Lenox City Council is looking at adding new city codes dealing with scooters, mobile food vendors, and a new chapter dealing with the speed limit at the campground at their November 24, meeting.
They first discussed the dangerous and vicious animals code that is already in place and looked at changing some rules. The council talked about increasing penalties for habitual offenders of abusing animals. They talked about not allowing people to bring animals inside the city limits once they were requested to remove an animal from Lenox. Allison Kitzman, city administrator, said they talked to the codification company and they felt that would be hard to enforce.
“I just have trouble being fair to the animals when they are getting mistreated and abused, I wish there was a way to stop people from getting them,” said Melissa Douglas, mayor.
The council talked about increasing fines for habitual offenders.
Kitzman said the problem is Lenox does not have its own law enforcement and the Taylor County Sheriff’s Department has put in their contract they will not deal with animals at all. There have been vicious animals attack people and the sheriff’s department refuses to come. They expect the city employees to do that even though they don’t have the protection to deal with vicious animals. The city employees deal with dogs running at large. Kitzman added that people moved out of a house and left the dog inside. The sheriff’s department was called and they refused. The dog died.
“It is shameful that we pay $220,000 for law enforcement and then we won’t even write a ticket when we ask them to,” said Douglas.
According to the code, the mayor declares a dog vicious. If the owner does not comply and don’t get rid of the dog, law enforcement is needed to step step up and go to the house and say the dog is vicious and remove the animal. Kitzman said fortunately any time they have deemed a dog vicious, the owner has complied. The council agreed to remove the clause referring to a particular breed.
No action was taken
