CASE STUDY 3: Miami Dade County Pet s Trust

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1 CASE STUDY 3: Miami Dade County Pet s Trust by Michael Rosenberg Like most people in Miami Dade County, I drove by the Dade County Animal Shelter, located off a busy intersection in North Miami, several times a week, for years, not really thinking about it, or what goes on there. Personally, I am very involved in the community, but for some reason this building was just another building that I drove by on my daily trek to and from work. I am the President of the Kendall Federation of Homeowner Associations. This is an organization in the southern part of the County that has monthly forums that invite government leaders to meet citizens in the community. I usually am the point person that arranges these meetings and in October of 2011, I invited the director of Animal Services, Alex Munoz, to come and speak as our guest. That was when my eyes were first opened to what goes on in the world of our animals. Shockingly opened! I spoke to Mr. Munoz before that meeting, as we went over the procedures of our forum, and innocently asked the most basic question... Is that building that I drive by where you also kill the animals? He said, Unfortunately yes. I couldn t believe what I had just heard and quickly calculated that about 70 dogs and cats are killed every day. Totally naïve to this problem, I thought maybe that they had had a bad year. But, it turns out that this number, this 20,000, has been fairly consistent for decades. It seems that no matter what had been tried, adoption events, the spay neuter truck, fundraisers, the heroic rescue groups...at the end of the day, 20,000 adoptable animals are killed, and that nothing was going to change those sad depressing numbers in the foreseeable future. (Later I learned even more awful numbers...300,000 killed in Florida and over 3 million around the country because of overpopulation.) Being a community activist, and always thinking of ways to solve problems, I started asking more questions. Every answer that I received seemed to involve needing more funding. So, I asked Mr. Munoz to create his dream budget that would help solve this problem once and for all. That dream budget came out to about $20 million dollars. Now...where to get that money? 1/6

2 In Dade County, we have a program called the Children s Trust which is funded through our property taxes. They receive about $130 million dollars a year for all sorts of amazing programs. I called the property tax appraiser and asked him how much more the average taxpayer would pay if our property taxes were to go up $20 million dollars a year. After doing the calculation, it turns out the average household would pay $20 a year to create this $20 million dollar fund. Now, we have that potential funding source. The next step was to challenge the animal community to be part of the support group to make this happen, and with the help of Rita Schwartz and Lindsay Gorton, (both of who have tremendous knowledge in the world of rescue and spay/neuter) we created and co-founded the Pets Trust and introduced the concept to the major rescue groups and animal advocates in our community. After getting the support of all of these groups in the community, we went to our thirteen county commissioners, one by one, and presented the problem and the solution. In this anti-tax climate, they would not dare raise our property taxes, (even though they could have) but they did listen to us and allowed the Pets Trust ballot question to be placed on the November 6th election. As a group, they agreed to let the community decide, and challenged the members of the Pets Trust to educate the community on the problem. When we learned that it is costing taxpayers $300 a year to kill an animal, and $65 to spay/neuter, we realized that this would be one of our major marketing points. This is the ballot question we asked our community. Would you be in favor of the County Commission increasing the countywide general fund millage by mills and applying the additional ad valorem tax revenues generated thereby to fund improved animal services, including: decreasing the killing of adoptable dogs and cats (historically approximately 20,000 annually); reducing stray cat populations (currently approximately 400,000 cats); and funding free and low-cost spay/neuter programs, low-cost veterinary care programs, and responsible pet ownership educational programs? YES NO 2/6

3 After a brilliant and strategic marketing campaign, (with limited time to organize and limited funds and no experienced campaign people) 65% of our community voted yes to saving lives. And, that they would pay a bit more in taxes to do this. Our government leaders were surprised beyond words that almost 500,000 people voted to do this in a positive and almost loving manner, in a community where one year earlier, 90% of the people voted to recall our Mayor because he raised our taxes! On July 17th, the full board of County Commissioners voted to put the Pets Trust on the ballot. We had a little over three months to try and win this campaign, in a large county of 2.5 million people. The experts told us to wait and put this issue on the ballot in 2014 when the economy would recover. They told us we would need two years to prepare a campaign of this size. They also told us we would need two million dollars minimum, and an expert campaign management staff. The Pets Trust board decided we could not live with the idea of waiting two more years (another 40,000 animals dead) and we went to work immediately trying to figure out how we could do what we were told was impossible. One of the first things we did was take advantage of our miracle mascot, a tiny puppy we named Pepe Sal. At one of the commission meetings, as our group prepared to enter the Government Center, a homeless man drove up to us with a small box in his bicycle basket. In that box was this small dog that the homeless man wanted to sell. We bought him for $50, and then went into the no dogs allowed meeting with this little dog in hand. When our part of the meeting started, we brought this gift from the angels up to the Commissioners and said, look... this problem with overpopulation is right at your doorstep. As the commissioners passed the dog around, pictures were snapped that the next day became front page news in the Miami Herald. The legend of Pepe Sal (named after two of those commissioners on this committee.. was born!) Pepe Sal started making appearances, and everyone wanted their photo taken with him. One of the more exciting events is when he threw out the first pitch (with some help) at a Miami Marlins game. Soon everyone knew about the dog and he became our iconic figure. Pepe Sal became the face of the Pets Trust campaign, and it was his photo that appeared on all of our literature with the comment... Vote YES to stop the killing of 20,000 adoptable animals every year in Dade County. NO ONE wanted to kill Pepe Sal!. 3/6

4 One of the critical components was money. You can t win an election without funding for all the literature, ads, signs, banners, web promotion, and all the various tools you need to promote the cause. We did the best we could with fundraisers, and the assortment of donations we received from the community. Our grand total for the entire campaign was never close to the two million dollars we were told it would take...but rather...we did it with $70,000. Our challenge was to spend every penny wisely. And also...get as much free stuff as we could! The community responded not only with money, but with offers to help based on the types of businesses they had. We had a TV production company shoot our commercials at no cost, a restaurant offered us all of their proceeds on a special Pets Trust night, a local bakery provided an endless array of desserts for our meetings and fundraisers, local community newspapers ran ads at no cost, and we gathered steam as the community started to enjoy the true grassroots nature of what we were doing. As more people came aboard asking how they could help, it only led to even more people joining with us. What we didn t have in money, we had in energy, love, and passion for realizing that the Pets Trust could be the historic animal solution we all were waiting for. Even with all of that, we still had plenty to do to reach more and more people in this vast and diverse county. We needed some sort of spectacular event which wouldn t cost anything, and that would grab the attention of the news media that thrives on covering things unique and unusual. Well, we certainly hit the homerun!!! I decided that I would live in a cage at the animal shelter for an entire weekend. Some people thought it crazy, but the original founders thought it brilliant. We created a dramatic black and white photo of me sitting on the cold hard floor, in a cage that would be my home for three days and two nights. That was to be our pre-publicity shot to get the press excited about what we had planned. Pets Trust Founder Begins Weekend In Animal Shelter Cage 4/6

5 This photo was sent out to all the TV stations, newspapers, radio stations, and bloggers and our biggest concern was the hope the weekend we selected, five weeks before the national elections, would be a slow news weekend so we would get coverage. Without the media, the idea would have failed. However, the plan worked perfectly. Seven TV stations filmed me being checked into the shelter and being led to my cage. The idea was so novel, Man Living In A Cage with the Animals, that it led to almost non-stop coverage for the entire weekend. Our Public Relations company (also working pro-bono) estimated, based on numbers of viewers, website hits.. etc...that if we had to pay for that coverage, it would have cost us $25 million dollars. After that weekend, there wasn t a place in town that I could go, or a stranger on the street, that hadn t seen me on one of those news shows. It wasn t an easy three days, but so many people came to visit and see me in that cage, that the time just flew by. After the stay in the cage..we managed to get free billboards, more radio interviews, and the volunteer force continued to grow. It was actually beginning to seem we could win this. We had endorsements from major animals groups across the country, extremely favorable press, the Miami Herald editorial endorsement, and no opposition. When early voting started and we had those infamous long lines for voting, (people waiting up to eight hours) it actually worked in our favor as our volunteers put our promotional card in the hands of every voter waiting in those endless lines. Vote Yes on 240 signs were everywhere and people knew that voting yes meant... Stop the Killing. The polls closed on November 6th at 7:00 P.M. By 7:15, we were already being called and congratulated on this miraculous victory. We were at 62% YES based on the absentee ballots. The experts were telling us... it s all over...you did it. By 7:30 we were up to 64% with the early voting numbers in. The lead was increasing. When it was over...500,000 people had heard our message. The Pets Trust story proved, than in challenging economic times, where the idea of raising taxes is almost suicidal, if people were asked the right question... Would you vote to yes to stop killing animals, the good and kind nature of people would prevail. We believe that if any community was asked this question, and presented with the right facts, they would do the same. 5/6

6 With the people s mandate behind us, the Pets Trust Miami has now created the Plan Of Action that details how those funds will be spent to fix this problem. This plan was created with input from dozens of experts from around their country, who enthusiastically are overjoyed with what has happened in Miami Dade County, and see what we have done here as a national model for other communities. Best stated, Pets Trust Miami could be followed by Pets Trust Atlanta, Pets Trust Chicago, Pets Trust Omaha, Pets Trust Dallas, etc., and hopefully... everywhere one day, under an umbrella of Pets Trust America. No community likes to talk about that building where you kill the animals, but once brought into the daylight, we believe that all communities, like ours, will do the right thing to stop the killing. That is the message of the Pets Trust, and we are here to help anyone that reaches out to us to share with you how we did it and what is next. 6/6