Council committee backs Susan Cappello for city's Animal Care and Control chief

A City Council committee on Tuesday advanced Mayor Brandon Johnson’s choice to lead Chicago’s overburdened and under-resourced Commission on Animal Care and Control, despite strong objections from volunteers and animal welfare organizations.

Susan Cappello spent three years as acting executive director of the city-run shelter at 2741 S. Western Ave. before Johnson chose her for the permanent job.

That hasn't stopped 27 animal welfare organizations and scores of shelter volunteers from condemning Cappello’s leadership and demanding that the Johnson administration conduct a nationwide search for her replacement.

They described a toxic environment of “hostility, manipulation, favoritism and retaliation” where volunteers who complain are summarily dismissed. They raised concerns about overcrowded and unsanitary shelter conditions, where dogs are held in cages, sometimes in their own waste — and taken for a walk often just once a week.

“Have you seen the conditions? Have you seen that recently, they started using puppy pee pads on the counters because there are so many rodents that… they have to throw out the treats they buy from their own pockets?” said Heather Owen, co-founder of One Tail-at-a-Time, a Chicago-based animal rescue organization.

Nevertheless, the City Council’s Committee on Health and Human Relations approved Cappello’s appointment on a voice vote. That sets the stage for a full Council vote next week.

Kelly Gandurski, who ran the city shelter under former Mayors Rahm Emanuel and Lori Lightfoot, asserted that the problems at Animal Care and Control are “not Sue Cappello problems." They are "community problems" in a city that earmarks just $8 million a year for animal care and control, less than one third than the average spent in other major cities.

The spending shortage comes at a time when the number of dogs and cats arriving at the city-run shelter has surged by nearly 5,000 over the last two years. That's because Chicagoans who can no longer afford to support themselves are choosing to give up their pets to a shelter that turns no animal away.

“CACC is being asked to do the impossible. Never stop taking animals in, avoid euthanasia and somehow place animals with rescue groups and adopters that are already overwhelmed. This is not a management failure. This is a systemic problem," Gandurski said Tuesday.

Gandurski argued that Chicago has long had a "severe animal over-population issue, particularly with pit bull-mix dogs that are often bred in backyards, sold cheaply without vaccines or proper care and then end up in a shelter a year or two later with medical or behavioral issues."

"What CACC needs is not finger-pointing. It needs legislative action” to ban backyard breeding and reduce the flow of animals into the shelter, she said.

WGN Radio’s Steve Dale, a certified animal behavior consultant, said he has seen “nearly four decades of executive directors come and go” amid controversy. But Dale said he has never seen "vitriol" like the coordinated campaign against Cappello.

“The attacks are relentless, hurled like scoops of dog--- I won’t say the word,” Dale said.

Even though animal intake has been surging, Cappello said, transfers to the city’s rescue partners have risen to their highest levels in a decade. Euthanasia rates remained flat from 2024 to 2025, when adoption rates rose to the highest in department history.

“I recognize that concerns have been raised about shelter operations, conditions and outcomes and I take those concerns seriously,” Cappello told committee members. “Municipal animal sheltering is complex work and the decisions our staff face every day are often difficult.”

Cappello said her chief priorities going forward are to strengthen the dangerous dog ordinance banning backyard breeding that stalled under Gandurski, and ensure that every dog gets walked every day instead of once a week.

She also vowed to promptly fill the 17 new jobs bankrolled by the $657,000 increase in her annual budget.

“We’re adding more shelter cleaning staff… We have more animal control officers… More dispatch clerks to help really put together something similar to like a call center so that we are calling residents back on their service requests in a timely manner, and then a program specialist to help us… look into best practices elsewhere,” she said.

Animal Care and Control has long been the revolving door of city government. In 2018, Gandurski replaced an executive director fired for warehousing dogs in conditions that made dangerous dogs more dangerous. Five years earlier, then-Inspector General Joe Ferguson concluded that Chicago’s lost, stray and impounded dogs and cats were not always cleaned and fed properly — or getting veterinary exams within 24 hours — because of a 30% vacancy rate in feeding and cleaning staff.