Hoping to bring a calming force to the volatile Animal Services Department, a city panel recommended Monday confirming Brenda Barnette as the agency's sixth director in the last decade. The City Council will vote today on the recommendation from its Public Safety Committee to appoint Barnette, the former CEO of the Seattle Humane Society. She would be paid $192,000 a year to manage the department of 357 workers, with an annual budget of $18.6 million. During Monday's hearing, Barnette alluded to the long-standing tension between the department and local animal-rights activists as she recalled a recent conversation with her daughter. 'I told her that I wished the Seattle humane community was a little more outspoken,' Barnette said during testimony before the City Council's Public Safety Committee. 'She told me to be careful what I wished for.' Animal-rights activists said they have concerns about Barnette's qualifications, which they plan to raise during today's hearing. Questions have been raised about her commitment to a no-kill policy at city shelters, to her support for spay-neuter programs and whether she has sufficient experience to oversee an agency that last year impounded more than 54,000 dogs and cats. 'I want her to do well, but the lack of substantive responses to completely legitimate questions makes me concerned,' said Daniel Guss, an animal rescuer. 'When asked about her freshest marketing ideas to promote spay-neuter and adoptions, she said she would have 'nice fliers' -- fliers instead of thinking big.' Barnette, who met with activists during a town hall meeting on Sunday, said her top priority is to deal with the staff, which has been hit with morale problems over the years by the constant change in management and criticism from the animal rights activists. 'The first thing I plan to do is be accessible and spend time in the shelters,' Barnette said. 'In the meetings I have had so far, everyone had their own animal and their own animal story to tell. Those are stories we need to get to the public.' Barnette said her experience with private shelters has prepared her to do the public outreach and private fundraising that will be needed to supplement public revenue for the department's programs. Barnette said she supports the 'no kill' goal of the city and believes it can get to 70 or 80 percent of its goal within the next three to five years. To get there, she said, will require an aggressive spay-neuter program along with the other adoption programs in place in the city. Kathy Davis has been serving as interim general manager of the department since Ed Boks resigned last year. Boks was harshly criticized when he canceled free or discounted spay/neuter services for low-income pet owners. The program was later reinstated. He was also forced to cancel a 'Hooters for Neuters' bikini contest aimed at collecting donations for sterilization programs, and a Pit Bull Academy, which would have allowed reformed felons to train dogs. At one point, several members of Boks' staff signed a petition saying they had 'no confidence' in him as a leader. Boks' predecessor, Guerdon Stuckey, was ousted after 13 months, during which a smoke bomb was set off in the lobby of his apartment building by a radical animal-rights group. L.A. Animal Services took in 54,129 dogs and cats in 2009, and almost 25 percent of the canines and more than half the felines were euthanized for untreatable illnesses, intractable behavior or lack of space. 