Supervisors approve new animal regulations
| Tuesday, Dec 08 2009 06:19 PM
Last Updated Tuesday, Dec 08 2009 06:20 PM
By JAMES BURGER
jburger@bakersfield.com
Kern County supervisors voted to change the county's animal control laws on Tuesday after four years of controversy and debate.
The major goal of all the work was to combat animal overpopulation in Kern County, which forces county workers to kill nearly 20,000 unwanted animals a year.
Supervisors blessed rules requiring license numbers be added to advertisements offering animals for sale. They also implemented penalties for failing to license dogs.
Nobody spoke against passage. But some speakers noted the rules were much less strict than they could have been.
In the past two months, the ordinance was stripped of a rule unpopular with animal breeders that would have required people who have more than 10 animals to apply for a permit and allow inspections by the Kern County Animal Control Department.
Animal volunteer Liz Kehoe urged the board to pass the rules in front of them.
"We have been fooling around with them for far too long," she said.
But she said supervisors will eventually need to confront animal breeders' role in the problem they are trying to fix.
"They are the ones who are causing much of the problem, much of the (animal) intake," Kehoe said.
But some breeders challenged the parts of the ordinance that require them to report license numbers in advertisements.
Animal Control Commission Chairman Michael Yraceburn, a Kern County deputy district attorney, said the rule isn't perfect.
"As someone who has enforced every possible regulatory scheme you have put in place, I frankly was shocked at the debate over adding a new regulatory scheme," he said. "That said, politics is sometimes the art of the possible, not the perfect."
Supervisors thanked Animal Control Director Guy Shaw for bringing the ordinance to a final vote and changing the ordinance after opponents flooded public workshops in November.
Supervisor Jon McQuiston said he was tough on Shaw in October, when he pushed for the public workshops.
McQuiston said Shaw came to him and told him he'd get McQuiston's vote.
"Mr. Shaw, you're going to get my vote," McQuiston said.
The vote was 4-0 in support of the ordinance with Supervisor Michael Rubio absent.
