ACC Funding
The Bulk of ACC Funding Comes from the DOH.
The DOH sets the ACC budget, a number that is NOT determined by what the ACC actually needs to operate but rather what the DOH is willing to pay.
In several ways Dr. Thomas Farley, the current DOH Commissioner (and ACC Chairman) has been the most aggressively hostile DOH Commissioner to the ACC. When he became ACC Chairman, he quickly made two things crystal clear: (a) the DOH would never build shelters in the Bronx and Queens; and (b) he would personally cut the ACC’s budget to make it a bare bones operation.
Starved for money, ACC management began to slice services. By 2011, he ASPCA said the ACC was in “crisis.”
Dr. Farley didn’t care. And even if Executive Director Julie Bank cared, she has never complained or challenged the budget cuts..
The ASPCA and The Mayor’s Alliance walked into the perfect trap. Asking for more money for the ACC, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn had a quid pro quo. The City had to be relieved of its obligation to build shelters in the Bronx and Queens.
The deal became Local Law 59. Trying to put a positive spin on the deal, Ed Sayres of the ASPCA assured the public that the extra money would make a “tremendous difference” for the ACC.
False!: Shelters continue to be overcrowded. Animals all get sick at the ACC. Veterinary care is disgraceful. And the DOH remains very much in control of the ACC. And Bank & Co. remain as the top executives.
Additional Funding
Even if the ACC ever had skilled fundraising staff, it could never raise the monies needed from the public. Because the first rule of public donations is that people don’t want to donate to a public agencies which operate on tax dollars.
Thus, the private donations that the ACC attracts are minimal.
However, two outside organizations have provided some monies -- The Mayor’s Alliance and the ASPCA. But what they’ve donated over the years is far from what’s required to operate a major municipal shelter.
Shelter Buildings
The DOH owns the two old factories the ACC is forced to use as shelters in the Bronx and Queens. The ASPCA originally owned those buildings and when it walked away from its City contract, it sold the buildings to the DOH. However, the ASPCA was clear that the buildings either must
be radically renovated or, better yet, razed and rebuilt. The DOH was never going to waste monies doing either.
In Staten Island, Borough President Molinari has provided funding to create a new but small animal shelter for the DOH.
The DOH holds leases on the two storefronts the ACC uses as “receiving centers” in the Bronx and Queens.