[Though not directly part of this petition, it is relevant information you should be aware of.] 

One of the responsibilities of the San Francisco Civil Grand Jury (CGJ) is to audit the mission and operations of the City's animal shelter, S.F. Animal Care & Control, every ten years, since the shelter's founding in 1989.

Unfortunately, this "audit" has been merely pro forma and a waste of time. The primary conclusion of the 1999 CGJ report was that the shelter was very well run but was losing dog licensing revenue because the City tax collector's office in City Hall was also selling dog licenses (a complaint of ACC's director). The CGJ's report recommended that the dog license service at City Hall be terminated so that ACC could collect that entire revenue. The public convenience and service of offering a second license sales location was not even mentioned.

The CGJ's third report on ACC operations in 2019, also available online, was a virtual "carbon copy" of the rosy 1999 report. Its only major conclusion was exactly the same as the one 20 years earlier: Terminate the (still operating) dog licensing service at the City Hall tax collector's office. The jurors obviously saved a lot of time and effort copying the earlier report (and likely hoping no one would notice).

The jurors also commented in the 2019 report on such superficial attributes as how cheerful the volunteers looked. They apparently took any representations made by ACC’s Executive Director and section heads at face value. Although interviews of the public users of ACC's services, its volunteers and its hourly employees may be beyond the scope of the Civil Grand Jury's mandate, it would likely have revealed disappointment with several aspects of ACC's performance as well as the other issues highlighted in the above petition.

The CGJ's website offers an online form by which anyone can recommend an investigation of a City department. Such a request was submitted in March 2022 for an investigation into ACC's inhumane "no stray cats" policy. The Civil Grand Jury has not responded to date (not that anyone is holding their breath).