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When the bathroom is flooding, bailing water is not the solution until the faucet is turned off.

As most of the nation's shelters are in crisis prompting nationwide shelter reform, rejecting Best Friends Animal Society and Maddies Fund agenda, together with American Pet Products Association they have imposed their agenda on PACC — abandoning enormously effective volume, sponsored spay/neuter outreach programs to monetize billions in pet merchandise, services and massively lucrative crisis-driven homeless pet fundraising while merging taxpayer funds with private non-profits and for-profit business.

The recent Maddies $1.9 million 3-year grant (Memorandum of Understanding) to "Friends of PACC" perpetuates this agenda.

There is no allocation for volume, sponsored spay/neuter outreach, the only long-term solution to escalating pet overpopulation and shelter crisis.

Through private non-profit Friends of PACC, the grant merges taxpayer-supported PACC with private nonprofit Humane Society Southern Az (HSSA), blurring transparency obligations and largely shielded from public records requirements.

The grant’s priority is hiring seven call center employees, expanding Pima County Communications for the Shelter Intake Diversion program of owned or found strays with offers of low-cost medical, behavioral, and material support.

Yet the public cannot absorb continued uncontrolled breeding from outlying areas, economically struggling public and backyard breeders — often poorly bred with inadequate or falsified health records. Call center-referred “low-cost” veterinary care is increasingly unaffordable and transportation to those clinics is a barrier.

Other communities have deployed MASH or volume “Mobile Animal Surgical Hospital” set-ups in spaces with water and power for a dramatic reduction in overpopulation. PACC’s vehicular clinic has inadequate capacity, and Scarritt Foundation's recent free spay/neuter appointments at Casa Maria Kitchen and Santa Cruz Clinic turned away most with inadequate capacity while demonstrating overwhelming need.

Friends of PACC and HSSA clinic appointment grant requirements do not specify spay/neuter, and HSSA is only obligated for 16 general-purpose public monthly appointments initially. HSSA is required to intake PACC jurisdiction animals beyond HSSA capacity for adoption.

However, HSSA is a “hub” for Best Friends large-scale interstate transport network of shelter animals, where many are transferred to high kill shelters in other states, inhumanly warehoused or disappear with no known outcome or destination.

The Maddies grant/memorandum should be re-negotiated, prioritizing volume, sponsored spay/neuter outreach with verifiable benchmarks, the only long-term solution to the chronic PACC overcapacity crisis. The private non-profit status of Friends of PACC and HSSA should not insulate them from transparency in their opaque merging with taxpayer-supported PACC. Animals interstate transported should be verifiably documented for destination shelters with adoption listings with transparent, publicly available outcomes.

Compassionate, hard-working PACC shelter advocates and the animals we love deserve better than the Maddie’s grant in its current form.