The Miami Herald
His voice shaking with anger, Zoo Miami spokesman Ron Magill told the Miami-Dade County Commission Tuesday that as one of nearly 500,000 voters who volunteered to raise their own property taxes to save unwanted pets, he was ?insulted?? that anyone suggest he didn?t know what he was voting for.
That?s one of the reasons that Mayor Carlos Gimenez gave last week for doing an about-face on his support for what?s popularly known as the Pets? Trust, a grassroots effort that placed a nonbinding question on the November ballot to raise about $19 million through a tax for animal care.
Property owners would have paid an average of $20 for the year.
Gimenez said that he recently heard from people who said they didn?t know what they were voting for.
?I was keenly aware of what I was voting for,?? Magill said. ?Any one of you would love to receive [those votes], yet here we are still here today trying to convince you.??
Despite his position, he said he?s ?not a tunnel-vision animal rights extremist, and there isn?t a single animal life that?s more important than a human life, but it?s an economical [solution]. It costs five times as much to euthanize an animal as to sterilize it.??
The commission chamber was packed with animal lovers wearing red, most of whom had been protesting outside the Stephen P. Clark Government Center holding placards that read ?Stop the senseless killing of innocent pets?? and ?Don?t muzzle our vote.??
High-powered lobbyist Ron Book, whom Pets? Trust Miami hired to address the commission, said that in his 40-year career, he?d never had more calls from supporters of his client.
He called them ?rabid without rabies.??
Book acknowledged that the measure wasn?t binding, but that doesn?t imply that the public did not understand.
?This is not about pro or con on pets,?? he said, rather, it?s about the commission?s ability to set tax rates.
The public ?never voted on anything else,?? he said. ?They voted on this.??
This story will be updated as the commission meeting continues.
Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/16/3502664/animal-lovers-protest-miami-dade.html
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