Meet the new top dog, same as the old top dog: Steve Kozachik has been picked to be the permanent director of the Pima County Animal Care Center.
The former Tucson City councilman — who resigned his seat last March to become a high-level staffer for the county — has been running the animal shelter since December.
County Administrator Jan Lesher announced Friday that she has appointed Kozachik as PACC director on a permanent basis, saying that he was the best choice after a national search.
Kozachik said the job comes with a wide scope and big challenges: “We cover everything from Ajo to Vail. We've got 470 dogs and about 150 cats in the shelter today.”
The county animal care program has “18 animal protection officers for 9,200 square miles; we have a backlog of animal cruelty and hoarding cases,” he told the Sentinel.
But PACC, while over-crowded, has bright spots, he said.
“We have a clinic that's operating like a MASH unit, with veterinarians and techs. We've got 3,000 volunteers” who help walk dogs and otherwise pitch in, he said.
Seven candidates to become PACC director were interviewed by the county, with two finalists asked to interview further.
“Unfortunately, only one finalist followed through with participating in the interview process,” Lesher said. “As I reflected on the candidate's skills and read through the written feedback from community and staff, it became evident that our community would be served best by naming our interim director, Steve Kozachik, the permanent director for PACC.”
The finalist who didn't get the job was from out of state, Kozachik told the Sentinel.
PACC is “resource-starved, like every department in the county,” he said. “People aren't spaying and neutering their animals enough.”
Kozachik cited the county's free spay/neuter clinics, an ongoing Spanish-language outreach campaign, and work to foster pets for people facing eviction, medical difficulties and other issues.
“We're trying to keep those families together even when people are going through tough times,” he said.
Arranging for an outside animal rescue to work with a temporary foster for a pet means that dog or cat won't be turned in at the shelter or end up loose on the streets.
Kozachik said he's working to set up a patrol of “volunteer animal protection officers” who can help prevent people from allowing dogs to run off-leash at parks.
“We're not looking to cite people; we don't want to be handing out tickets,” he said. “But we do want to have some educational patrols.”
Kozachik took the place of former PACC Director Monica Dangler, who announced her resignation in October.
Under Dangler's tenure, Pima County dramatically reduced the number of dogs who are put down and also mitigated dog bites by 22 percent since 2010.
“Unnecessary
deaths” at the Pima Animal Care Center have been “systematically” cut
by 94 percent with a change in strategy to focus on “compassion and
care,” Dangler wrote in report published in August.
Dangler
attributed the decrease in euthanasia and bites alike to a focus on
animal rehabilitation and training rather than punitive animal control
over the past decade.
In March, Kozachik resigned from the Tucson City Council after serving as the representative for Ward 6 since 2009.
After
leaving that seat, Kozachik was hired by Lesher to tackle the Mosaic
Quarter—a public-private athletic development on Tucson's South Side.
Kozachik
was a sports facilities associate director at the University of
Arizona, but he was pushed out of that job in November 2020 when his
criticisms of college administrators' handling of the COVID-19 pandemic
became more pronounced.
Kozachik began working for UA athletics in 1988.
