Today Aurora Velazquez resigned her executive director position at ACCT Philly (Animal Care and Control Team Philadelphia).

ACCT has been widely criticized from many sides for the conditions of the shelter and lapses which included procedural errors that led to (among other things) the mistaken euthanization of a dog put into their protective custody. Ultimately, a change.org petition demanding the removal of key leaders at ACCT Philly has garnered more than 34,000 signatures. This petition cites a number of failures at ACCT Philly.

In September, ACCT Philly posted something of a mea culpa on Facebook, acknowledging the disturbing findings of a then-recent inspection by the Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement, which went so far as to ask the PSPCA to investigate ACCT Philly for animal cruelty (stemming from unsanitary conditions in the kennel). Though the PSPCA’s report found that the problems at ACCT Philly did not rise to the level of animal cruelty, this did very little to mollify the critics, some of whom accuse PSPCA of being as dysfunctional as ACCT Philly and unqualified to act as judge.

Although many people that PennDog admires signed the change.org petition, PennDog did not. Although I try to educate myself as well as I can on these matters, I simply cannot say whether ACCT Philly will be better off under new management. I say this for two reasons:

First, although I do not know Ms. Velasquez, I do know many people in the animal welfare field and I have yet to meet a shelter director who was motivated by anything other than a deep desire to care for animals. Nobody does it for the money or the fame, because there is very little money and no fame at all. Nobody in shelter leadership has enough help, or money, or time to do everything they wish they could do for the animals in their care. To accuse a shelter leader of not caring about their animals is completely inconceivable to me. Of course, that doesn’t mean that every shelter leader is the best person for the job, or that some shelters wouldn’t benefit from a change in leadership, but it is far too reductionist to point at a troubled or failing shelter and assume that replacing the leadership will necessarily improve the situation.

Second, ACCT Philly has been for years woefully under-funded. In 2017, then-HSUS board member Marsha Perelman testified before the city council (with data) that “Philadelphia is the most poorly funded municipal shelter in America” and “dead last among major cities.” As Philadelphia’s only open shelter, ACCT Philly has essentially no control over how many animals they are tasked to take care of or the condition of these animals on intake. This is pretty much a worst-case scenario for a shelter — very little money and an essentially unlimited mandate to provide services. When a system breaks down, it is reasonable to ask whether even the best leadership could have prevented what has happened. I do not know the answer to that question, and I doubt anyone does.

Although the pandemic did lead to unprecedented rates of adoption for shelter pets (at least in the first year or so), the news has not been all good for animal shelters. COVID outbreaks among shelter staff are practically catastrophes, because one cannot simply shut down operations for a couple of weeks while everyone quarantines. Animals, too, are contending with their own epidemics and while you could argue that some of ACCT Philly’s failures contributed to the spread of disease in the shelter, it would be grossly unfair to suggest that they are at the root of the problem.

In the end, it is hard to know whether ACCT Philly will be helped or hurt by a changing of the guard. Surely, the situation today is terrible and everyone wants to see conditions improve. Will the next Executive Director have the right combination of knowledge and skills to right the ship and improve the lives of their animals? We can only hope so. Personally, I’d feel better if Philadelphia gave their animal control team (whether it remains ACCT Philly or another organization) funding on par with other cities even close to its size. On-par facilities with on-par funding would no doubt yield better results than finding even a superstar Executive Director and dropping them into the current environment. It is reasonable to ask if Ms. Velasquez and other ACCT Philly leaders could have done better, but we shouldn’t stop there.