Discussion from the April 22 borough assembly meeting could lead to potential changes for some furry best friends in Wrangell.
Hiring a part-time ordinance enforcement officer to handle a surplus of dog feces in public parks has been discussed since the April 8 meeting. Assembly member Daniel Blake asked for the issue to be added to the April 22 agenda based on a Facebook discussion of the matter which he said drew between 30 and 40 responses.
Several possible changes to existing ordinances could make dog cohabitation a little less gooey, Blake said.
Generally, he focused on changes to licensure that would extend dog licensing from an annual term to the length of a rabies vaccine. An ordinance change requiring dogs to be on a leash may be too much, but requiring owners to have a leash in hand when exercising their dog – in order to prevent dogs from fighting during the daily walk – may be in order, Blake said. In addition, pet owners who do not scoop should find themselves facing a fine, Blake said.
“There’s nothing in the current code about cleaning up pet waste, especially in public areas, and I think we need to add that in there with probably a $25 fine for not doing so,” he said.
An ordinance change might not be enough to deal with the problem, Blake said.
“The sticking point that we run into with a lot of people is who’s going to enforce this?” he said.
Beyond providing fodder for dog-based puns, the current situation could represent a liability issue, Blake said.
“Right now the police department currently does it,” he said. “The problem that I have with that is our police officers are not trained as animal control officers, and they’re not equipped as animal control officers. So if we send an officer up to Housing on a vicious dog, and that officer gets bit, we now have a worker’s comp claim, and possibly a civil lawsuit from the officer because he was never trained to deal with that properly, nor did we give him the right equipment to do so.”
In addition, dogs kept in patrol cars could prove to be a vector for diseases transmitted to human passengers, another potential liability for the borough, Blake said.
Animal control officers have in the past suffered at the hands of their own success, city officials said. Successful officers have found themselves facing taxpayers in a dog poop-free city questioning their salaries.
A possible solution might be to hire a part-time officer dedicated not only to ticketing rogue poopers, but also to a host of other issues, Blake said.
They would include “parking violations or abandoned vehicles, yard care violations, there’s an ordinance about mowing your grass, any number of things like that,” he said.
Without a dedicated dispenser of dog justice, Fidos could find themselves at the mercy of existing employees, Blake said.
“The other way to do that would be to make that the responsibility of an employee of the city who’s already employed by the city with other duties, and making animal control their part-time responsibility, maybe public works or parks and rec, something like that,” he said.
Whatever changes to leash laws are in store, they’re likely to affect the city’s bottom line, said borough manager Jeff Jabusch.
The budget is like a pie, Jabusch said.
“The bigger one piece gets, the smaller something else gets,” he said.
The borough’s code review committee is scheduled to take up the issue at a 4 p.m. meeting today.
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