Despite a packed meeting room that favored a repeal of the pit bull ban, Unified Government commissioners tonight left the ban on pit bulls in place, while passing most of the rest of the animal control ordinance changes.
“The pit bull issue is a passionate issue,” Mayor Mark Holland said. “People feel passionate on both sides.”
The vote was 4-4 on repealing the pit bull ban. Six votes were needed in order to pass the ordinance change. Voting for a repeal of the pit bull ban were Commissioners Jane Philbrook, Ann Murguia, Mike Kane and Angela Markley. Voting against the repeal were Commissioners Hal Walker, Tarence Maddox, Jim Walters and Gayle Townsend.
The commission voted 6-2 in favor of raising the limit of dogs allowed at an individual residence to three, with three cats also allowed, for a total of six at a residence. Formerly, only two dogs, along with four cats, were allowed at an individual residence.
“We have a stray dog crisis in Kansas City, Kan.,” Mayor Holland said. “We have a problem with dogs everywhere, and we have cats everywhere. I think the reason we have dogs and cats everywhere is not because of the responsible owners, and our laws unfortunately, by legal statute, we cannot have one law for a good pet owner and another law for a bad pet owner. We have to have one law for the entire community.”
He felt that increasing the number of pets allowed would increase the number of strays.
When asked by Commissioner Tarence Maddox why they should allow more pets at individual homes, an official with animal control said that they currently answer a lot of calls about three small dogs living at one residence, where there are no other violations and no problem behaviors. They would like to move away from making calls to responsible pet owners and spend more time going after irresponsible pet owners, she said.
“If we can get more animals off the street by having somebody adopt and by letting the animal control people do their job of picking up the stray ones instead of calling on people who have three dogs versus two, I would rather have the stray ones picked up and trapped,” Commissioner Jane Philbrook said.
The UG Commission also approved a new trap, neuter and release policy that will apply to feral cats. Instead of capturing and killing them, animal control’s policy will be to trap, neuter and release them.
Also approved was the intention to pass new nuisance animal provisions. Commissioner Gayle Townsend pointed out that the language of the ordinance needed to be worked on in these provisions, and so a final version of this portion of the changes will come back to the commission later. In general, this part of the ordinance will outline specific penalties for specific behavior of animals.
In another vote, the commission decided to keep hearing the requests for pets that are over the limit allowed, instead of sending them administratively to animal control, one of the proposed changes.
Most of the time, Mayor Holland did not have to vote, but he had a vote on this 5-3 issue of whether the requests should come to the commission or go to animal control. He voted for the issue coming to the commission, and the motion failed, 5-4. Six votes were needed to pass.
Commissioner Mike Kane said one of his family members was at college with two pit bulls, and when college was done, she had to give up the two pit bulls to move back to Wyandotte County.
He pointed out that on the police list of dog bites, Labradors had bitten more people than other breeds of dogs.
“The pit is not the problem, it’s the owners of the pit bulls,” Kane said.
A committee that recommended the changes earlier had stated that it was not a specific breed that was vicious, but rather, it was the animal’s environment, caused by the owners, that made it vicious.
It also was stated tonight that animal control officers spend too much of their time tracking down pit bulls illegally in the city, time that could be better used in tracking down animals with bad behavior. The head of the animal control division stated that it costs about $1,000 per dog to track down pit bulls, remove them, house them, and go to court.
During a previous UG committee meeting on these changes, community members spoke in favor of and against lifting the ban on pit bulls. Included were comments from family members and friends of a Kansas City, Kan., woman, Jimmie Mae McConnell, who lost her life in 2006 while working in her own garden after an attack by a dog that lived next door.
During the discussion, Commissioner Hal Walker noted that pit bulls currently were the second highest on the list for dog bites, according to police records.
“There shouldn’t be any pit bulls in Wyandotte County whatsoever,” Walker said. “It tells me there are a lot of people who ignore the law.”
He said he was concerned that the day the UG Commission approves pit bulls, there would be people who would go out and buy three pit bulls. He said he was not ready to share the collective responsibility if someone was mauled or killed by a pit bull after the UG lifted the ban.
Commissioner Jim Walters said he liked the idea of trying to prevent something bad from happening, and that was why he supported the current ban on pit bulls.
Katie Barnett, of the Barnett Law Office, with the committee that proposed the changes, said that the intent of the extensive nuisance language changes was to change the ordinance from reactive to a proactive one.
Commissioner Townsend noted that some residents earlier said they chose to leave the city with their pit bulls, while others chose to stay in the city but give up their pit bulls.
“The problem for me is that for Mrs. McConnell, there is no choice,” she said.
“I would like to go on the side of choice for people to be safe and not in fear,” she said, adding that she believed the pit bull by breed had more propensity to be vicious and inflict fatalities than other breeds.
An effort was made by Commissioner Ann Murguia to table the nuisance portion of the ordinance, along with the pit bull ban, until April so that adequate funding could be worked on for these changes. However, a motion to table it failed. Murguia said she was supportive of all of the committee’s proposed recommendations that came forward on animal control.
Commissioner Murguia said it was evident from the number of people present how important this issue was to the community, and that the commissioners should work on better financing animal control during the budget discussion. While these ordinance changes are best practices, the ordinances aren’t any good if the UG doesn’t fund the department to enforce the ordinances, she said.
“If this community is serious about getting animal control under control,” she said, “we need to put money behind it.”