There are always legal issues going on in Kansas City, KS. There is not a city in the Metro we receive more complaints in regards to corruption, harrassement and unwillingness to appropriately do their duties to keep citizens, and pets, safe.
Do you know where your city candidate for the upcoming election stands on Animal Control and animal welfare issues?
Americans love their pets – dogs, cats, ferrets, to name a few. In fact 63% of US households own at least one pet. The chances of your city passing legislation that could affect your as a pet owner are very high.
More and more cities, like Kansas City, KS, are passing knee jerk legislation that criminalizes law-abiding citizens, forcing those citizens to make difficult decisions; and many families in KCK are being forced to give up their family pet or move. In this housing market the option to move isn’t always feasible so many people are losing their pets.
Animal Control issues don’t just affect pet owners. All citizens of our city should be asking questions such as:
Do we have laws on the books that are wasting our tax dollars and targeting the wrong people? Are we as a city focusing on the wrong issue? Is public safety being served? Are measurements of progress such as Animal Control’s response times, reduction of dog bites by all breeds, being tracked? Is our city providing dog bite prevention aimed at our children and basic pet care classes proactively? Just how did our city use last year’s budget of $728,877?
If you are an animal lover, you might be interested to know that the State of Kansas Agriculture Department approves and inspects private homes that have the proper license and paperwork to run a “rescue”, but our city refuses to honor these licenses. In turn, citizens who are trying to make a contribution to our community by fostering homeless animals using their own money are unable to serve our community.
Our city has restrictions on ownership of certain breeds of dogs. What happens when you own a mixed breed dog that is deemed similar in looks to one of the banned breeds? Do you as a dog owner have to worry? You betcha’. Your dog can be confiscated, you can be charged with possession of an illegal breed and fined and/or jailed. As a dog owner you are now facing criminal charges and a lot of out of pocket expenses for fines, lawyer fees, never mind the loss of your beloved family dog. This is happening in our city on a regular basis. Innocent dogs are dying and innocent pet owners, of mixed breed dogs, are consistently targeted by animal control as a result of this subjective ordinance.
Did you know that, with the exception of one park, it is illegal to take your dog to one of the area parks and work on off leash training exercises or let your dog swim at Wyandotte County Lake? One park for a city of 142,320 simply isn’t enough. Progressive cities across the U.S. are actively trying to make their cities more pet friendly by offering more dog parks. Are our city leaders on the same path? Are our city leaders in favor of creating sections of some of our area parks into off leash ares, especially our inner city areas where yards are typically smaller?
What about pet limits? With many residents lving on large lots of several acres why do we still have a 2 dog limit? The average dog limit in the KC area is 4 dogs. Why is our city so restrictive? With the economy as is more families are moving in together, what happens to those families now over the pet limit?
Do you know of a kindly neighbor that likes to feed feral or stray cats? Believe it or not, it is illegal to feed stray cats in our city. Is punishing those feeders going to solve the feral cat problem? Experts, such as No More Homeless Pets Kansas City, say a resounding “No!” There are many more effective ways to reducing the feral/stray cat population and punishing animal lovers is not one of them.
These are just a few of the issues regarding animal control and welfare that need to be addressed in our city. The fact is that our city has missed the ball on this issue for too long. With all of these laws, they still have not addressed the real animal related issues in our community. As a result of our laws and practices, innocent people and innocent pets continue to be penalized while animal abusers go unpunished and stray dogs run our streets.