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HomeMy WebLinkAboutNovember 21, 2006 C/C Minutes Meridian City Council November 21, 2006 Page 14 of 43 support of this ordinance, so if you have any other direction to me I could put it on the agenda as well. De Weerd: Okay. Council, any opposition to moving that forward? Bird: Not from me. I had a good chance to look it over. 3. Discussion of Dog License Ordinance: De Weerd: Okay. Item 3. Nary: Thank you. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, the last item, dog license ordinance. This one has also gone through a number of different hands before it's got to you. The only thing that's been added -- added to the ordinance after a couple of drafts -- we did add an actual fee for vicious dogs that we will have to bring the fee portion back through the Public Hearing process, because it is a new fee. When we passed the vicious dog restriction a year ago we didn't pass a different licensing fee. We required that if you do have a dog that is determined to be vicious, that it not be -- or that it requires a special license, we just didn't create a special cost for that. Because it requires a site visit, you have to -- you have special restrictions if you have a vicious dog, therefore, we'd have to send our animal control officers out to the residents to make sure that it complies. There is a higher cost to that license. That is included in this ordinance. We couldn't impose it until we had the Public Hearing. The other things we have changed from the past -- there used to be a discount for senior citizens with -- with these -- many cities have eliminated that, it's not been eliminated everywhere, but many cities have, because of the -- the concern of trying to separate out licensing based on age and no other criteria and there has been issues that have been raised in a number of other cities regarding that discriminatory practice of doing that. We have eliminated that requirement. The fees are fairly small in comparison to most things. I think it's 21 dollars. So, I guess we can hear what -- the comments or concerns you may have about that. Other than that, most everything else is pretty routine stuff. We do allow for other designees to sell licenses. If you recall we had a discussion earlier that in the past the prior mayor had authorized the sale of licenses through the veterinary clinics and through pet stores, like PetCo. We think that's a good idea, we would just like to have it in an ordinance that authorizes that and so we did -- we did add that provision into this ordinance as well. Do you have any other questions? If you'd like, I can bring it back next week, we can discuss it further or whatever your preference is. I don't know if the chief has any other comment. I know he's had an opportunity to review it. I think his concern was on the -- the licensing thing for vicious dogs and I don't -- I think I have addressed all his concerns, but I didn't know if he had a comment he wanted to make. Musser: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, and Counselor Nary, just under Section 6 on the ordinance, we still need to line out one reference to owners of 62 years of age or older in reference to showing -- that would be the only thing I see at this point that we perhaps overlooked in all the conversations we had back and forth. Other than Meridian City Council November 21, 2006 Page 15 of 43 that, I'm in agreement with Mr. Nary on what he's proposed and his statements at this point. De Weerd: Chief Musser, wasn't there a desire for someone within your organization to have a requirement for a yellow pages ad in here or -- Musser: Madam Mayor, not that I'm aware at this pOint. Nary: We might want to wind the tape back up and -- De Weerd: As it relates to dogs. Anything from Council? Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Bird. Bird: I believe we have discussed this at numerous times and I think it's something we need to get started with, so we can have like part of the ordinance that we don't have now, so I would like to see it come forward if the other Council don't have any problem with it. I have read through it, I don't see any problems with it at all. De Weerd: Okay. Rountree: Madam Mayor, the only comment I have -- I don't know if we missed this, I don't find it in here, are police dogs required to be licensed and do they pay a fee? I mean those that are trained for special uses, impaired hearing, site, et cetera, are exempted from the fee, but there is nothing about police dogs or should it -- Bird: A guard dog. Rountree: -- have a fence, like security kind of things. Let's get them all, I guess. Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilmember Rountree, we could certainly add in any animal that's owned by a public entity -- since all of the public entities would either be used for bomb dogs or ones that are owned by the city of Boise that reside in our city and they don't have a city license, so we can add that provision in as well. Musser: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, at this point we do issue out city licenses to our K-9s, but we do issue them as a department item, so that they are identified, so that they do carry them. However, they are excluded when we went through the vicious dog aspects, because of their temperament and their training they are not considered a vicious dog under that end of it, but we have -- we have issued out the licenses in the past. Meridian City Council November 21, 2006 Page 16 of 43 De Weerd: Anything further from Council? Okay. We will go ahead and move these three ordinances forward to next week's agenda. Berg: Madam Mayor, if I could ask a question. Concerning this license with the new fees, are we going to use the old fees until we pass a resolution and the Public Hearing for the new fees or are we going to hold the whole entire ordinance up until we do it all at once? The only reason I ask that is the codification of two separate things coming back and recodifying it is going to be an additional cost, but if some important parts need to be addressed, we need to do it right away. Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, we can pass the ordinance as written and not impose the fee until it's approved and that's perfectly fine. We haven't had -- in a year and a half we haven't had anybody come and get a vicious dog license, so I'm not real concerned in the next month that we will have one. If we do, we will charge them 21 dollars and that won't violate our ordinance and that way we can not have it on two separate tracks and that's perfectly fine. Berg: Excuse me, Madam Mayor. The other fees that are suggested are more than five percent and so that's the only question I had, because they were all of the fees that were suggested to be changed. Nary: Oh. Okay. Berg: Which are okay, it's just if we want to do separate -- two separate things to make sure we get these other things in place or wait two weeks to get it noticed and -- Nary: Yeah. That would be -- yeah. I'm sorry, Mr. Berg did point out, that is correct, we have these other increases, which I think are in line with the other local jurisdictions, so we can go ahead and bring this forward when we get the noticing done, so that all of it can be done at once, so it will be a couple of weeks until we get this back in front of you for approval. 4. Approve SWAC Recommendation on New Plavaround Eauipment at River Vallev Elementary for $12,000.00: De Weerd: Okay. Does that work? Okay. Finally, item number four. Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, the last one is the Solid Waste Advisory Committee recommendation on some new playground equipment at River Valley Elementary. They have complied with all the requirements of the program for the recycling funds. This one was one that was held up from the last group of recommendations, we were waiting on some language regarding a sign and that there was going to be adequate notice to the public that that play equipment was going to be purchased with solid waste recycling funds. They have done that, they have proVided both the information for the sign and the sign itself and that is included in your packet.