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Alcoa animal ordinance passedSubmitted by R. Neal on Wed, 2007/05/09 - 8:33am.
The Alcoa City Commission passed the amended Alcoa Animal Ordinance last night by a unanimous vote. It took a little longer than expected to get it on the agenda because lawyers had to rewrite some language to incorporate a few suggested changes. You can read more about that here. We spoke with Alcoa Police Capt. Phillip Dunn, who is in charge of animal control and is a super nice guy who cares about his work with animals (and pet owners). We thanked him for listening to our concerns and incorporating changes to address them. We also thanked City Manager Mark Johnson for working with us to get this done. Capt. Dunn also told us that they had already purchased the microchip scanners City Manager Mark Johnson had authorized, and they hope this will help keep some strays out of the shelters. Capt. Dunn also said they are working with local veterinarians on a registration program that would let residents register their pets when they go to the vet for annual rabies vaccinations. They are also working on a new brochure to give to all new residents explaining the animal control ordinances and registration requirements (which we did not know about), and hope to have this info on their new website soon. They also hope to allow for online renewal of registrations at some point. We briefly discussed the new Smoky Mountain Animal Care shelter, a non-profit that will hopefully be taking over Blount County's shelter operations soon. (Read more about that here.) There are no plans at this time for the City of Alcoa to change their shelter arrangement with the City of Maryville. Alcoa city officials have been involved with the group, though, to help with planning. P.S. In related news, the Mrs. is donating two dog poop stations to be installed at Springbrook Park. The stations have cleanup bag dispensers and waste receptacles. Blount Co. Parks and Recreation will take care of the installation, resupply, and maintenance. There is currently only one and it is at the parking lot. We'll be going over there next week with the parks guy to scout out locations for the new ones. |
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What a great thing to do. When we were at PAWS in the Park last fall you really had to watch where you stepped.
R- by any chance did you ask why Alcoa is not planning on using the new shelter? Considering Alcoa is involved in planning with SMACF and in fact the Blount County Animal Control Board will or wants to have an Alcoa member.
WPR has just posted more on this in her blog.
They didn't want to go into much detail about it at this time.
One thing that occurred to me was that since Alcoa uses Maryville's shelter, get Maryville to close theirs and go with the SMACF and Alcoa would come along out of necessity.
Oh yeah, Maryville needs to come along but if Alcoa and the other small towns went with the new shelter then Maryville would most likely follow.
Whatever way it happens, it will not happen at all unless more city residents speak out for change. Change as in making things better instead of simply saying the county does not pay it's share of the funding.
The bottom line for me is simply to reduce the number of animals that are put down in Blount County and as long as MAS allows adoption of animals which are not S / N then they are part of the problem.
as long as MAS allows adoption of animals which are not S / N
We asked Capt. Dunn about that, and he said it was his understanding that they required it. We also asked about the hold times, and he said that as far as he knew they went by the local ordinace of whoever placed the animal there, and that they (Alcoa) pay a daily fee to keep them however long they are supposed to.
I will follow up with him about these issues. Any more details (offline is fine) would be helpful.
People are supposed to get their animal that they adopt from the Maryville Animal Shelter spayed or neutered. They sign an adoption agreement and get a voucher. But there is no follow up to see if this is done.
Research has shown only a small percent of the people who get a voucher to spay or neuter their adopted pets actually do this. When a shelter spays or neuters the animal before it adopted, over time, there is a drop of unwanted animals. This is not seen in areas where the shelter just gives a voucher.
Terry
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