Controling Deja Vu

As I mentioned in my last post, last weeks council meeting seemed like a case of Deja Vu.

Animal control is once again on the radar. The stated reason is  that Animal control can't keep straight what to call their officers in court or before a judge. I guess it can be hard to keep the less than half a dozen titles straight so they can actually show that the person that issued a citation can legally do it. We expect city employees to remember a lot and they're just asking council to make their life easier. The reality is probably something different. There is a lot of turbulence in animal control. Always has been. At the last council meeting it was mentioned that there are 6 control officers in the city government. 3 are fully qualified, 2 are in training, and 1, who didn't get qualified within the allotted time after training is doing a "work around."  Think about that for a second. In 2006, council was told that a minimum of 9 officers were needed for a city our size. Here it is 11 years later, and we only have 6 on the payroll of which only 3 have certification and we've grown enough we need 10. This is the real problem.

There are still two big problems that were the same in 2006. First off, the animal enforcement is understaffed and under performing. New laws and ordinance changes won't make much difference. They haven't in the past.  You have to have enough experienced people on board to do the job right. And you have to verify they are doing it.

Another problem is that the Animal Shelter Advisory Committee needs to be put in the game. I and other observers have noticed no real input from the advisory committee on the recent issues brought before council. The minutes of the meetings seem to focus an extraordinary amount of time on feral cat's and not much time on issues like the recent distemper outbreak. Of course it's hard to tell because only four agendas and one set of minutes are on the cities web site. The bylaws are on the website, as well as a set of goals and objectives that look to be very expensive to implement. Still, not much information is there to suggest any solutions beyond an expensive new centrally located building. It's not on the Capital Improvement Plan yet but they have it on their goals to be there by 2021. Instead of the 285,000 listed in they  CIP for the next 5 years, it seems they want to go with a multi-million bond issue right in the middle of tackling all the basic infrastructure problems the city is already paying for. And personally, I think I'd much rather have a quality affordable  shelter on the edge of town than pay the much higher price for a "centrally located" (is that downtown or out by the mall?) with poor parking that takes valuable property off the tax roles.

Today, as it was in 2006, dogs and cats out number people in this city. Less that half (probably less than a quarter) of pet owners have them licensed/registered. Few have them spayed or neutered.  Many, like me are still trying to figure out why we need to pay for both a micro-chip and a metal tag. Most pet owners have little use for Animal Control/Services. They mostly ignore the laws unless they are adopting from the animal shelter or a rescue group. I have seen nothing to indicate that breeders or multi-pet owners permits have done anything positive for the health and safety of San Angelo or the quality of life of pets and their families. The same core laws and regulations we had in 2005 are still the ones that work best when applied in the field. New laws have had little affect. The formula today is the same as it has been.

Hire enough good people. Train them well. Lead them well. Provide them with the tools they need. Connect them to the public. Don't try to make their job a revenue stream or nothing but control issues. Respect the rights and freedoms of those living in the city. Fix the problems, don't make excuses or pass the buck.. Again, get the basics right and don't worry about image or popularity. Put health and safety first and leave the frills and self promotion for later.

A bit of Deja Vu

After you’ve been blogging long enough, stories start to repeat themselves. You sit down to write and it strikes you. Last weeks City Council meeting was Deja Vu all over again

We at ConchoInfo started covering animal issues from the start of the blog. Back in 2006 there was a lot to write about because of a puppy mill in one of the better neighborhoods in the city. It was mostly just a nuisance but the local news had a field day and City Hall went in to defense mode. We blogged about it here. First that happened was All kinds of new laws were proposed, especially restrictions on the number  of animals that could be owned and couple of new license requirements such as breeder permits and multi pet owner permits. The animal control statute was revised in 2007 but no new licenses or numbers were added. The main point made during all the discussions were that there were plenty of existing laws to deal with these issues if they would just be properly enforced (brought up by Judge Gilbert), and there were not nearly enough Animal Control officers available to do the job. It was pointed out at that time by the health director that a city should normally have  one officer per 10,000 people which meant that San Angelo needed 9 officers back in 2006. They were only authorized 3, which council then upped to 5 and said let’s see how this works. Throughout this bit of drama almost nothing was said about the animal services board. You know, the councils representatives that are supposed to provide policy guidance and oversight to the animal shelter and control operations.

In 2009, another puppy mill and a worse case than the one 3 years before. More pictures on the local news and abuse was front page. We blogged about it here. This time they passed an ordinance with breeding and mult-pet restrictions. Spay and neuter, etc. etc. etc.. At this time they had never had all 5 of the control officer positions filled. Looking at the quality of enforcement, not sure that would have really made a difference but the truth is that in a city our size 5 officers weren't going to be able to handle the job. And the Animal services board was still mostly missing in action. They did manage to get some very committed people on the commission for a while but little progress was made. I attended a few ASB meetings and they had some good recommendations but many of them never made it to the city council. Those few that did get before council were often not even close to what the board recommended.

It was during this time that city council and staff started looking at why, when, and how to use the numerous boards & commissions in the city. Animal Service board was rename and give a new ordinance and bylaws as the Animal Shelter Advisory committee and staff congratulated themselves on solving that problem.

Some things have changed in the last 11 years and there really has been some progress but last weeks council meeting seemed like a kind of mashed up replay from 8 to 12 years ago. As I will make clearer in my next post, things have changed but far too many are still stuck over a decade ago. Like I said, Deja Vu all over again.

Bored with boards

There is a lot of talk lately about boards and commissions. State of the Division has posted a couple articles that are critical of the board member selection process and the Animal Shelter Advisory Committee. I have to agree with much of what he says. I also think I understand what's at the root of the problem with boards.

It's hard for the city government to create effective boards when they're not clear on why we have boards in the first place. Here are some of the main reasons I think we need them.

The first reason we have boards is to connect the citizens with the city government. It's important that the city government not be isolated from the community as a whole. Governments need constant feedback. Feedback is need to prevent and correct errors and identify problems.  With a properly functioning board the city government and the community will connect on issues and work together to shared, supportable goals and avoid a significant number of problems. This helps reducee the "us vs. them" mindset that is so common.

The second reason to have a board is to bring a fresh perspective from outside the walls of City Hall. This is in reality a part of the first reason but it's purpose is to keep the government from being isolated. Far too often there is a traditional, legalistic, governmental rule book way of dealing with issues. A government staff that isn't connected to the community will also act defensively. A good board is a balance to traditions and power centers in City Hall. You have to balance the inside with the outside.

Another reason you need boards is to act as representatives of the city council at the working level so council has an independent view of what is going in city hall from a citizens perspective. Council can't be everywhere. That's why we have boards.

 The last reason you need a good board is you need groups that can take a long view independent of the day to day operations. City governments get in trouble when all the solutions are tied to short-term goals with little longer than an election cycle. We've had some local progress such as a capital budget we put in the charter to force planning for some stuff at least 5 years into the future. City officials still have problems thinking beyond a budget cycle or the next election. A good board has the luxury to think long range. What will our grand kids be doing? What will happen to San Angelo in a hundred or thousand years? Will it be a thriving community or just an archaeological dig? That should be part of the mission of every board.

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Right now we have many boards that are probably unnecessary. We have many boards where attendance is so low they have a hard time making a quorum. Some only meet a couple times a year and really they don't have much work to do. Many have vacancies that haven't been filled for years. Many of the board members I've talked to don't know what's expected of them or what they can do or what role they play in the city government.

Four years ago I submitted a plan to the City Council. They looked at it. They voted on and approved it and then promptly forgot about it. They did make changes to the boards and commissions some of the changes were actually steps backwards. The council pretty much abandoned the selection process to city staff who does all live review and screening. It's tough for anyone with fresh perspective or a different opinion from staff to even get before Council unless they can convince a council member or the Mayor to push for them.even though or just post to be picked and selected by city council and serve at the pleasure of City Council. Boards are not staff. They don't do day to day operations. They are there to advise council and staff on policy and the future. 

Things need to change. Here are my recommendations.

1. Every board and commission should should face a review every 2 years. This review should happen at a joint session where the board should be able to tell the council why it should continue and what it has done for the past few years. Council should give feedback on how useful the board has been and what it expects in the future. Special requirements and qualifications for membership should be part of the review. If the board needs expertise, they need to have a plan on how to get it. A list of future goals should also be part of the review. At the end of the session, the council should either say "Good job. Keep it up.", "Here are changes we expect from you in the future." or "Thanks but we don't really need this board anymore."

 2. Every application for board membership should be forwarded to the appropriate council member. Staff should verify that the applicant meets the requirements for the position. If the applicant meets the requirements, the packet should go forward. If there are any staff considerations besides qualifications, those should be forwarded as part of the packet but if the person meets the qualifications their name should forwarded. The decision is for the council, not staff, to make.

3. Attendance should be monitored and reported to the council, probably at least quarterly. Any meeting that is canceled because of lack of quorum should be brought before council at the next meeting it can be put on the agenda, probably during public comments and made part of the public record.

4. Every board should have a clear, action oriented mission statement. One I particularly like is this one from the Airport Advisory Board: "The board shall act as an advisory board to the airport manager, and the city council, and is expressly directed and empowered to make a complete study of all phases of the airport operations and make recommendations from time to time for the most efficient operation of said airport." Not perfect but not bad. We need similar mission statements for all the boards. And they need to be taken seriously.

5.  Board members don't work for staff, they work for council. They do, of course, have to work with staff and and they should be supporting, not fighting staff. That being said, one of the most important functions board members should do is as a devils advocate. They should ask tough questions and not be just an echo chamber for staff. They need to have an unfiltered connection to council. They should be self governing and independent from staff in decisions and questioning.

6. A properly functioning could be part of the hiring process, especially for liaisons. They should work closely enough with staff and be knowledgeable enough in their area they can offer independent advice up the supervisory chain. They might be able to serve part of a screening committee during a job search. They should be another a set of  eyes that know the city's needs. Not sure any of them are ready for that yet but in the future I could see the water advisory board giving advice on hiring a water utilities director or engineer.

These are our thoughts today. You can see they haven't changed much over the last few years. Hope to see some of the changes soon.

Restraint

Animal control issues have been around San Angelo for years and every so often something will hit the local news and a new batch of ordinances will come before council, most of them ill considered. Unintended consequences usually pop up and make the ordinances look stupid, and enforcement costs (real enforcement costs) are not considered. This link shows most of the coverage we've done here at ConchoInfo.

In 2009 a series of ordinances and amendments were passed. Among them were changes that changed how a dog can be housed, and virtually eliminated the ability to tether or chain a dog out. This issue came up again and was discussed at the last council meeting. There are factual errors that need to be cleared up.

First off, it was stated that state statute HS 821.076 thru .078 doesn't allow for tethering of a dog for longer than 3 hours. It's easy to get that impression from the slides presented at council because the the definitions and exceptions were on different slides. HS 821.077 states in part “(a) An owner may not leave a dog outside and unattended by use of a restraint that unreasonably limits the dog's movement” and then goes and defines unreasonably limiting a dogs movement as

“(b)  In this section, a restraint unreasonably limits a dog's movement if the restraint:

(1)  uses a collar that is pinch-type, prong-type, or choke-type or that is not properly fitted to the dog;

(2)  is a length shorter than the greater of:

(A)  five times the length of the dog, as measured from the tip of the dog's nose to the base of the dog's tail; or

(B)  10 feet;

(3)  is in an unsafe condition; or

(4)  causes injury to the dog.”

Chains and tethering are legal under state law, they just have to not unreasonably restrain the dog. The part that everyone focused on was HS 821.078, which the list of exceptions to unreasonable restraint requirements and particularly “(3)  a dog restrained for a reasonable period, not to exceed three hours in a 24-hour period, and no longer than is necessary for the owner to complete a temporary task that requires the dog to be restrained;” This gives exceptions such allowing a tether less then 10' long.

This confusion over what state law actually says basically derailed the logic of the discussion that was before the city council. It reduced the debate to “if the state only allows 3 hours, why bother to raise it from 2”, and then it go hung up on how hard it was to make a safe trolley system, etc.. The bad information made a rational, accurate assessment of the situation impossible. In the end, the council did the best they could under the situation.

The last point I want to make is that it is possible to safely tie out a dog. You do need to make sure that he can't get hung up on a fence or wrapped around a pole or tree or lawn furniture. That is probably taken care of by the definitions in (b)(3) “is in an unsafe condition” but we could add clarifying language to our ordinance that says “a restraint that allows a dog to get tangled or wrapped in such a way as to limit restraint length to less then 10 feet shall be unlawful”.

I saw the pictures presented at the council meeting of the case that brought this item to the agenda. It would have been helpful if those pictures and the rest of the information in the presentation had been part of the agenda packet on SlideShare (that's a rant for another day.) The dog was not restrained properly as he could easily get tangled in the fence and could still get over the fence if he had the urge to. It looked to me like was restrained in an unsafe way. There are several ways that he could have been restrained safely but as it stands now that may not be an option.

We euthanize far too many animals in San Angelo as it is. If we get more vigorous on enforcement of unrealistic ordinances such as our tethering ordinance, we won't have more dogs leading better lives, we'll just have more euthanized animals in our landfill. We need to remove our current restrictions on tethering and at most add in the clarification on a safe restraint.

Animals, Boards, Commissions, and Communications

I was pleasantly surprised Friday to find that once again, the city website has the agenda packet online and usable. Last meetings packet is also still up. Progress. Thanks Alicia and the staff that helped you get this done. It's appreciated. 

A quick scan of the packet shows a couple of items that really interest me. They are revising the Animal Services Board ordinance, and they are discussing city boards and commissions again, hopefully so we can have the first review in the near future.

We've known for a while that the Animal Services Board ordinance, 2.3800, and the ASB Bylaws were in need of revision. At the minimum, they were out of sync with each other. There questions about how well it tracked Texas Health and Safety code chapter 823, which governs animal shelter advisory commissions, which is one of the major functions of the ASB. There were questions about whether health director and animal services director should be voting members. The Bylaws were last approved in 2000, while the Ordinance was last updated in 2007.

A workshop was held by the ASB on March 10th 2010 to address these issues. I was invited to that workshop (which was, of course, an open meeting) to help with the discussion. It was requested that City Legal have a representative at the meeting, but none were present. The meeting lasted a couple hours, and at the end, they had a good revised set of documents the hoped were ready to go before City Council. Just needed legal review and possibly some tweaking before becoming an ordinance.

That was 7 months ago. Tuesday a new ordinance is finally on the agenda. Unfortunately, this is a mostly new ordinance to replace the one we currently have. First off, it changes the name to Animal Shelter Advisory Commission (although the new 2.3810 still uses “members of the animal service board”.) Then it reduces the number of members from 9 to 5*, all of which now have to be involved in some animal related business or activity. No plain citizen or property owners are on the board. It requires 2 veterinarians even though we've had trouble getting even one to serve. It limits the scope of the commission to just the animal shelter, ignoring the larger question of animal welfare throughout the city.

I have a number of problems with this. First, why did it take 7months for this to come before council. As far as I knew, outside of some minor tweaking, the only open question was whether or not the staff members on the board should be voting members. The proposed ordinance doesn't make it any clearer. Next, this is a very major change to the duties and the responsibilities of the board/commission members. Staff, in their briefing to council in the agenda packet, states that the ASB has "historically been called upon to provide advice beyond  the scope of the law authorizing their creation and duties." If they are referring to the Health Code, section 823, then that might be the case. The ASB was not created by section 823, but to be in compliance with section 823. It was created by a city ordinance that gives them the animal shelter advisory role as just one of its duties. A review of several other Texas cities animal commissions finds that several of them use their commission for general animal issue advice. Lubbock specifically requires their ASAC to "advise on the city's animal services program." Midland requires their Animal Control Advisory Commission to "advise on animal control issues referred by council." This pattern is common.

The proposed ordinance changes the make up of this board/commission significantly. Any change this large should be addressed as part of the board and commission review process that has still to get off the ground. At the minimum, it should be done during a joint session.

This brings us to a problem that goes to the fundamental reason we have boards and commissions. Boards and commissions work for the City Council, not city staff. They are appointed and removed by Council. They are accountable to Council. They are subject to Council guidance and limitations. They are supposed to be the expert advisers to Council, and in many cases they are councils representatives. They are an extension of City Council into many areas because there just aren't enough council people to be everywhere. They are not just auxiliary, unpaid staff.

Unfortunately, our boards and commissions are being used and treated like low level staff. They are isolated from council, their boss, by staff. With the exception of statutory appeal boards like the planning commission and the zoning board of adjustments, you never hear about a boards input on an item before council. Many board members, especially on the animal services board, don't know who appointed them. Start and end dates for their term in office are often unclear. Boards have almost no contact with the council, and are often left to fend for themselves on critical issues. What guidance they get doesn't come directly from council. Instead, it's filtered through several layers of staff. Some times staff does a great job of getting the word down to boards. More often than not, it's like the old game of telephone where the message to the boards bears little resemblance to the guidance from the council.

Boards and commissions need to have good, unfiltered lines of communication with the city council. Their recommendations should be heard unedited by the council. Staff needs to be in the loop, and the staff representative needs to make sure that the council is given staffs input on the issues. The city legal department need to be in the loop to make sure that the city stays in compliance with the law, but that is no reason to delay input to the council by half a year. If nothing else, all board decisions should be presented to the city council for discussion as a draft work in process. Even if staff has concerns, and needs to do further research the council should always know when a board votes to send something forward. That's just basic communication.

The board and commission review process the council adopted last spring will help address these problems. I think it is very premature to do a major restructuring of a state required commission before the council has done a fair review of that commission using the process they approved.

*Made a mistake on the number earlier. Was caught by a sharp eyed reader.  Sorry for the error.

Choke that Chicken! Updated

In my last missive, I mentioned at the end my concern over raising fighting cocks in town. Unfortunately, for me this is not hypothetical. I live Eastside, just off Bell St, a neighboorhood of quarter-acre lots. Mostly blue-collar, good working folk, pay the bills, mow the grass, responsible folks doing our best to take care of business, a little older demographic than the "late-night party" crowd.

Now comes one rudely inconsiderate bloke who thinks this is a fine venue in which to raise gamecocks. We are not talking here an egg-and-meat flock of mostly hens, but 14-16 fighting cocks. With Louisiana finally making chicken fights illegal, nowhere in the US is it legal to fight chickens for fun and profit, as it should be. As a nation, we take cruelty to animals seriously enough that a top rank quarterback in the NFL served over two years for fighting dogs.

At least the dogs, typically Pit Bulls, have another purpose than fighting. One neighbor has 4 Pits, but they are truly pets. I suspect his kids would revolt were he ever inclined to fight them, which he does not do.

As to gamecocks; they are born and bred for one purpose alone: to slaughter one another immediately anytime two roosters find themselves in reach of one another. At $50 to $150 each, they are not being raised for Sunday fried chicken dinner, and they sure don't lay eggs for breakfast.

What they do is, in frustration at being unable to fight the rooster in the adjoining cage, they indulge in crowing contests. All night long, every night. Perhaps the single rooster in a flock of hens might crow at dawn, but these rascals are at it 18 hours out of 24. Heat of the day they get in the shade and rest, so they can keep me up all night crowing at 3:30 in the AM. The 100 foot distance now in ordinance does nothing to alleviate the noise.

I have nothing against the egg & meat flock of hens, maybe A rooster to keep the flock self-sustaining. My grandmother raised chickens and quail when I was a kid, had an incubator and taught me the art of "candling" eggs to determine fertility. One of my chores was collecting eggs and plucking Sunday dinner sometimes. Frankly, the eggs ARE tastier than supermarket eggs, and the clucking of hens keeps no one disturbed at night, hens coop up and stay silent.

Over several months we have established that my rude neighbor cares not a whit for my inconvenience. SAPD kicks me over to Animal Control. Our noise ordinance gets enforced if an apartment-dweller cranks his stereo at 2:00 AM, but mention "birds" and SAPD backs off, tells me to call Animal Control, which has done all it can under current law. I'm not really chewing on SAPD here, our existing noise ordinance is loosely written, I can see not looking forward to making a rooster noise case in court.

Wednesday I will present to Animal Services Board a proposed new ordinance limiting roosters in town. Noon at the Convention Center. If you have a similar problem, or for that matter, wish to defend your right to keep your neighbors awake, be there. This is how things get done.

Update: It turns out the Wednesday meeting had to be canceled. Seems city staff forgot to post the agenda on the city hall bulletin board 72 hours before the meeting, as required by the Texas Open Meeting laws. They also failed to post it on the city website as required by the last city charter changes. This issue should be on the agenda for the next meeting which is currently scheduled for October 15th. Hopefully they will be ready next time.

I realize that there is some confusion now because they have a new health director, and they are losing the current animal services director, but this is not the first time that the ball has been dropped for this board. We finally have a board that is involved, active, and paying attention. They need to be better served by the city staff.

Father's Day Free-for-All

My focus today will be a review of city accomplishments (and goofs), but first some Just-for-fun items.

Happy Father's Day. In particular, kudos to my own Father for forbearing to justifiably kill me before I turned 21. Also, my thanks to those Fathers who are spending this day apart from their families halfway around the world in service to our country. With conscription off the board, you are all heroes.

We are all appreciative of the recent rains. I drive for a living and one item I cannot help notice; on rainy days about half the driving population is breaking the law. Early 90s, east of Knoxville Tennessee, a heavy fog and rain settled in resulting in a 70-some vehicle pileup on I-40. Over a hundred injuries and a couple dozen dead, some burned alive, trapped in this mass of twisted metal. Tennessee passed a law that if the windshield wipers were on, the headlights had to be on. A number of states, Texas included found this to be a good idea.

I couldn't help noticing (again) that in the rain, especially certain color cars might as well be in camouflage. On this, it is not some nit-pick nanny-state rule, it is plain good sense. It's a lot easier for me dodge you if I can SEE you, I promise to try. I haven't been in a collision in 30 years, but I've had some close ones. If my truck and your car tangle, you lose. I might feel bad and lose sleep over it, but you might not ever wake up. Lights on even on cloudy days, please.

Another Juneteenth, a day perhaps made more significant with our first black President in office. It is also my Uncle Harold's birthday. It reminds me that San Angelo has a long history of (relative) tolerance. Our school system was I think the first, certainly one of the first in Texas to desegregate. I was in North Carolina public schools back then. I did not actually have a black classmate until 8th grade, or 1965. For those too young to remember, the '56 Brown decision did not end segregation over night, it just gave the good guys a solid legal ground from which to contend. It was the beginning of what in some places was a long, and too often mortal, struggle. It is worth remembering, San Angelo skipped over most of that resistance. Von Brunn, the Holocaust Museum shooter, (and how the hell did he get a "long gun" through the front door?) reminds us we are not quite "post-racial", but we really have "come a long way".

On to the main topic, San Angelo City Government has also "come a long way, baby". For context, a majority of these things happened while J. W. Lown was Mayor. He didn't accomplish them single-handed, in fact he made some substantial mis-steps along the way, but this sets a time frame for an effort involving a whole herd of people.

Water issues are a good start. First we had the elimination of "PILOT", or "payment in lieu of taxes". This was a thinly disguised transfer of water revenues to the general fund. By pretending the Water Dept. owed "taxes" to the city, it let the Council have more money for pet projects without directly raising property tax, but it also starved the water system. Later, but in the same line, we finally got a re-designed water (pardon me, "utility") bill. Yep, your water bill went up. I am paying $55 for what was $35 four years ago, BUT; look at that bill. I am now confident my water/sewer/trash money is going to the indicated systems, not to a tennis court I'll never use. We also adopted a "tiered" billing; families with modest, responsible use, pay a lower rate than than the 25,000 gallon a month Yard of the Month irrigator. As it should be.

This came about too late, the Christmas failure of the 27" main valve, the Honey Creek fire with no water to the hydrant, the multiple "geysers" from lesser lines 20 years past reasonable life expectancy, the sewer line collapse, all these things were the result of short-sighted diversion of water money from infrastructure maintenance and repair. People in those departments had been telling me we were approaching meltdown for years, and like Dorian Grey's wagon, the pieces seemed to fall apart just about the same time.

The overdue repairs are underway, they appear to be well prioritized. It has been a while since some 1945 main turned into a fountain with local flooding. Considering they are playing 20 years of catch-up, city staff has done a really good job here.

Hey, they are even re-doing Bell Street south of the river. This is one I used to remind them of every chance I got. City comes in, about '02 as I recall, repaves Bell Street, good idea, long overdue. Then the water department comes in, does two inch main replacement every block, digging up this smooth-as-a-baby's-butt pavement and turning South Bell into a 4 wheel drive test track again. I don't think they will do that again. Inter-departmental communication seems to be the word of the day.

Back to the water bill: when the new bill came out, it was mailed with a ten day due date. People with bi-weekly paychecks got caught between pay periods and assessed late fees. That was corrected, we are on 21 day billing, as it should be.

Capital improvements has been a thorn in the budgetary process for decades. First Council moved to make that component, with a separate set of public hearings, the first part of the annual budget, with a five year projection on prioritizing needs. The last was a good example. We started with almost $500 million of cap improvements on the "wish list". Obviously, not all of them will get done this year on a $100 million budget, but now we have a rational process to say "We NEED these, we really, really want these, and these can be set back to next year, three years from now, and some of these, maybe go pound sand or raise private money, we can live without it". Then we go to overall budget. This is a simplification, but it will serve, and it is an improvement over the "who yells the loudest at this Council meeting" process we used to have.

Then Council moved for a major City Charter update. I was one member of the Charter Review Committee. The voters approved the bulk of the revisions, meaning another Council a few years down the road cannot overturn those rules without the voters approving them.

On transportation; our city buses are now included in a regional public transportation system. They really are working to make the set-up more user-friendly. By setting up transfer points outside the main terminal, one no longer has to ride a whole hour route to transfer to the bus which actually goes where one needs to go. Sometimes. A lot of work left to be done here, but people are trying.

When ASU Pres. Rallo declared he was going to close Johnson St. he did us an unintended favor. The uproar moved the parties to share the cost of a traffic study for all of Ave. N. Rallo has since backed down, turns out we were not slaughtering students crossing the street. Upside, City identified five really overdue intersection re-alignments, which will be done. If Rallo succeeds in making ASU a 10,000 student campus, traffic will greatly increase. My time at UNC, students learned early, leave the car parked. Big campus, small town. Use the bus, walk, the parking permit was a hunting license, not a reserved parking spot, only tenured Profs got those, and not all of them. ASU is a highly vehicular campus, and I don't see that changing. Of course Lord Rallo could decree "no student vehicles", but he won't or he will never see 10,000 willing students. This is West Texas, not Chapel Hill. Make the parking spaces wide, lots of pickup trucks.

Economic Development has worked better than I expected. In that we successfully beat it three times at the polls I suppose that is self-evident. Really, a few mis-steps, but no one wins every investment. ED in San Angelo is not solely "corporate bribery". Oh, we do that, as needed, but it is not the end all. We have good standards for incentives, and companies have had claw-back imposed if they fail to meet standards. SADC has coordinated with the Small Business Development project at ASU, and they have welcomed the idea of "economic gardening". Economic gardening means, not so much writing checks, as preparing the soil, making us a more attractive site for a new business to move to and stay in, or a local business to expand in, and getting the word out that we have those advantages.

An instructive example would be the empty Taylor Publishing building in our "industrial park". That was corporate bribery, and the results are self-evident. The day Taylor fulfilled its contract, it started packing. Compare and contrast, as my English teacher used to say, with the DCS/ACT deal. Both companies in debt collection, specialty, student loans. DCS got here first, we wrote them a check. ACT came up, same business, wanted the same check. Uh-oh, ACT didn't get it. Guess what? They are here anyway. I hear, just as a rumor, that DCS also might well have been here, check or no. Why? We have a nice town, reasonable wage-scale (a top producer at these companies can drag down 80k, which ain't small change in this town) and a willing, competent labor force. Seems we have a lot of bilingual people who are not opposed to being well paid to sit in a chair and talk on a phone all day. No, that is NOT a cut at the workers. There is personal stress, most defaulters are not thieves, they are in all sorts of bad situations, and the job involves wringing blood from turnips. At least turnips don't cry on the phone to you.

The best break we've caught in a while is the Martifer deal. The partnership with Hirschfield nails it down, this is going to happen. This is probably the single best deal SADC has done. Huge plant, possible expansion, and we finagled the RR improvement bucks out of the federal "stimulus package". Ever see all those RR ties stacked up every couple miles between here and Coleman along Hwy 67? For one thing, it speaks well of the honesty of West Texans. If those piles of creosoted ties had been in other places I have lived, they would not still be there six years later, they'd have been in gardens and landscapes all over the country. All the RR needs is the money to put those ties under those rails, straighten out the rails, and do that one bridge.

I have questioned "secondary benefits" on other issues, but on this one, they are if anything, understated. After the towers are built, many of them will go up in our area. A Turbine maintenance person has x number of towers he is responsible for and knocks down 40k or better. They are going to want to live where they work; families, housing, shopping, connected service industry, so long as the Feds are providing that magical two cents a KWH subsidy for wind, we get a big chunk of income tax back here in the local economy.

On to "goofs". The most recent has to be the set of "animal control ordinances". Best I can tell, the "chaining" ordinance has been used once, at the insistence of a neighbor. Zero breeder permits, zero multi-animal permits, and quite sensibly, zero aggressive enforcement of same. The nasty case from last year resulted in a year sentence for the woman, her husband is likely looking at the same, and neither results from the new ordinances. Very few of us would have to walk more than a block to see violations of one of the three new laws, chaining in particular. There are only 8000+ registered dogs in San Angelo. Does anyone believe this represents the true number of animals? We euthanized more dogs last year than were registered. We need to encourage people to register and vaccinate, not discourage. If we could magically transport all unregistered dogs to the "pound", what in God's name would Leslie Hart Turney do with them?

I caught the story about putting off the RR crossing at Knickerbocker until after the boat race. My question is, why is that a priority crossing? I drive for a living, I cross there several times a week. Compared to Main St, Harris St. or the two at Hughes/Culwell, why is this smooth crossing on Knickerbocker top of the list? I got on the wrong side of the Culwell crossing a few years back and fractured an idler arm. Is this a city/TxDOT problem? (State roads are TxDOT, otherwise, city).

Final news item: Thursday's paper, section C; "Grillers question gas prices". The gas grill bottle exchange racks you see all over town, usually Amerigas or Blue Rhino, are quietly raping you with your pants on. The DOT cylinder is designed to hold 20 pounds of propane. If you look closely at the plastic wrap label on the new bottle you are paying $20 for, it will plainly say "contents 15 pounds". They used to be generous and give you 17 pounds, but propane went up with other fuels, they dropped it to 15 to keep a steady price. Now that propane is down, have they given back the gas they reduced it to? Well, not exactly.

If you are buying convenience over price, so be it. If you want value for money, go to any local propane dealer to fill that bottle. They will charge you $10-12 for 20 pounds (4.27 gallons). I know because I am a local propane dealer. This soapbox is not for my personal profit, I won't identify by company. You want to spend $8 for convenience, so be it. You want what you pay for, come see one of us, we live here, spend our money here, and will be honest with you.

Doggie Catch "22"

It did not escape my attention that Emilio Jimenez-Perez's final offering is listed as Agenda item #22. Irony "rocks" as the younger set might say.

Brief precis: he has proposed an ordinance which would preclude Council from re-examining an ordinance, passed or failed, within 6 months of last final action unless 4 of the 7 members agreed to place it on agenda. There are exceptions to allow for adjusting to state or federal mandates, but... Cut to the chase, This might be called the "Save the doggie Ordinances" amendment.

Understand, I have sat on Emilio's patio and shared an adult beverage with him, I am with him well over 80% of the time, even though he is not my Councilmember. He is a good man and has a good record as Councilmember, but on this issue, we must agree to disagree.

It is a well established principle that one Council may not bind the next Council by Ordinance. This is why our last Charter Review Committee, of which I was a member, was proud of putting in play, for instance, the Capitol Improvements Planning. As a voter approved Charter Amendment, CIP is now an ongoing part of the budget process no future Council can ignore just because it might be inconvenient. In this instance, the draft ordinance has pretensions of a Charter Amendment without troubling ourselves with a Charter election.

As it is now, Emilio is retiring (as he promised), the two contenders for his seat are not running against him. Nonetheless, both candidates for his seat have been open as to their doubts about the recently passed by 4-3 vote, doggie ordinance package. Hypothetical: had this been a livelier race, and an issue such as this been key, would we not see this amendment as a limiting, "Dog-in-the-Manger" move? Another day and time, would a new City Council accept such an attempt to restrict its power?

Whoever prevails in SMD4, it will be, by definition, a "new" Council. When we are talking items passed 4-3 by existing Council, the "new" is critical.

Any elected Council, new or not, ought be allowed to consider, re-consider, or bring up new items as circumstances demand. "Stuff" happens, there might be all sorts of reasons we would want to re-examine a recent Ordinance. Any existing Council might find itself looking at new info or citizen input, and wanting to re-visit a recent Ordinance on short notice. I notice that of the three exceptions to the six month rule under the draft ordinance, citizen outcry is not included.

Practical aside, I am not a legal scholar with letters after my name, but my layman's read: This would violate Texas state statute, Constitution, and (forgive me for mentioning it) the intent of the law. How does one go about getting 4 votes just to put something on agenda without violating Open Meetings Statute? Open Meetings means just that: decisions by Council, or SAISD Board, or County Commissioners are to be arrived at in public meetings. None of these bodies are supposed to be meeting off-the-record and hashing things out in some "smoke-filled room" out of public view. If a quorum of such a body is to meet at a local cafe or watering hole, they best bring along a court recorder to take minutes of such a de facto "meeting".

The matter at hand, the "doggie ordinance" package is very likely to come up shortly after the May election. Aside from lively public comment, we have a new Animal Services Board advisory committee. This group, unlike its predecessor which had problems getting a quorum for meetings, is taking its tasking seriously.

City has already played "fast and loose" on this issue. A "committee" was appointed completely outside the Council-approved Bylaws of the existing Animal Services Board. Under Articles 5 and 6 of ASB Bylaws, any special committee is to be appointed by the ASB chair, and "shall be comprised of of a chairman, who must be a member of the Board...". Unless Council has formed a separate Committee to override the existing ASB, a dubious proposition at best, any sub-committee tasked to study doggie ordinances should have been appointed by the new ASB Chair, Jennie Wilson, and have had as its Chair "a member of the Board", which this group does not.

Realistically, the best option for the City would be to put enforcement of the "doggie ordinance" package on hold. The Texas legislature has a few bills still in the hopper which might add statewide requirements as to breeders, spay/nueter, and humane confinement. Frankly, we have been wrestling with this issue for at least four years. We have a problem, not a crisis. This is a real good time to step back, let the new ASB have a chance at doing its job, wait for State Statute (or not), and then, with all facts in, take the matter up and deal with it properly. Frankly, my guess would be after Labor Day, maybe sooner, but sometimes quorums are hard to come by during summer vacation season.

Come May 10, we will have a new Council. I am not speaking for either SMD4 candidate, but were I in that position, I would be offended at this attempt to limit my franchise as Councilmember. Current Council can do the "new" Council a favor by voting against item 22 this Tuesday.

Anatomy of a Failure

Animal control in San Angelo is operating in failure mode. We have had 2 high profile puppy mill cases in the last 4 years, which took way to long to be resolved (if they are.) That is not even the tip of the iceberg.

Our best estimates show that cats and dogs outnumber humans in San Angelo. With approximately 58,000 dogs and 68,000 cats, there are about 126,000 animals to maybe 88,000 people here. Approximately 37,000 of these animals have owners. That means less than a third of these animals have a home. A total of 8,254 of these animals are licensed. Thats about 6.6% of the total or 22% of those with owners and homes. We adopt out about 1,200 animals from the shelter, or about 1% of the total animal population. Given the average life of a pet, it is likely that most of the licensed pets in this town were adopted. We euthanize over 9,000 animals a year, which is more than the number of animals licensed and about 7.2% of the animals in town. These numbers show a system that doesn't work.

There are a number of reasons that the system isn't working. There is a built in personnel shortage. The sources I have found recommend an average 1 animal control officer per 10,000 population which means we need 9 officers, while we only are authorized 5 and normally only have 3 or 4, and the turn over is very high. It's a tough, thankless job.

Lack of personnel is not the only, or probably the biggest, problem. There are several systemic problems that hurt our animal welfare and control efforts. At the top of the list has to be the Animal services board.

The Animal Services Board is supposed to be the main provider of advice to the city on animal control and welfare issues. The board has no authority to act for the city, but they are tasked with making recommendations to the City Council on City Policy and the Code of Ordinances. They are tasked to hold evidentiary hearings and appoint special committees as needed. For the most part they have been missing in action.

Way too many meetings in the past couple of years have been canceled because of a lack of a quorum. They are having a hard time getting 4 out of 7 members to attend scheduled meetings. When a meeting is canceled due to lack of quorum, they have not been calling a special meeting within 7 days as is required by city ordinance (section 2.3804.) They just let it slide. Of all the meetings scheduled last year, only 4 of them had a quorum show up. I have been told that some of the less than quorum gatherings did discuss some issues, but without a quorum no official business or discussion can happen. A member can be removed from the board for too many unexcused absences, but they have to miss 2/3rds of the meetings for this to happen. This means there is effectively no requirement to even show up. I know it's hard to get people to volunteer for these boards, but the goal here is more than just having a name on the board. If these volunteers miss more than a couple meetings without a good excuse, what are they doing that benefits the community?

The structure of the board is a another problem. There appears to be a conflict between what is in the code of ordinances and what is in the boards bylaws. The ordinance calls for 9 members with 2 of them staff members (health director and animal services director.) It says they are full members. The bylaws says they are not voting members. This is a problem. They need to bring the ordinances into sync with the bylaws. I know that both of them are approved by the City Council, but if you want to get real picky ordinances trump bylaws.

These problems have led to more problems. The last special committee created for animal issues further illustrates these problems. Council sent the last attempt to get an animal limit back to the board with the instructions to form a committee to create a new ordinances. Council asked some of the people who had spoken before it to get with the animal services board and possibly serve on the special committee. The committee that was formed suffered from a number of defects. First, it was not representative of the city either geographically or by those that have an interest in animal issues. There were 2 animal rescuers and a member of the humane society while the rest of the members were residents of the neighborhood where the last puppy mill was located. There were no breeders, either amateur or professional were on the committee. There were no representatives from poor or minority sections of town. Trainers and providers of professional animal services were also not involved.

During the formation of this committee, no effort was made to balance this committee and make it representative of the city as a whole. Contrary to standard city practice, no information sheets were filled out or collected. I can't find that the committee was even officially voted on by the Animal Services Board. The board in September of 2008 just seemed to accept everyone that showed up as a member of the committee and told them to come back when they were done. They just kind of left it to fend for itself until its next meeting. Members seemed to be added to the committee even after it was formed. One of the committee members seems to have appointed himself as chairman and railroaded through his personal agenda. In February 2009 (six months later) when the next meeting was held, the board voted to forward the output of the committee to the city council with minor changes after calling around for 20 minutes to finally get someone to show up so they could have a quorum. The resulting proposals had significant problems, mostly with basics like the definition of a breeder and the definition of enclosure and they narrowly passed the council after significant changes and much heated debate. The resulting ordinances still have problems that will need to be addressed in the future. These problems shouldn't take long to show up in higher rates of euthanizations and an even worse level of licensing of animals.

The Animal Services Board needs some significant changes. The Health Director or the Animal Services Director (probably not both) should be there as an ex-officio member, staff advisors, and the point of contact between the city and the board. This change needs to make it into the ordinances.

All boards should required to pass their proposals by a majority of the membership, not the quorum. We already require this of some boards and commission such as the SADC. It needs to be expanded to all boards and committees.

Board members should only be allowed 2 unexcused absences a year. If they can't make it most of the time they are not really that committed and need to be replaced. If you want the prestige of being on a board, you have to accept the responsibility of at least showing up.

There need to be guidelines for the formation of special committees. They must be balanced as much as feasible geographically and among the major stakeholders in that particular area. The presence of trainers and legitimate breeders on the committee would have prevented many problems. There also need to be guidelines on the election of a chairman and other officers as needed. An official policy on attendance and voting should be part of these guidelines. A quick review of some other city boards and committees show that there are more of these type of problems out there. They just haven't made the news yet.

There are major problems in the animal control and animal welfare area. I am hopeful that they will be properly addressed in the near future. We have a new chairman of the Animal Services Board, and I am hopeful that she will get things moving in the right direction.

Doggie Dilemma

I intended this as a comment to one of JWTs posts, but I think it worth a post.

Last Council meeting, I took a day, ended up jumping up and down like the "Whack-a-Mole" in the kids game.

True story here, to set the background. We have a terrier/jack russel mix female. Never intended to breed her, but we were advised it was better for the dog to wait until after first heat to spay the animal. I do not hold that is true, but I do know a lot of people, including some veterinarians, believe it.

Comes the aforementioned "first heat", our normally docile bitch digs out of the fence, visits with a neighbor's chihuahua, and in the fullness of time, presents us with four adorably cute, but wholly unintended, puppies. As I told Council, we have placed the pups in loving homes, and as soon as they were weaned, we had momma spayed.

I offered at last Council session, an amendment; a once-in-the-life-of-the-dog exemption from the $100 breeder fee. It seemed well received, Farmer initially moved it with "Mr. Ryan's" Amendment, looked good for passage. Then there was other comment, something about 50 dogs in a yard (which had nothing to do with the matter at hand), next thing we know, what is on the table Tuesday passes: Barely.

Points that strike me here: the pet/person relationship is as dear as that with a child to some people; the pet nuisance, if allowed, is important to neighbors of pet owners; and in my opinion as desirable as might be the objective of encouraging spay/neuter to limit unintended population explosion, this ordinance, as written AIN'T GONNA GET US THERE!

As JWT mentioned, there are 70-some bills in the Legislative hopper on animal control, maybe 6 or 7 locally significant. My position now, as I related to Council, I prefer no law to bad law. Good intentions do not necessarily make good law. The road to Hell is paved with what material, my Mother taught me? We have here a problem, not a crisis. We have the luxury of being able to pause, take a deep breath, wait until the Legislature gives birth to whatever it will, and come next summer, let's revisit this matter with more information on the table.

My advice: we have a brand new Animal Services Board chairperson, let that board digest the comments now on the table, take some more, then come before Council in the slow season and present EXACTLY the board's recommendations, something I hear did not happen March 3.

Animal Control Legislation

While we have been struggling with animal control issues here, a new legislative session has convened and numerous bills related to animals have been introduced. ( Check the Texas Legislature Online.) Some of them relate directly to our ongoing problems.

HB 3180 and its companion SB 1910 cover commercial dog and cat breeders and dog and cat dealers. There are some good points to the bill, but there is likely to be some confusion because the definition of a commercial breeder is different than the federal definition of a commercial breeder. It also includes a definition of hobby breeder which is different than what I would prefer, but will work in my recommendations. Our current zoning ordinance definition of animal kennel would include commercial breeders and dealers by implication. If this bill passes, we need to either update the animal kennel definition to include commercial breeders and dealers, or specifically reference commercial breeders and dealers in the code of ordinances. There are also new requirements on buyers rights, which are probably overdue and requirements for veterinarian inspections which are needed. I think that setting 11 unaltered females as the threshold for a commercial breeder may not be the best way to separate commercial breeders from hobby breeders but it's probably the most likely to succeed politically. The difference in the Federal and proposed Texas definitions is not likely to have much effect on our local animal control issues.

HB 2001 and its companion SB 634 covers the restraint of dogs. It effectively eliminates the tieing out of dogs, (exceptions for camping, agriculture, training) and it adds a 150 sq ft minimum enclosure size. For reasons I stated in " Enclosing a Problem", I think this bill will cause more problems than it solves. It would eliminate the need for the original enclosure proposal that was brought before council, but I really can't support it.

We need to keep following these bills. They will impact how the city does animal control, but they really don't have that much impact on my recommendations. The breeders bill will give us a definition of "Hobby Breeder", and will add some record keeping, notification, and buyers rights requirements that fit in well with a "Know your seller" campaign. It does appear that some space requirements will be created if the breeders bill passes, but those will only apply to commercial breeders and dealers.

Overall, there are currently 70 bills dealing with animals before the Texas Legislature. There are about 11 that I will be following that might be relevant to our local animal control. There are others I am likely to be commenting on in the future, but click on the Check the Texas Legislature Online link I provided earlier, and see for your self.

Animal control recommendations

As I promised, I will make recommendations for animal control and related ordinances but first we need a quick review of some facts and problems.

We have a large number of stray and abandoned animals. The number euthanized each year is heartbreaking. We don't want to make this problem worse.

We probably have only 20% to 30% of the pets in town licensed and vaccinated. This leads to other problems, especially with health and public safety. What are we actually using this licensing information for? We really need to examine our whole approach to licensing.

This ongoing interest in ordinance changes was triggered by cases of irresponsible people running puppy mills in residential areas. The problem surfaced because of complaints from neighbors, and is still an issue because of the poor initial response. Part of the problem may be from poor ordinances and regulations but much of it is due to inadequate resources used ineffectively and not in a timely manner.

The pictures from the puppy mill raids show cases of animal cruelty. They were caught because they were in residential areas and neighbors were fed up dealing with it. I am concerned that this problem would not have been detected or dealt with if the puppy mill had not been in a residential district.

Animal control is limited in personnel and resources. We don't need to divert resources with unnecessary paperwork.

We do need increased community involvement on all animal related issues. Anything we do should enlist responsible pet owners, animal rescuers, and hobby breeders. We must not alienate them.

Public health and safety is the first concern. Health and safety of the animals is next in line.

We already have an ordinance covering Animal Kennels, which covers keeping, breeding, boarding, or training animals for commercial gain. These are limited to non-residential areas. The conditional use matrix only lists overnight boarding, which may cause confusion on what is meant. This section of the zoning ordinance does not allow a puppy mill in a residential area.

There are no space requirements for animals in the current code of ordinances. The animal control section on pens, yards, and enclosures does cover sanitation. The quality or size of the enclosure is not addressed.

So what are my recommendations? Lets start with breeders and pet sales.

Pet sales are already somewhat restricted by the zoning ordinance. Those for commercial gain are restricted to some commercial and manufacturing districts. The animal control ordinance needs to state that offering for sale or trade of pets is not allowed in a residential area with 3 exceptions: The hobby breeder, the animal rescuer, and the accidental breeder.

The hobby breeder and the animal rescuer must have permits issued by animal services after an inspection is done of the facility. Qualification and inspection guidelines will be developed by the ASB and approved by Council.

An accidental breeder would be allowed to sell one litter over the life of the pet, as long as proof that the pet was neutered is presented to Animal Services with 60 days. The accidental breeder would also have the option of qualifying as either a hobby breeder or rescuer. If none of those 3 happen, then they are subject to a fine.

Now on to enclosures. The ordinances already cover sanitation, so we need to add that the enclosures need to be securely built. They need to be built so they do not injure the animal. They need to be built so they are easily cleaned, and they need to be sized appropriately for the animal. They must provide shelter from the weather and access to water. Rather than require measurements and calculations like the APHIS standards for commercial breeders do, we can go with small, medium, and large sizes. For animals that share their living space with their owner (house pets) only 25% of the living space should be allowed for the animal space calculations. Enclosure and space regulations will limit the number of animals on a property based on what that property can realistically handle.

There need to be guidelines on tethering. A minimum tether length (8' for a small dog, 10' for a medium dog, 12' for a large dog?) is needed. The dog should not be tethered where he can get tangled. Shade, shelter, and water must be available for the tethered dog. Any method of tethering likely to cause pain or injury to an animal should not be allowed. Examples include choke, pinch, or prong collars.

We need to redo our licensing fee schedule. At the minimum we need to put the pot bellied pig on the list. I recommend that we also set a higher fee for non-sterile animals. Not a punitive fee, but a difference that is enough that a pet owner gets a long term break for altering their pet. Significant work for animal services is a result of the offspring of unaltered pets, so paying more for that privilege seems appropriate. We can also use the license fee to promote positive goals for animal control. For example: Get your pet neutered, get that years license free. Get your pet vaccinated, discount on the license fee. Adopt a pet from the shelter, get a discount on a lifetime license. Eliminate the lifetime license for most unaltered pets (exceptions for show dogs and working dogs.) I would also make the License term the same length as the vaccination term (there are 3 year vaccinations, so have the license coincide with the vaccination.)

I recommend we make the animal license database available to first responders. When the fire trucks roll up, it would be good if they knew how many pets were in the building, if there were any special assistance animals inside, etc.. This would be valuable to first responders and the general public.

Last recommendation is that the city start a "Know your seller" information and education campaign. We need to let the people know the problems that puppy mills and irresponsible owners cause.

This is not quite ready for an ordinance yet, but it is where we need to start. We don't need to do all of it right now, but we need to settle the breeder and enclosure issues soon.

Breeding Contempt

It is time for me to cover the last animal control proposal: Breeder permits. This proposal has a host of problems.

The original language requires a $100 breeders permit for anyone that "sells, trades, or gives away" the offspring of their unaltered dog or cat. This is problematic for a number of reasons. First, it penalizes a person whose pet gets pregnant before they can get it neutered. I have seen where many veterinarian organizations are recommending adolescent neutering but not many people do this. Many times neutering a pet is an economic decision. Save up to get the pet neutered or wait until the animal shelter is offering vouchers again and gamble that princess doesn't get pregnant. If they lose the bet, the pet owner has to keep the offspring until they can get their pet neutered. That could be a problem.

This problem affects rescuers as well. They rescue a dog or cat that was mistreated and had pups or kittens. It may take a long time to nurse that animal to where it is healthy enough to be neutered. Until the rescued animal is either sterilized, transferred to another owner or euthanized, the rescuer is stuck with the offspring or forced to buy a breeders permit for an animal he won't be keeping. No exception. No appeal.

The original language also makes it more difficult to convict a puppy mill operator. Even if they advertise in the paper they have pets for sale, unless you can prove they actually sold, traded or gave away an animal, you only have intent to be a breeder. It is likely the city will add the words "offers for" to the sells, trades, or gives away which will effectively close that loophole but you still have a problematic breeders ordinance. There is another loophole because a breeder is defined as someone that owns an unaltered animal and sells, trades or gives away the offspring. If the breeder gives away the unaltered animal to a friend first, then they can sell the offspring with no problem. The friend can then give the unaltered animal back once all the offspring are sold. Irresponsible breeders will game the system and they can be very good at finding loopholes. Which brings me to my next point.

There is an overlooked group of pet owners I will call the hobby breeders. These include people that participate in dog and cat shows. These shows require that the animals are unaltered. In addition, many owners of hunting and working dogs don't want to neuter their dogs because they feel it affects their natural hunting and herding instincts. We have vasectomies in our ordinances as an acceptable method of sterilization because of just this issue. These hobby breeders are not in it to make money. This is not their business. It is frequently their passion. They do breed and sell some animals. The breeding is frequently in an attempt to produce a better animal whether for show or for work. Some hobbyists I know spend more money on their animals and shows then they will ever make selling animals. These hobbyists don't breed for money, they breed for the love of their animals and hobby. They take pride in their animals and care for them properly. With few exceptions, they are good neighbors.

Hobby breeders as a rule try to work with the government and other groups to solve animal control problems. They will reluctantly accept a small permit fee and reasonable inspections as long as they can see some value to the city and to themselves. I don't think that the proposed ordinance changes as they stand today will be seen that way. They will be seen as inflexible, arbitrary, punitive, and invasive, and not really addressing the problem. The problem is not with what a puppy mill or hoarder has but what they do with what they have. Most of the suggested ordinance changes do not address the bad behaviors.

In my next article I will give you my thoughts on the changes I think the code of ordinances needs to address these animal control problems.

Enclosing a problem

The second animal control ordinance proposal presented deals with dog restraints and enclosures. There is one part of it that is needed. It prohibits the use of choke, pinch or prong collars unless the dog is under direct supervision and control of the owner. These collars should never be used to tie out a dog as they can cause serious injury or death to the dog. The rest of the proposal has some serious problems.

The proposal starts off stating that it is unlawful for any dog to have a primary living area outside of a secure enclosure. "Secure enclosure" has two different meanings. Does it mean a securely built (as in sturdy) enclosure. Or does it mean one secured by locks, latches, etc. as in a secured building.

Next they say that an outside enclosure must be at least 150 square feet if it is used as a primary living area or almost any other function associated with being a dog. The number is arbitrary (I find no research or state or federal regulations that use this number.) There is also no mention at all about indoor enclosures. I guess that it's okay to have 20 dogs in your garage as long as you don't have an outdoor enclosure they use. The proposal doesn't address that at all.

They seem to have copied much of this section from Austins animal control ordinances, so why didn't they copy the important parts which read

(A) A person may not keep an animal, fowl, bird, or reptile in an enclosure unless the enclosure is:

1. securely built;

2. adequately sized for the kind and number of animals, fowl, birds, or reptiles housed in the structure

3. maintained in a sanitary condition that does not allow flies to breed or cause an odor offensive to an adjacent residence or business; and

4. in compliance with the applicable requirements of this article.

After you have that, the 150 square foot requirement is not needed. Without that, you have huge loopholes.

The last problem is the prohibition against tethering a dog. I don't like tethering or chaining a dog out, but for some people there really is no other good option. Most people in rent houses have no choice about whether there is a fenced in back yard. A 10' by 15' enclosure for a dog would be expensive to build if the landlord allowed it. And we need to remember that there are dogs that a fence won't keep in.

For a while I was watching a dog that was part blue heeler and part basset hound. He dug under my chain link fence repeatedly. He was had done this before I had him, and did it with his next owner on occasion. He was friendly, gentle, and neutered and only escaped when his curiosity was aroused but the only way to keep him in was to chain him. My sister had a dog that figured out how to scale their 8' privacy fence. They ended up using one of the invisible fences in addition to the privacy fence until they moved out in the country where their dog had 6 acres to roam on.

We do need good guidelines on safe tethering for dogs, but to prohibit it altogether is not a good solution.

The last problem is that a separate enclosure for a female with puppies is a luxury that many families can't afford. For most families, the separate enclosure would be a big box in the garage, bathroom or a bedroom.

If this ordinance goes into effect there will be a huge increase in animals abandoned. Rather then spend already limited funds on a fence or enclosure the family can't afford (and might not be able to get built in 15 days), the dog will be abandoned.

It is obvious that this section was written by someone with no concern for the cost to implement it. They forget that poor people have and love their pets too. I am sure the fence companies around here could use the business but the goal is supposed to be effective animal control. This proposal doesn't meet that goal.

Problems by the numbers

Last Tuesday, another update to the animal control ordinances was put before the City council, and after much heated discussion passed first reading with basically no changes. What passed is really heavily flawed and, at least according to the members I have talked to, not really what the advisory committee or the Animal Services Board intended. Lots of mistakes were made before we got here and I am disappointed that they weren't caught before this went before Council.

I'm disappointed in myself for not paying enough attention and doing the research and analysis I have done in the past. I was at the last ASB meeting, and should have paid more attention when they covered the definitions. Instead of the language I expected (offers for sale or trade) in the definition of a breeder was "sells, trades, or gives away," which is not what I had originally heard. The definitions were covered something like "Anyone have a problem with the definitions?" and then we started tackling the wording of the ordinances. The meeting started late. There was not a quorum at the beginning, and the Animal Services Director was calling members to try to get one there for the meeting. There was a quorum about 15 minutes later, and we started discussing the numbers, etc.. Some changes were made, and they agreed to put the changes to the council in three parts. Staff was supposed to make it into 3 proposals and clean up the legal language. I am disappointed in myself for not noticing some of the problem, such as the lack of the term "offers" in the definitions. Granted, I am not part of either the advisory committee or the ASB, but I do try to pay attention, and I should have looked and listened closer. I will try to do better in the future.

I want to critique these proposals in the reverse order they were presented. I will start with the "Multi-pet" permit. I opposed this one from the beginning and stated that at the ASB meeting. It is an unnecessary burdensome extra layer of bureaucracy. Granted, there is currently no fee envisioned, but that doesn't mean it's free. It takes resources for animal services to print, distribute, collect, process and store all of the possible permits. It takes time and transportation for the citizen who owns multiple pets to comply with this proposal. Looking at what it costs to process similar paperwork, we are probably talking in the range of $20 to $50 per permit to process this redundant paperwork. The reason given by the proponents of this proposal is that it gives animal control something they can charge someone with on a complaint. Again, I say that it's redundant. There is already an ordinance requiring pets to be licensed and vaccinated. You can be sure that an owner that doesn't do a free permit will not have all his pets licensed and vaccinated. If you find someone with 8 altered pets and no permit, there will already be 8 citations for no license and 8 citations for no vaccinations.

There is also a problem with this proposal when it comes to rescuers. It states that all of a multi-pet owners dogs and cats must be altered. What does a rescuer do when the 8 ^th animal they want to rescue is a pregnant female? Do we suddenly require them to get a breeders permit? We will wait to discuss the problems of disposing the expected offspring to a later part of the discussion.

Lastly, there is the problem of inspecting a private residence unless there is a complaint or information that there is a problem. There are hundreds of years of common law precedent and tradition that a governments police powers can be broadly used to inspect, and regulate those engaged in business and commercial enterprises. They can inspect Joes kitchen any time they are open with little to no notice. They can't inspect grandmas kitchen unless they have a warrant or have probable cause that a serious crime is in progress. Businesses waive some of their rights for the privilege of operating a business and making money in our city. We shouldn't even contemplate requiring citizens to waive rights just so they can own a few dogs.

I think I will let this sink in for a while before I comment on the other two proposals. I need a break and a chance for my blood pressure to go back down. I still have a lot to say on this issue.

Political Numerology

I have been following issues on this blog for a while and have come to the conclusion there is a connection between politics and numerology- a mystical belief in the power of numbers. I have observed many cases of the belief that just picking the right numbers is all that's needed to solve a difficult problem. Our school system provided a good example.

Early in the discussion on the last bond, there seemed to be a belief that a $99mil bond would pass no matter what was in the package. A package tailored to that exact amount was the initial proposal. Toward the end of the decision making cycle, it was felt that two was a better number of propositions than one so a second proposition based on major new main building at Central was added. They were careful not to disturb the magic $99mil of the first proposition.. A necessary, last minute recalculation of construction costs and inflation estimates raised the cost of both propositions. They made the decision to keep prop 1 the same despite the price now being $117mil.. Prop 2 was another story. The new price was felt to be too high. Rather than completely abandon the power of the number two, prop 2 was completely redone. Prop 1 had coherence, and the original prop 2 had a vision of a much revitalized central campus. The new prop 2 had neither of these characteristics. It had little in the way of coherence or vision – coming across as a mixture of unrelated leftovers. In the end, the numerology didn't work and prop 2 failed.

Numerology seemed to drive at least part of the decision making process. One of the first items the new facilities committee announced was the $99mil figure. This was well before they announced the schools or projects involved. Prop 2 was added toward the end of process because it was felt that 2 bonds might have a better chance of success. The second proposition was kept even when the original vision no longer applied. In the end it seems the mystique of magic numbers drove a large part of decision making process, if only at a subconscious level.

There are many more examples where just picking the right number is counted on to solve a problem. Forget the studies, logic, analysis, etc.. The magic number will solve the problem. Mandatory minimums aren't working? We just need a better number. Teen drunk driving a problem? Pick a number. Economy collapsing? A few magic interest numbers will save the day. Puppy mills a problem? Just choose a number of dogs. Don't worry about studies or history or precedent or inconvenient evidence. The power of numerology will magically provide the solution and if the resulting solution doesn't work, don't worry. Forget studies. Just pick another number.

In January, a proposal for a numerical limit on dogs will be back before Animal Services Board. It will be put before the City Council in early February. We need to make sure this doesn't end up being just another case of political numerology.

Control Freaking

Animal control, especially dog limits, is still a hot topic. At the end of the last council meeting, they directed the Animal Services board to consider an enhanced Spay and Neuter ordinance, a possible breeders ordinance, and a look at zoning, but left limits on the table. There are better alternatives to limits.

There was some misinformation at the last council meeting, especially on zoning. It was stated that the zoning ordinance made breeding and selling dogs in a residential neighborhood illegal. This is not quite correct. Animal kennels are illegal which "includes any structure or premises where animals ordinarily considered household pets are kept, boarded, bred or trained, for commercial gain." Those are limited to commercial districts.

This is talking about when the primary use of a structure is a kennel. What about when someones pet just happens to have pups in a residence and the owner sells some? Residences fall under a category called household living. Among the allowed accessory uses are "raising of pets, hobbies, home occupations." It also states "Allowed home occupations include, but are not limited to" and gives a list. The few occupations specifically not allowed in a residential area are "Hair cutting or styling shops, nail salons or other beauty or cosmetic-related business. Tattoo parlors. Pet grooming. Any form of repair shop." No mention of breeding. There are restrictions on auxiliary buildings, traffic, etc. but those apply to any home business. It appears that small scale breeding is legal unless you violate other laws such as nuisance, public health or animal cruelty. If we want to do more about breeding with zoning, we must redo the zoning ordinance. We must define when breeding crosses the line into a business that is not suitable for residences. Change the spay and neuter laws and develop a breeders permit. Until then we must use existing tools effectively.

Texas and San Angelo laws make it illegal to "transport or confine an animal in a cruel manner." There are federal guidelines on space requirements, especially for commercial operations and laboratories. There must be adequate space for "freedom of movement and normal postural adjustment." The space must allow a dog "to turn about freely, to sit, stand and lie in a comfortable manner, to walk in a normal manner." The department of agriculture even has a formula and procedure to calculate this space based on an animals size, and whether or not there are pups. The space available for adequate housing puts a maximum limit on the number of dogs that can be properly cared for on the property. This also takes care of the case where animals are jammed into small cages, as was evidently happening in the puppy mill.

This leads into another important point. Violations of zoning and nuisance laws only allow for fines and maybe contempt of court charges. Animal cruelty laws allow for the seizure of dogs, and possible jail time for the owners. Cruelty laws need to be used more effectively. The limit should be space per dog, not the dogs per person.