At 6 p.m. Friday, the Animal Protective Association will lock up at its animal shelter in Olivette. But when the St. Louis County shelter opens at 10 a.m. Saturday, different hands will hold the keys.
The changeover is raising anxiety among local animal lovers.
The St. Louis County Department of Public Health, which is retaking control of the Animal Care and Control Adoption Center, had overseen a once-troubled operation that drew criticisms from animal rights advocates. A 2019 independent audit revealed both operational failings and practices that led to needless euthanasia.
Animal advocates' fears that the shelter would fall back into its old ways under the purview of the county spiked earlier this month. A lawsuit filed in St. Louis County Circuit Court alleged that the county had a secret plan to use mass euthanasia to control the population at the shelter.
Dr. Kanika Cunningham, the county's health director, denied in early February that such a plan existed, but reporting by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch revealed that it was, in fact, real.
The three-page document has been shared widely on social media. It details a proposed contingency plan that would begin after the APA departs that includes mass euthanasia to lower the shelter’s population. “Full shelter euthanasia is not necessary but could be implemented” if the shelter has too many animals, it reads.
The document describes different scenarios in which euthanasia could be implemented, such as animals being in the shelter too long, dogs that bite and animals showing signs of stress. “Keeping a low population will be key to success,” it reads later, including that a no-kill policy is “unattainable.”
“We were unaware that a plan of this nature existed, and we learned of it when the news broke, just like the rest of the community,” said Sarah Javier, chief executive of the APA. “Like so many others, we were very dismayed and upset and disappointed that this would even be a consideration as a way to operate a shelter.”
Javier said the county has told her it won’t use the plan, and a Sara Dayley, spokesperson for the Department of Public Health, wrote in an email Tuesday, after this article was initially published, that the contingency document was only “a suggestion and immediately dismissed as an option” rather than “an officially adopted plan.” The proposal did go in front of Cunningham and the executive leadership team, who rejected it, Dayley added.
For the past six months, the APA has worked to create a 450-page transition document that includes explanations of how the nonprofit runs the shelter, she said. The organization has also provided some training and showing opportunities for county employees.
“My understanding is that it is the county's intention to operate the shelter in much the same way that the APA has over the past two years, utilizing the operational playbook that we put together for them,” Javier said.
Some of the county’s planning for the transition happened at the last minute, according to a source close to the matter who spoke to St. Louis Public Radio on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
Dayley said that the county has been planning for the transition since the change was first announced and that it only received the APA’s document in January, “two-thirds of the way through the transition. While waiting for the playbook, we continued to work towards the transition.”
On Thursday, the county announced that it was opening applications for a pilot volunteer program. An announcement last year that the volunteer program as it existed under the APA would be paused drew criticism from current and past volunteers. It harkened back to a dark moment from before the APA took over operations when volunteers were similarly let go in 2019. And the county’s contingency plan does include no volunteers and no adoptions for six to eight months.
The problem with no volunteers and no adoptions is that there would be no outside eyes on how the shelter is being run, said Jenny Agnew. Agnew was one of the volunteers let go in 2019.
“All people are thinking about right now is that whatever animals are left when the APA leaves [today], that they're going to be euthanized,” she said. “This is a shelter that has a history of duping the public. … So the administration has to work really hard to get people to gain good faith and trust and confidence.”
The only way to do that is to let them inside, she said.
Contrary to the county’s contingency plan, Dayley told St. Louis Public Radio on Friday that adoptions would not stop and that the volunteer program would be open to anyone. On Tuesday, she added that the county could not continue to run the APA’s volunteer program because it didn’t have “the necessary infrastructure and staff.”
“Without the APA playbook for the first four months of the transition process, the department developed a new volunteer manual and application process to ameliorate issues that plagued the program in 2019,” she wrote.
Meanwhile, the APA is trying to adopt out as many pets as possible before the changeover and will be transferring many pets to its Brentwood location after Friday. To that end, the shelter will waive adoption fees this weekend.
“Taking over an operation when the shelter is full of pets can be really, really challenging,” Javier said. “By doing adoptions and placing pets into foster homes or transferring them to other shelters, we reduce the number of animals that are in this facility, which really gives the county an opportunity to come in with with a lower census, less demand, and sort of acclimate to the environment so they can operate more effectively.”
No animals were euthanized over the weekend, Dayley confirmed on Tuesday.
To see the APA’s adoptable pets, visit apamo.org.
This story has been updated with additional comments from St. Louis County spokesperson Sarah Dayley.
