Dana Hice
6:00:10
My name is Dana Hice, and I'm here on behalf Clear Corey and Brookline Animal Action, and I'm also a member of Nunn with Dana Jacobs.
6:00:18
As Brookline Animal Action is a rescue that's been going for over 14 years, our hope was that this situation was gonna get better, not worse.
6:00:26
Brookline Animal Action vets and adopts out 100 to a 1000 cats a year.
6:00:30
Our costs in 2010 were a $100,000, and they're now $350,000.
6:00:37
And our intake our intake capacity did not increase.
6:00:42
We are a volunteer run we are a volunteer run, and we are all working full time jobs.
6:00:46
I personally got involved in this when I was when I moved here from Australia 5 years ago, and I lived across the street from a nicer complex.
6:00:54
There was over 40 intact cats living in a cockroach infested crawl space, and I had no idea how to help them.
6:01:00
I quickly realized that there was no city agency that was gonna come in with a solution where Brooklyn Animal Action did.
6:01:06
We don't get paid for this, and we have to beg for money to cover these bills.
6:01:10
And we run ourselves ragged trying to help as many as we can, but we'll never get there without help.
6:01:15
Our inbox, Abercrombie, auction, currently sits at about 25,000 unread emails.
6:01:20
We just can't get to them all.
6:01:22
But, boy, do we try?
6:01:25
We are drowning, and I know for a fact that there are rescuers here today that have had to dip in and out of this meeting because we're running to vet appointments.
6:01:32
We're taking calls from emergency vets.
6:01:34
We're consulting with foster homes.
6:01:35
And we're trying to decide if we can actually intake that cat that we've just been beg to take in, or while working our full time jobs.
6:01:43
This is a city issue, and we're excited to see these issues are now on the agenda, and we're hopeful for the solutions that may come from this.
