By: Shar Dimick
THE VILLAGE REPORTER
President of Wauseon City Council, Heather Kost, brought up concerns on changing the wording of Section 505.01(a)(2) of the Codified Ordinance to eliminate breed-specific wording from the definition of a vicious dog at the December 1 council meeting.
While the first reading Ordinance 2014-15 that would amend the definition of a vicious dog to match that of the State of Ohio’s Revised Code 955.11 ultimately passed 4-1-1, Kosts said “I personally would like to have the other side of the story before I vote on this issue, because we haven’t heard from someone from the police department and the dog warden.” She abstained from the vote and Richard Frey was the only dissenting vote.
Kost said that her concerns stemmed from talking to the dog warden and to a couple people from veterinarians offices. She also stated that the dog warden has some concerns and that she also received an email from a person who indicated the state might be changing its wording to “be a little more stringent again at the state level because of some of the things they’ve seen.” Kost suggested tabling the issue for now, but wasn’t opposed to going forward with voting on the first reading if the others wanted to do so.
In response to Kost’s concerns, Estrada said “the Safety and Code [committee] did hear from what we feel are pretty important people in the city being the Chief of Police and the City Law Director.”
The council passed the Safety committee’s recommendation to remove breed-specific language from the vicious dog ordinance 5-1 at the November 17 meeting. At that meeting, Chief Torbert stated that “Wauseon doesn’t have a dog issue at the moment.”
“It’s not necessarily that we shouldn’t pass it. It’s just that I think I don’t want to jump into something and then have to change it again next year,” Kost said.
Estrada said that the committee contacted other cities in Ohio and Lima is the only decent-sized city that hasn’t changed its wording to match the state’s. Kost said that she wasn’t concerned whether or not other cities had converted to the new language or not, but whether they’ve had any issues since converting.
Councilor Shane Chamberlin said that he didn’t have any problems with anyone addressing council with concerns, but that it shouldn’t hold up the legislation. There will be two more readings of the proposed change before the final vote. Mayor Huner said that hopefully before the second reading they could hear the dog warden’s concerns.
In other council business, the following items were approved:
•The recommendation to enter an agreement for services from Clemans & Nelson for performance evaluations, classification plan and position descriptions, and compensation plan services on retainer
•Resolution of the authorization for the mayor to enter into an agreement with Public Entities Pool for casualty, liability, fire and property damage insurance effective immediately.
•Resolutions to extended previous contract agreements until the end of 2015 for indigent defense services in county court with the Fulton County Commissioners, city-county dog services with the Board of Commissioners of Fulton County and with Fulton County for bail bondsman services for Fulton County Court, Western District all effective in 30 days.
•Second reading of the resolution to revise the City of Wauseon Investment policy.
•First reading of the approval of the Solid Waste Management Plan update.
•Motion to reappoint Shane Chamberlin and Rick Frey to the Volunteer Fire Fighters Dependent’s board for the term 1/1/2015 to 21/31/2015
•Motion to accept the resignation of Ron Grime from the Planning Commission for his unexpired term to 12/31/2016.
Shar may be reached at
publisher@thevillagereporter.com