If approved, a new animal control ordinance would significantly tighten requirements for keeping animals in the city.
The ordinance would require annual registration of all dogs in the city and the strict confinement of animals deemed “dangerous” by the ordinance’s guidelines. Aldermen are expected to vote on the ordinance at their March 15 meeting.
Starkville has too many dogs, city animal control officer Rich McKee said. McKee said he usually catches about two dangerous dogs per week, but that he recently caught four chow chows in one day.
A draft of the ordinance lists several guidelines for determining dangerous dogs. Animals that threaten or attack people or other animals while not on the owner’s property are classified as dangerous. Also, animals that “have a known propensity, tendency or disposition to attack” without provocation and animals that have been bred for fighting fit into the category.
The ordinance calls for any animals classified as dangerous under the criteria to be housed inside or in an enclosed pen made of steel wire or other sturdy material. The pen would require a roof and a concrete base, unless the pen’s walls were embedded at least two feet underground.
“This is a serious business,” Ward 2 alderman Frank Davis said. “It’s tough, but it’s got to be.”
Davis, who has played a major role in developing the ordinance, said that concern for the safety of Starkville children and elderly spurred the update of the city’s 1986 animal control ordinance.
“What we’re really worried about is these dogs getting loose from their confinements and entering schoolyards or nurseries,” Davis said.
The new ordinance would also require dog owners in Starkville to pay an initial fee of $5 for registration of their animals. After paying the fee, a dog owner would receive a tag with a designated number to attach to his or her dog’s collar.
City attorney Katherine Kerby said she looked at animal laws in Dekalb, Ga.; Tacoma, Wash.; Lafayette, La.; Gadsden, Ala.; and Columbus in the process of writing Starkville’s new ordinance.
“This is a radically different ordinance from the one we already have,” she said.