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Editorial
Wildlife center issue offered some lessons
The successful campaign by the Wildlife Center of Silicon Valley to get funding from the town of Los Gatos offers an important truth: Sometimes things just slip through the cracks.
The ancillary truth is this: If you've got something worth fighting for, go for it.
The WCSV had never asked the town for money--its request earlier this year was a first for the organization, which, until now, has been able to survive on donations of time and money.
The budget process is a long and complicated procedure, and perhaps council members can be forgiven for not asking why the WCSV request was listed in the draft budget as an unfunded item.
If council members had asked about it, they would have learned that the $3,949.50 request was just 5 percent of the amount cities throughout the county were being asked to chip in to ensure that orphaned and injured wildlife would be cared for and nursed back to health so they could be released in the wild. That 5 percent represents the town's share based on past history of which cities animals at the center had come from.
And so while the funding request managed to get the attention of officials in every other community involved, it fell through the cracks in Los Gatos.
Deborah Champion, executive director of the center, and her dedicated team of volunteers decided not to accept the town's decision without a fight.
First, they told the town that the center would no longer be able to accept orphaned or injured wildlife from Los Gatos.
Then they began a letter-writing campaign not just to individual council members, but to the Los Gatos-Weekly-Times. They wanted to ensure that the officials who approved the budget understood the implications of turning down the center's request.
And they wanted town residents to understand why the center would no longer accept injured wildlife.
When many of those same volunteers who had written the letters showed up Sept. 20 to convince the council to reconsider the request, council members quickly moved the item to the consent calendar. The volunteers and animal lovers had accomplished their goal.
So, all's well that ends well.
And in the process, some valuable lessons have been learned.
Representatives from the center now know that educating public officials is a critical component of any funding request.
And Town Council members learned--or at least we hope they did--that it pays to be vigilant to important items that may fall through the cracks.
After all, as this episode showed them, what they don't know can hurt them--not to mention make them look hard-hearted and uncaring to their constituents.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
