Council unhappy with spay compromise

An attempted compromise ordinance to encourage spaying, neutering and microchipping pets has evaporated in the dog fight between detractors and supporters.

City Council members voted 6-0 shortly after midnight Tuesday for a gutted ordinance that merely reaffirmed the fees the county already charges, with Councilman Keith Bohr, the original proponent of mandatory spay and neutering, abstaining. The only new rules in the ordinance would require anyone advertising sale of kittens or puppies to have a business license.

Also scrapped was a plan to make licensing of cats mandatory. It will remain an option for $5.

Prior to this week, both council members and many opponents of the original mandatory spay and neuter law Bohr proposed last year had been optimistic about a December compromise to give financial incentives to those who sterilize and microchip their pets. But after city staff came back with a new set of fees, most said the law in front of them wasn’t what they had asked for, with annual fees for a dog not spayed or microchipped as high as $213 per year. That compared to $23 for a sterilized, microchipped dog, which was the same as the current fee.

“If I can’t pay the $213, what do I do with the animal, just turn it in?” Councilman Joe Carchio asked. “Either you’re going to turn the animal in, or turn it loose, or give to someone else.”

Fees were drawn up to make pet owners pay the full cost of a spaying or neutering even if they opted out of a procedure, Police Chief Ken Small said.

“What we tried to do was create an ordinance that gave people an incentive to spay, neuter and microchip their animals,” Small said.

But council members were not happy with the results, which charged $190 more each year for a dog not spayed and without a microchip, and which gave only an $11.50 discount for seniors.

“The wording was not drafted by the council,” Mayor Debbie Cook told those who spoke out against the ordinance. “It does not reflect the discussion we had at our meeting.”

A couple dozen dog breeders and other pet owners, who fought mandatory spaying and neutering called the high fees a de facto ban on unaltered pets.

“I think you need to look at your fee structure,” resident Carol Hamilton said. “Look at what you’re trying to tax out of existence.”

One woman even threatened to start a recall effort for Bohr if the ordinance passed.

Only one speaker supported the law, but Bohr said he had told animal rescue workers they didn’t need to show up for the vote.

“I take some blame for the lack of supporters here,” he said. “I said they do not need to come, that their point has been made.”

There wasn’t enough middle ground left for a law that would do anything to prevent pet overpopulation, Councilman Don Hansen said. Neither opponents or supporters of the original proposal were getting behind this compromise, he said.

“We’ve spayed and neutered this ordinance down so much to try to make it digestible that nobody wants it,” he said.

Bohr tried to salvage the ordinance by asking to pass it without setting fees, then negotiating them out at the next meeting, but fellow council members didn’t warm to the idea.

“I have a problem with not knowing what the fees are before we adopt something,” Cook said, before proposing the stub of an ordinance that members voted on.

That ordinance must be voted on one more time to pass. The vote is scheduled for the next council meeting on Feb. 18.