Animal ordinance discussion elicits strong opinions – Pipestone County Star

Community news and information for Pipestone, Minnesota
Thursday, September 29, 2022
By Kyle Kuphal | on September 28, 2022
Pipestone Planning Commission members and about 10 residents of Pipestone and other communities had a lengthy and sometimes heated discussion about the city of Pipestone’s animal ordinance during the commission’s Sept. 21 meeting.
Commission members had previously discussed the matter on Aug. 10 due to complaints from community members. The commission tabled the discussion at that time so that Pipestone Building and Zoning Official Doug Fortune could gather more information about animal control officer positions and enforcement of the city’s code pertaining to animals.
Fortune said he obtained policies and ordinances from other cities including Windom, Chaska and Rochester. He said none of them had a full-time animal control officer and he hadn’t been able to come up with a cost estimate for such a position yet because he’d been out for a week with COVID. Fortune said policies and ordinances from the other cities could be used to change the wording of the Pipestone city code and clarify definitions if desired.
Planning commission member Erica Volkir said the problem seemed to be a lack of enforcement of the city’s existing animal ordinance by the sheriff’s office, which the city contracts with for law enforcement services.
“If this is a service that we have in our code that we want enforced and it’s not being enforced, then maybe the city council needs to go back to the county and say we’re going to deduct that because now we need to hire someone who will enforce it,” Volkir said.
According to Chapter 90 of the city code, animals are not allowed to run at large and must have a collar and license. The chapter indicates that law enforcement or any agent designated by the city shall impound any animal found in violation of the chapter in an animal shelter. The animal shall be housed and fed in a humane manner and kept for not less than five regular business days unless reclaimed prior to that time by their owner.
Any animal that is not claimed may be evaluated and sold for adoption at the discretion of the city, according to city code, and any animal not claimed by the owner or sold for adoption “shall be painlessly and humanely destroyed” as allowed by state statute.
Pipestone resident Dorothy Darveaux took issue with the existing code, referring to it as “outdated,” draconian” and “ridiculous.”
“It should be rewritten,” Darveaux said. “I don’t support it. Nobody that I know supports it.”
She and others spoke in favor of allowing cats to roam the community and said they have positive impacts on the community including keeping pests such as mice, rats, rabbits, possums and raccoons out of the neighborhoods where they live. Darveaux contended that enforcing the city code and impounding at large cats will catch pets.
“They’re going to be people’s pets who escaped, people who let their cats roam because that’s healthy for them, and we need a few community cats,” she said. “They’re an asset. They’re not a pest.”
Darveaux and others who addressed the commission, including Cathy Nelson, president of the Tracy Area Animal Rescue; Cricket Raschke, with the Tyler City Council; and new planning commission member Jennifer Cronin, spoke in support of a trap-neuter-return (TNR) policy.
“I am speaking today in favor of a TNR program and against having an animal control officer,” Cronin said.
According to information from the Humane Society of the United States, with a TNR program cats are captured in a live trap, transported to a veterinary clinic, spayed or neutered, vaccinated against rabies and have one ear clipped to indicate that they have been sterilized and vaccinated. They are then returned to the same location where they were caught.
Darveaux presented a nearly 20-minute slide show in favor of a TNR program and against impounding and potentially euthanizing loose cats. Katie Wiese, with Windy Ridge Veterinary Clinic, said Windy Ridge would be willing to partner with the city on a TNR program. Darveaux said Brookings and other cities across the country have implemented TNR programs and had success.
“Science has proven that this is the way to get a cat population under control,” Nelson said. “You can’t kill your way out of it.”
Planning Commission Chair Thad Reinert said he didn’t oppose exploring the TNR program, but that he would rather see the cats released to a volunteer farmer who could use them than released back into the same neighborhood they were caught in.
Pipestone resident Tom Steffes also took issue with the releasing of the animals, which he said meant there would still be unwanted animals urinating and defecating on his property and that of others. He also said that he had called law enforcement about animal issues and was told that his “option is trap them and drop them off in the country.” He said he didn’t see that as a solution because the animals could find their way back to his property and that rural residents probably don’t want animals dropped at their properties.
Cronin also took issue with people catching cats and dropping them off in rural areas. She said she believed that someone had taken one of her cats back in 2020 and done just that. She eventually placed an advertisement in the Pipestone County Star and someone called her three months after the cat had gone missing to say they’d found it. She said the cat had been living at a farm 11 miles from Pipestone and the residents said it had shown up there the same day it disappeared from her home.
Cronin said another one of her cats went missing this spring after escaping through an open door and she believes that cat might have been taken and dropped off in the country too, and that other people in her neighborhood told her their cats had been taken as well.
“Make no mistake, this behavior is cruelty and theft and the terrorizing of pet owners,” Cronin said.
Pipestone resident Shane Reinhard said he had neighbors who put out food for cats that attracts them to the area. He said cats have scratched up his siding and that he regularly finds cat feces in his landscaping and garden.
“I don’t have a cat,” he said. “I don’t think that I should have to pick up cat feces in my own property, so I just ask that we try to come up with a solution that can make people who are not pet owners also happy to be on their property.”
Pipestone resident Toni Kruger said she thought dog owners and stray dogs were held to a different standard than stray cats and cat owners.
“Why, as a dog owner, do I chain them, leash them, collar them, chip them, always have them inside if they’re not with me, but a cat owner can release their cat out into everyone’s area, my private property,” she said. “Why is that different?”
She said she’d heard of the TNR program and asked if the same would be done with stray dogs. Reinert said TNR would not work with dogs.
“I don’t think anybody wants dogs just running wild in town,” he said.
Kruger also said she’d had issues with dogs that were allowed to run loose in the city.
Pipestone resident Ron Belcher said he had a problem with a neighbor’s dog. He said dog feces was not being picked up from the property and the smell became so bad that he had to cancel a picnic that was planned at his home. He said the dog was kept in a small kennel in its own feces and not given food or water.
“I have contacted the police numerous times,” Belcher said. “The Sheriff’s Department has told me there’s nothing they can do about it.”
City code prohibits feces from remaining in a dog enclosure for a period that is “longer than reasonable” and requires that enclosures be kept in a manner conducive to health, sanitation and the prevention of odors. It also makes it unlawful for kennels and yards where an animal is kept to be “in an unhealthy, unsanitary, or obnoxious condition or to permit the premises to be in such condition that obnoxious odors can be plainly detected on adjacent public or private property.”
Fortune said at the end of the meeting that he would contact the sheriff’s office to ask the questions about enforcement of the existing city code that were brought up during the meeting and bring the answers to the next planning commission meeting. He asked commission members to send him questions they wanted him to ask.
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