L.A. mayor says animal shelters won’t close. Rescue groups are still on edge

Nathan Kehn has rescued cats and kittens from some tough spots — dumpsters, an abandoned police car and, in one case, a cramped space behind a water heater.

The Sherman Oaks resident swung into action yet again last week after hearing that the Los Angeles Animal Services department was threatened with $4.8 million in reductions, part of a larger list of cuts in Mayor Karen Bass’ latest budget.

Kehn and scores of other animal rescue advocates turned out at two packed budget hearings to demand that the City Council reject employee layoffs, keep animal shelters open and preserve spay-and-neuter programs.

“If you stop fixing cats,” Kehn said, “the problem is going to be out of control in a matter of months.”

Bass and her budget team say the concerns are rooted in a misunderstanding.

The mayor’s spending plan spells out a $4.8-million cut to Animal Services. But it also sets aside an extra $5 million for that agency’s operations in a little-known section of the budget known as the “unappropriated balance,” which serves as a holding tank for funds that have not yet been finalized.

That $5 million is enough to keep all six of the city’s animal shelters open, Bass said in a social media post Monday, halfway into a five-hour budget hearing where the fate of those facilities was repeatedly discussed.

“We understand the need to continue operating all City shelters, and will work with the City Council to assure that the priority for animal care and their well being is reflected in the final budget,” she said.

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The confusion over the city’s troubled animal shelters, which have been plagued by overcrowding and rising euthanasia rates, began with the rollout of the mayor’s proposed 2025-26 budget.

Bass’ $14-billion spending plan, released last week, proposed deep cuts to the city workforce to close a nearly $1-billion shortfall. About 2,700 positions would be eliminated — more than half through layoffs — across a wide range of agencies.

While preparing those budget documents, the mayor’s team initially did not think there would be enough money to prevent layoffs at Animal Services, Deputy Mayor Matt Hale said. By the time they found the $5 million, it was too late to incorporate the money into the part of the budget that lists the department’s salaries and expenses, he said.

The $5 million was then set aside in the unappropriated balance, also known as the UB, which appears on Page 1,013 of one of the mayor’s budget books, under the category “animal services operations.”

On the day the budget was released, city officials issued a one-page explainer on the proposed job cuts, which showed that 111 positions would be eliminated at Animal Services, 62 of them through layoffs. That document did not reference the $5 million.

A day later, officials at Animal Services issued their own memo warning that a $4.8-million cut would result in the closure of three animal shelters — Harbor, West Los Angeles and West Valley. Residents who live nearby would need to be rerouted to the city’s other three animal shelters, wrote Annette Ramirez, the agency’s interim general manager.

That, in turn, would result in overcrowding and a dramatic increase in the euthanasia of dogs and cats to free up space, Ramirez said.

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Ramirez’s memo also acknowledged the $5 million set aside for her agency. Nevertheless, the prospect of increased euthanasia alarmed the city’s animal rescue volunteers — and one of their champions, City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who featured his corgis prominently in his campaign literature when he ran for office in 2022.

On Sunday, Mejia posted about the potential cuts on X, making no mention of the $5 million listed in the budget’s unappropriated balance. The following day, animal rescue activists rallied outside City Hall, then packed the budget committee’s five-hour public hearing to voice their frustrations.

Meri Kopushyan, while attending the hearing, said the $4.8 million in cuts would mean a “death sentence” for animals inside the city’s shelters.

“These animals are already scared, abandoned, living in horrible conditions, and they have no family to love them,” Kopushyan told the committee, fighting back tears.

Another speaker vowed to send her fellow activists — “cat and dog warriors,” as she described them — to Petco stores across the city to publicize the name of any council member who votes for cuts to Animal Services.

Yet another speaker, Mid-City resident Devin Bennett, warned council members that they would be remembered for having “the blood of thousands of puppies and kittens” on their hands unless they stopped the cuts.

“This will end your political careers,” said Bennett, founder of a nonprofit group called Here, Have a Kitten!

To prevent the layoffs and closures, the City Council still must vote to move the $5 million out of the unappropriated balance and into Animal Services.

On Tuesday, Councilmembers Traci Park and John Lee — whose districts include two of the three shelters that were at risk of closure — sent a letter to Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, the chair of the budget committee, calling for the money to be transferred. That same day, Yaroslavsky and Tim McOsker, another budget committee member, voiced support for the move.

“I do want to speak to the acting general manager of Animal Services and talk about some of the structural issues within their organization,” McOsker said. “But I do absolutely want to move the $5 million ... to restore those positions.”

Council members must approve a budget by the end of May. Some advocates say they should go beyond the $5 million and give an infusion of new funds to a department they view as seriously underfunded.

Jennifer Naitaki, a vice president at the Michelson Center for Public Policy, which is affiliated with the Michelson Found Animals Foundation, acknowledged that saving animals’ lives is expensive. Still, additional funding would pay off in dividends by reducing births of unwanted animals and easing the strain on the city’s shelters, she said.

Naitaki said city leaders could have avoided a political headache by providing clear information from the start about the funding set aside for the department. That would have also brought relief to worried animal advocates, she said.

“It just wasn’t communicated as well as it as it could have been,” she said. “Obviously, that caused a huge uproar and a lot of anger and a lot of advocacy. And I also think maybe that’s not bad, right? It’s always good to get in front of our City Council members and the budget committee, and have them hear from the folks that care.”