NYC animal control chief resigns

NEW YORK,  N.Y.— The New York City Center for Animal Care & Control will have a new executive director for the ninth time in 10 years and the 12th time since 1994,  after the September 26,  2012 resignation of Julie Bank for “family reasons.”  Bank left on October 19,  2012,  six months after receiving a two-year contract extension and only two months after winning a $10 million city funding increase over the next three years,  after two years of budget cuts.

. Hired in March 2010,  Bank cut the New York City rate of shelter killing per 1,000 human residents to 1.0,  lowest in the U.S.,  emphasizing neuter/return feral cat control and adoption partnerships through the Mayor’s Alliance for Animals.  But like her predecessors,  Bank came under sustained criticism from the day she was hired.

. Tired of attacks mostly associated with decisions to kill unadoptable animals,  especially dangerous dogs,  and with losing donations because of the attacks,  the American SPCA in 1994 returned to New York City the animal control contract it had held since 1895. As no other humane society was willing or able to take the animal control contract,  New York City formed the CACC as a free-standing nonprofit agency funded and under the supervision of the city health department.  Activists since then have clamored for the animal control contract to be given again to a humane society,  though no established humane society has expressed interest in bidding on it.

. “I am really resigning for family reasons,”  Bank told ANIMAL PEOPLE,  having mentioned family concerns to ANIMAL PEOPLE several months earlier.  Bank was succeeded as interim director by CACC director of administration and general counsel Risa Weinstock. Weinstock  also headed the CACC for six months after the October 2009 resignation of previous executive director Charlene Pedrolie.