Much like the responsible dog owner who cleans up after their pets, officials in Elon have found it necessary to do some tidying up of their own since they farmed out their animal control services to the city of Burlington.
The town’s leaders began this sprucing up process on Tuesday when police chief Kelly Blackwelder presented Elon’s town council with proposed set of new regulations that are in line with the standard operating procedures at Burlington Animal Services.
Blackwelder told the council that the need for these regulatory adjustments became quite clear to her when the larger municipality first dispatched its animal control officers to Elon in August.
“I kind of rushed to get this to you early,” she added, “because they’re already providing services, and they don’t have the tools to do what they need.”
Blackwelder added that many of the proposed revisions are simply meant to reconcile Elon’s regulations with the rules that Burlington has on the books. Perhaps the most significant of the suggested changes would replace the criminal sanctions that Elon now has for animal-related offenses with civil fines that mirror those Burlington favors.
Blackwelder was later joined by members of Burlington’s animal services staff as she fielded questions from the town council about the proposed regulatory overhaul.
Several of these inquiries concerned Elon’s potential adoption of Burlington’s dog ownership quota, which limits each household in the larger municipality to three adult canines. Blackwelder acknowledged that this rule mirrors Elon’s own three “pet” maximum, which she conceded has never been enforced because the town’s police department lacks the obligatory staffing and expertise.
“But now that we’re passing the batons,” the police chief insisted, “it makes sense to enforce the limits.”
Nick Tempesta, the field services manager for Burlington Animal Services, went on to assure the town’s leaders that he and his colleagues won’t go hog wild in policing this dog ownership quota.
“It’s complaint-based,” he added. “We’re not driving around town looking for things. Until I get a complaint, I don’t see a violation.”
Another fertile area for the council’s interrogatives was the police chief’s recommended policies for dealing with vicious dogs. Once again, Blackwelder has taken her cues on this subject from Burlington’s ordinances. According to Jessica Arias, Burlington’s animal services director, Elon will ultimately need to establish a citizen appeals board similar to one that Burlington has to review staff-level declarations of “dangerous” dogs.
In the meantime, some members of the council got a bit sidetracked by the more obscure provisions that appeared in Blackwelder’s 15-page recommendation.
“I got caught up in the section about birds,” councilman Randy Orwig confessed. “There’s a lot in there about starlings. Is that the only bird that can be a nuisance.”
In the end, the council reached a consensus to implement the proposed regulations once Blackwelder has had an opportunity to fix a few errors that came out during Tuesday’s review.
“I would like to get this language corrected really soon,” councilman Michael Woods said as he summed up the mood of the group, “so [Burlington Animal Services] can have the tools that they need.”
