASPCA, banded together under the Alliance banner and created new strategies to increase adoptions, expand spay/neuter options, and drive down euthanasia rates at ACC. That unprecedented effort paid off, resulting in year-after-year increases in live release rates that reached more than 90 percent by 2016 – a seemingly impossible goal that became a reality.

Today we face a different challenge that threatens to derail our hard-won successes in life-saving. Affordable spay/neuter and routine vet care are out of reach for too many pet owners and rescue organizations. Resources are limited. To continue to rely solely upon the ASPCA, ACC, and other dedicated animal welfare organizations to shoulder the burden is not sustainable. They alone cannot satisfy the needs of our 2

community. So today we’re asking the city, beginning with our City Council, to step up and provide funding to supplement the efforts of the private sector… to create and expand existing high volume spay/neuter resources and low-cost community veterinary facilities to meet the needs of the public and the rescue community. We implore our city’s leaders to commit to sharing the cost of providing these muchneeded services if we are to solve this solvable problem.

On a separate and final note, I want to express support by the Mayor’s Alliance for the new bill sponsored by Councilmembers Brannan and Schulman that would implement in local law the state’s prohibition of the sale of cats and dogs in retail pet shops, and require that any person who sells animals to the public in their ordinary course of business, other than an animal shelter or animal rescue organization, receive a permit from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Thank you.

3