Meeting its mission? Criticism of San Diego Humane Society piles up in wake of grand jury report, proposed budget cut

Contributions and grants to the San Diego Humane Society, the local nonprofit that provides animal-welfare services and has been granted police powers across much of the county, nearly doubled over the five years ending June 30, 2024.

Tax-deductible donations and other revenue pushed the organization’s total assets to $133 million, almost twice the $70 million it reported five years ago, federal tax records show.

Yet when San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria announced a 20% rollback to what the city pays its animal-services contractor, a $3.5 million haircut to help close a quarter-billion-dollar budget hole, the San Diego Humane Society responded quickly with dire warnings if the city were to follow through.

“I don’t think we have an ability to continue to serve the city of San Diego with a reduction like that,” longtime chief executive Gary Weitzman said in April.

“Because it can’t be targeted for just one or two things — to reduce patrols or the way we are caring for animals,” he added. “It is really across the board, and it’s such a tremendous reduction we’d actually be unable to continue with the contract.”

The swift and decisive pushback helped drive down the proposed cut. Gloria’s revised spending plan in May proposed a $1.5 million hit, although the two sides remain at odds over how much may be trimmed from the $18.2 million contract for the year beginning July 1.

The success of the nonprofit’s threat to discontinue animal-welfare services in San Diego may reflect the huge reserve of goodwill the Humane Society has built up over many decades.

But it comes as the organization confronts a slew of public complaints and criticism, most recently from a county grand jury report that found the San Diego Humane Society has failed to meet contractual obligations.

The agency also is being sued over its community cat program, which calls for releasing stray cats that may be adoptable to the outdoors without supervision. After a judge halted the practice late last year, the organization amended its program; a final ruling is due at any time.

Meanwhile, activists and volunteers say the Humane Society is not doing enough to provide local pet owners low-cost spay and neutering services, which exacerbates the number of homeless animals and which they say is antithetical to its core mission.

And volunteers — the nonprofit says it has more than 4,000 — complain they are taken for granted and not permitted to help in ways they are trained for.

At the same time, the nonprofit continues to boost executive salaries.

Weitzman collected $488,000 in base pay last year, some $50,000 more than the prior year and $145,000 higher than five years ago, federal tax filings show. Other senior leaders also received healthy pay increases.

The decision-making by senior leaders at the San Diego Humane Society has disillusioned some local animal advocates, even though they share many of the same objectives.

“There just needs to be greater oversight and ability,” said Bryan Pease, one of the attorneys suing the San Diego Humane Society for its cat-release program and other practices.

“Cutting the budget is certainly not the answer — they probably need more money to do a better job,” he said. “But this current leadership is not going to do a better job. They already are not doing things they’re being paid to do.”

The San Diego Humane Society dismissed the grand jury report as biased and misinformed. In a statement last month, it said the findings were speckled with “blatant misrepresentations” and subjective characterizations of its staff and enforcement practices.

It also defended its response to Gloria’s attempt to shave the 2025-26 spending by millions of dollars. And officials said even though the nonprofit has significant assets, most are tied up in real estate or designated for other projects.

“There is indeed a story to be told about San Diego Humane Society — but that story is that our organization is achieving extraordinary results and is moving the field of animal welfare forward in ways that will ensure animals are cared for and families thrive together,” spokesperson Nina Thompson said by email.

“Despite facing unprecedented demand for our services, funding challenges from our municipal contracts and questions from dissatisfied activists, we are creating a better world for animals and achieving nationally leading outcomes,” she said.

Humane Society officials also rejected criticism of its executive compensation, saying the salaries and benefits are in line with the skills required to manage a complicated and dynamic organization.

‘Regression in performance’

The San Diego Humane Society is one of the region’s oldest organizations, dating to 1880, when civic luminaries George Marston and George Hazzard spearheaded their plan to provide organized animal-welfare services across the growing city.

Over the past century and a half, the group has revamped and relocated, merged with like-missioned groups and expanded its services to become one of the biggest and best-funded private animal-welfare agencies in the nation.

Much of the Humane Society’s recent financial growth can be traced to a decision by San Diego County to curtail its own animal-control services nearly 10 years ago.

The society began assuming many of the responsibilities previously provided by the county, g contracts with cities across the region to take in strays, help with spaying and neutering, return lost animals to their owners and enforce licensing and other rules.

It’s now the animal-control and enforcement agency for 13 of the county’s 18 cities. Its officers are empowered to issue citations and even make arrests in cases of suspected abuse.

The nonprofit’s budget has soared with the additional contracts and donations.

The latest federal tax filing shows $72 million in revenue for the year ending June 30, 2024, against spending of $67 million. Its investment income alone — the interest earned off banked savings — was just shy of $2 million, nearly twice what it made the prior year.

While systematically raising fees charged to contract cities, records show the San Diego Humane Society also has raised the prices it charges of the public for services like spaying and neutering, euthanasia and microchipping.

In 2018, San Diego’s first year under contract with the Humane Society, the city paid it $12.7 million. Five years later, when the city signed a 10-year pact worth up to $222 million, the annual cost to taxpayers had climbed by one-third, to $16.8 million.

But questions have been raised about whether the nonprofit’s performance justifies the higher pay.

In a report last month, the grand jury found that not only had the Humane Society failed to meet of its contract with the city of San Diego, but the level of service was getting worse.

“A regression in SDHS performance measures warrants a city performance evaluation,” the jurors wrote.

Among other things, they criticized the Humane Society for failing to enforce San Diego leash laws, citing a 90% year over year drop in the number of citations. It also said emergency response times spelled out in the city contract were regularly unmet.

“We also discovered that when called, SDHS rarely (if ever) responded promptly to a reported violation or complaint,” the grand jury report said.

In Priority 1 calls, those concerning an immediate danger to people or animals, the society averaged a 32-minute response last year — not quite meeting its contract’s 30-minute clause, the grand jury said.

For lower-priority calls, the society badly failed to respond as required, the grand jury said.

On Priority 2 calls, which generally involve loose dogs or other threats, animal-control officers are supposed to respond in three hours; they averaged 16. Priority 3 calls, with non-exigent but serious concerns for an animal’s safety, took more than six days — even though they are supposed to get a response within 12 hours.

The Humane Society acknowledged some issues.

“Like many employers, SDHS has faced staffing challenges, particularly in humane law enforcement due to the challenging nature of this work and the long onboarding process required by law,” Thompson said.

San Diego officials were not spared by the citizens . The jury said City Hall was not properly monitoring its agreement with the Humane Society or holding the agency to .

The city is still preparing its formal response to the findings. But the Humane Society wasted no time rejecting much of the grand jury report, publicly chastising the volunteer last month and disputing the findings.

“San Diego Humane Society does not fail to properly enforce animal-related laws, including leash ordinances or those concerning the welfare of animals at rodeos,” Thompson said. “We have publicly lobbied against rodeos, including at San Diego City Council.”

‘They could do better’

Debate among advocates over how to ensure animal welfare is not new.

For years, the San Diego Humane Society and other shelters have faced criticism for their practices on encouraging adoptions, readying pets for home placement and the fees they charge pet-owning families.

San Diego County was on the receiving end of similar complaints before it reduced the scope of its Department of Animal Services.

For Nicole Donnelly, a board member of SNAP San Diego, the Spay-Neuter Action Project, the Humane Society is not doing enough to address the root cause of shelter overcrowding.

“They could do better by focusing on the prevention side,” said Donnelly, a Miramar small-business owner. “We all know the only way to fix the problem is to prevent it by stopping animals from having unwanted litters.”

Donnelly said the Humane Society could save money by investing more in low-cost spaying and neutering services and less in executive pay and infrastructure. Private veterinarians can charge $500 to $900 for services — far more than many families can afford, she said.

“San Diego (Humane Society) is doing better in some ways,” Donnelly said. “The challenge is they are so large, and they have so many different programs.”

Thompson said the organization spayed or neutered more than 22,000 cats and dogs last year and expects higher numbers this year. It also subsidizes the surgeries for qualified pet owners.

“We are making additional investments to expand the scope of our community spay-neuter program in the coming year to provide additional capacity for thousands more surgeries,” she said.

One of the biggest scandals involving the San Diego Humane Society erupted two years ago, after a well-publicized transfer of more than 300 small animals to a shelter in Arizona.

Within weeks, advocates began asking questions about where specifically the rabbits, guinea pigs, rats and hamsters ended up.

As it turned out, many of them had ended up as snake food. Not long after that, the San Diego shelter blamed the Humane Society of Southern Arizona for allowing their fate.

The San Diego nonprofit noted the Arizona shelter took responsibility for the deaths and fired two top executives.

But officials in San Diego resisted calls to release internal communications between the two nonprofits’ staffs — or the findings of a private investigator they hired to review the matter.

“We released a detailed email timeline with the activists and a full list of all the animals transported,” Thompson said. “SDHS has cooperated fully with all requests while maintaining appropriate confidentiality as a private nonprofit.”

Kelly Paolisso, the school psychologist who tracked down the fate of the small animals on her own and pressed shelter officials for answers, still believes those in San Diego knew more than they have publicly acknowledged.

“I have major concerns,” she said last week. “They said most of the animals were placed, but there were a ton of inconsistencies. We kept saying, ‘If you’re innocent in this, just show us the emails.’”

‘Under very tight control’

Volunteers with the San Diego Humane Society say the organization is especially disrespectful to those who donate their time and expertise. They say it is unduly difficult to sign up, and when they are itted, they are given more menial tasks.

The society reports more than 4,400 people donated their time last year — but some volunteers question that number.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reviewed screenshots of the Humane Society’s Memorial Day weekend volunteer schedule that appear to show dozens of volunteer shifts unfilled.

Humane Society officials said the records do not reflect the complete inventory of s by volunteers, who contributed more than 1,200 hours over the three-day weekend, in what they called a significant increase over last year.

“No volunteer has full visibility into the organization-wide volunteer schedule or database, so no volunteer would be able to accurately provide this data,” Thompson said.

Two volunteers who have donated their time for years said they are growing weary of the way they are treated by managers. They were reluctant to be identified, they said, because they fear being told they can no longer serve.

But each of them said they are permitted less time with animals and instead directed to chores. They also said they would like to see more transparency across the organization.

Cari Beltane is a special education teacher and certified animal therapist who also runs a holistic animal massage business. She said she volunteered for San Diego County for years but gave up donating time to the Humane Society after a few years because she felt she was not valued.

“We were kept at even a greater distance from the animals,” she said. “We were kept under very tight control.”

Beltane said she wanted to provide massage therapy, behaviorist treatment and other services to dogs at the San Diego Humane Society’s campus in Linda Vista — like she had at the county — but was not allowed to.

“You would think they would want me in there providing those services, but what I found was the more we cared, the more we tried to get involved, the more we were pushed away,” she said.

The Humane Society said volunteers are deployed how and where they are needed most.

It also said it has continuing plans to improve and grow.

Among other initiatives, the Humane Society is planning a $10 million capital campaign to develop a veterinary hospital to complement services that are already being performed, Thompson said.

“In 2022, we opened our Community Veterinary Program to provide affordable, comionate and exceptional veterinary care for the families that need it most,” she said. “In 2027, we hope to open a public access veterinary hospital and spay-neuter service that will help thousands of county residents care for their pets.”