Protesters March Through Center City and Demand More Funding and Staffing for ACCT Philly

Fed up with what they described as terrible conditions and a staffing shortage, protesters marched through Center City and called for more funding for ACCT Philly.

The demonstrators circled City Hall late Wednesday afternoon while holding signs and yelling for Mayor Jim Kenney to give more funding to the city-run animal shelter, located on 111 W. Hunting Park Avenue.

The protesters, many of whom are volunteers at the shelter, said they’re in crisis mode.

“There’s not enough people coming to clean these cages,” Barbara Marko, an ACCT volunteer, told NBC10. “There’s dogs dying every day because of this.”

Some of the demonstrators had photos showing a glimpse of what dogs are dealing with inside their kennels at the shelter.

ACCT Philly

“You may or may not have running water,” Patti Roke, another volunteer, said. “You have leaking roofs. Ceiling tiles that are falling down.”

ACCT Philly’s most recent executive director resigned earlier this month after less than a year on the job. It was the second time in a year that a shelter director had resigned or been replaced.

City officials said the shelter is dealing with an “extreme staffing shortage” and more than a quarter of the jobs at the shelter, many of them medical, are not filled.

“The conditions at ACCT this year compared to the conditions at ACCT last year are horrendous,” ACCT Managing Director Brian Abernathy said.

A city spokeswoman told NBC10 kennels and the adoption center at the shelter have received more than $500,000 since the start of the Kenney administration. She also said an additional $165,000 will go to the kennels and a new roof is allotted in the budget for next year. For now however, advocates and volunteers for the animals continue to shout for change.

“The funding levels haven’t changed,” Abernathy said. “Something else has. It has to be corrected and it has to be corrected soon.”