Animal Control
One of the government departments that it's been most frustrating to deal with in Durham is the County Animal Control Department. I don't know what the issue is. They seem for the most part to be dedicated and qualified public servants, but the problems, large and small, in dealing with animals here seem unsurmountable. On the small end of things, virtually everyone i know in Durham has a problem with nuisance dogs, the one or two dog owners who allow their dogs to run loose through the neighborhood whenever they feel like it. These animals are almost always intact males, and you know they're contributing to the animal overpopulation problem. The other end of that spectrum are the dog owners who keep their dogs chained to a tree 24/7, often in violation of the County's animal cruelty codes regarding food, water, shelter, length and composition of tieout, etc. The larger problem is that, according to a conversation i had with Cindy Bailey, Director of the Animal Control Department, a couple of years ago, as many as 60% of the dogs and cats in Durham County are not licensed. This means the county has no way of knowing whether or not those animals are vaccinated against rabies. This has the potential to be a really big deal at some point in time.
I bring this up because of something i saw in Hillsborough yesterday while at lunch.
In case you can't read it, here's a transcription:
The flier goes on to give an accounting of these new fees and penalties.
those are some steep fees and penalties. I have no idea how many violations the Orange County Animal Control Department will actually end up citing. I would hope that, if they do a good enough job educating their population, that the number will be small, because the number of violations will be small. I have no such confidence that a similar condition will prevail in Durham County.
One of the responses that i hear a lot from people in Durham when i say that i don't recall having to deal with these issues when i lived in New York or California is, not always with a smile, "we don't care how you did things up north."
I ain't talking about how they do things up north, folks. I'm talking about how they do them next door. Too many aspects of Durham's public administration and public services are run as though this is still a small town where everyone knows everyone else, and all that's needed to take care of the problem is Sheriff Andy to put his arms around your shoulders and explain the facts of life, and everyone goes home happy.
Those days, if they ever existed, are long gone. It's time our public administration reflected this reality.
UPDATE: The Orange County ordinance dealing with nuisance animals:
I particularly like the second part which spells out in detail the steps that will be taken to alleviate the nuisance, and the time frames involved. The vagueness of the barking section ("so as to interfere seriously with the reasonable use and enjoyment") which may limit its enforceability. Any of my Orange County readers have any experience in having nuisance animal problems resolved by Orange County Animal control? I know that in Durham, AC has dropped the barking dog provision from the nuisance animal ordinance, instead directing citizens to call Durham police and have the issue dealt with as a noise ordinance violation.
Good luck with that.
I bring this up because of something i saw in Hillsborough yesterday while at lunch.
In case you can't read it, here's a transcription:
The Animal Control of the Animal Services Department will be updating civil penalties and fees effective July 8, 2008.
The civil penalties and fees cover ordinance violations including animal mistreatment, public nuisance, and failure to vaccinate or license pets.
The flier goes on to give an accounting of these new fees and penalties.
those are some steep fees and penalties. I have no idea how many violations the Orange County Animal Control Department will actually end up citing. I would hope that, if they do a good enough job educating their population, that the number will be small, because the number of violations will be small. I have no such confidence that a similar condition will prevail in Durham County.
One of the responses that i hear a lot from people in Durham when i say that i don't recall having to deal with these issues when i lived in New York or California is, not always with a smile, "we don't care how you did things up north."
I ain't talking about how they do things up north, folks. I'm talking about how they do them next door. Too many aspects of Durham's public administration and public services are run as though this is still a small town where everyone knows everyone else, and all that's needed to take care of the problem is Sheriff Andy to put his arms around your shoulders and explain the facts of life, and everyone goes home happy.
Those days, if they ever existed, are long gone. It's time our public administration reflected this reality.
UPDATE: The Orange County ordinance dealing with nuisance animals:
Orange County Ordinance
Chapter 4. Animals
Sec. 445. Public Nuisance.
Public nuisance means the following activities of an animal, or conditions maintained or permitted by the animal's owner or keeper:
(1) The animal is found at large off the premises of its owner or keeper and not under the restraint of a competent person.
(2) The animal damages the property of anyone other than its owner or keeper, including but not limited to turning over garbage containers or damaging gardens, flowers, shrubbery, vegetables or trees, fences or gates, or causes injury to domesticated livestock or pets.
(3) The animal habitually and repeatedly barks, whines or howls so as to interfere seriously with the reasonable use and enjoyment by neighboring residents of their property.
(4) The animal repeatedly chases, snaps at or barks at persons, domesticated livestock, pets or vehicles when it is not in an enclosure, leashed or on the owner' s or keeper's property.
(5) The owner or keeper fails to confine a female dog while in heat (estrus) in a building or secure enclosure in such a manner that she will not be in contact with another dog; however, this subsection shall not be construed to prohibit the intentional breeding of animals within an enclosed area on the premises of the owner or keeper of an animal involved in the breeding process.
It shall be unlawful for an owner or keeper to permit an animal to create a public nuisance, or to maintain a public nuisance created by an animal. Compliance shall be required as follows:
(1) When an animal control officer or law enforcement officer observ es a violation, the owner or keeper will be provided written notification of such violation and be given 24 hours or less to abate the nuisance.
(2) Upon receipt of a written detailed and signed complaint alleging that any person is maintaining a public nuisance, the animal control director shall cause the owner or keeper of the animal in question to be notified that a complaint has been received, and shall cause the situation complained upon to be investigated and a written report to be prepared.
(3) If the written findings indicate that the complaint is justified, the animal control director shall cause the owner or keeper of the animal in question to be notified in writing, and shall order abatement of such nuisance within 24 hours or such lesser amount of time, which shall be designated on the abatement order.
(4) If, after 24 hours or such lesser time as is designated in the abatement order, the nuisance is not abated, the animal creating the nuisance may be impounded or a civil penalty may be issued and/or a criminal summons may be issued.
(Ord. of 6161987, § XV, eff. 111988; Ord. of 1111995, eff. 111997)
I particularly like the second part which spells out in detail the steps that will be taken to alleviate the nuisance, and the time frames involved. The vagueness of the barking section ("so as to interfere seriously with the reasonable use and enjoyment") which may limit its enforceability. Any of my Orange County readers have any experience in having nuisance animal problems resolved by Orange County Animal control? I know that in Durham, AC has dropped the barking dog provision from the nuisance animal ordinance, instead directing citizens to call Durham police and have the issue dealt with as a noise ordinance violation.
Good luck with that.
Labels: local government
Since 1949, Durhamites have slept soundly, secure in the knowledge that, in our town, erection can be depended upon. Now, thanks to the power of the internets, we can spread that security all over the world.
16 Comments:
Thanks for posting this. I've been concerned as well about the number of loose dogs running around my neighborhood, chained dogs, etc. I have noticed that since moving here three years ago that the number of chained dogs has declined. I've also not seen as many loose dogs in the past few months, though I'm not sure why.
I always guessed that not many of the dogs here are licensed. It's disappointing to hear that most dogs aren't licensed, and by extension probably also not up-to-date on vaccinations.
What licensing, if any, is required for someone to breed dogs? I think that if we want to decrease the flood of unwanted dogs going to APS that we need to clamp down on irresponsible breeding. It seems that little, if anything, is currently being done to stop this problem.
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Steve Graff, at 11:30 AM
Given how well the existing animal control laws have been enforced in my Orange County neighborhood, I'll be shocked if these new ordinances will actually make a difference. In my family's experience, calling Animal Control does no good whatsoever. Nice color choice for the flier, though.
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Lenore, at 2:39 PM
in other words, just like Durham.
oh well.
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Barry, at 2:48 PM
This is kind of tangential, but in the last two or three weeks, I've noticed that five to eight Durham animal control officers (sometimes more) all take a very long lunch break at the Northgate Park tennis court and they all play tennis. I don't have a problem with someone having fun/being active over lunch: but all of them at once for a couple of hours? Actually, it's more amusing than annoying.
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cg, at 4:01 PM
Maybe Durham could learn a thing or two from Holly Springs
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Locomotive Breath, at 4:53 PM
When I lived on Long Island, nobody ever said "we don't want to hear about you did things in the city." When I lived in California, nobody ever said "we don't want to hear about how you did things back east." But if you mention that there are alternate approaches to problems around here, and cite your experience having lived anywhere else, the response is "we don't want to hear how you did things up north." Even when up north means someplace other than up north.
What does that mean for, say, a police chief from Connecticut, or a city manager from Peoria? Will the defenders of dysfunction turn a deaf ear to them rather than be open to the notion that someone who lived someplace else might have experience worth hearing about?
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Anonymous, at 8:18 AM
I'm going to try and say this very gently.
There's a little matter of the shared cultural memory of spending a dozen years under Yankee military occupation and watching while family land and other property was expropriated by carpetbaggers under the color of law but really at the point of a bayonet. And the 100 years of Yanke hegemony and grinding poverty (for everyone) that followed.
For more information Google "Reconstruction".
And before someone starts it, very little of what went on during reconstruction had anything to do with correcting the evils of slavery and an everything to do with taking revenge.
By the quality of thy mercy do we know thee.
On the flip side a shared cultural memory has a lot to do with why a black person often resents taking orders from a white person even it's in the context of an otherwise normal employment or law enforcement situation.
Cultural dynamics in the south are a heck of a lot more complex than any outsiders ever realize. (cf. Dick Brodhead) You'll have to live here about three generations and maybe you'll be able to pick up the nuances.
So, white people for one reason and black people for another reason, no one here really wants to hear how you did it on Long Island. If it's that great you can move back there.
5, 4, 3, 2, 1, ... before Barry throws the Obama card and insists that even though his wife inserted herself into the debate, she may not be answered back.
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Locomotive Breath, at 5:55 PM
LB,
I say this as a lifelong Southerner with all the requisite Confederate captains and infantrymen in my lineage:
Hooey.
Modern day resentment for generalized advice from the North has very little to do with Reconstruction at this point. It has a lot more to do with persistent condescension on the part of northerners towards southerners.
That said, I don't want to recall the number of times, when I was in college in the upper midwest, when I was told, "you're from North Carolina? Wow, but you don't seem stupid!" or "that must have been hard, getting into a good college from there!" It got so that when some unsuspecting moron pulled that line around me, before I even had a chance to respond, my friends would instinctively draw away. All of the explanations about the history of public education in this state, the socioeconomic differences and differences in economic geography, the retorts about the massive intellectual contributions the south has made to American culture, all got old with repetition. After a while, it would just come down to, "fuck all y'all, ya damn yankees!" But that's not very neighborly, so yes, I've been known to use the "we don't care how you did it back north" line.
There's even some reason behind it, in addition to the knee-jerk reaction. Southern urbanized municipalities have very different characteristics than most other cities in the country, for a number of reasons. This shouldn't make you lower your expectations of public service dramatically, but yes, there are some reasons to think that policies might play out differently here. None in particular related to animal control that I can think of, but expecting Durham to have largely comparable polices to New York would be kind of like me going to Manhattan and complaining that nobody ever brushed me out of the way in Durham.
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Unknown, at 10:30 PM
Since none of my ancestors were living on this continent in the 19th century, I don't have a dog in the north/south fight. I didn't like Long Island, so I left it, and spent most of my adult years in a place that was neither north nor south, to which I would gladly return tomorrow if Mr. D didn't love Durham so much.
Having worked with and lived with people from all parts of this country and many others, I did not move to the south thinking that southerners were inferior in any way. The assumption that I hold that prejudice is in itself a prejudice.
If I say "hey, they had this great system for monitoring the parks in San Carlos which I think could be modified to address the problems we've been having in Duke Park" I am not saying "You are an ignorant fuckhead because of something that happened 100+ years ago when my great-great-grandparents were still starving in Ireland, and I am going to foist my ways upon you because of my vastly superior intelligence." I'm saying that I had an experience during my lifetime, most of which was lived somewhere else, and that I draw on all of my experiences all the time, regardless of where I live now.
I realize that there are bone-headed people everywhere, and that there are plenty of people in the north, midwest, west, wherever that have erroneous preconceived notions about the south, and that judge an individual based on those prejudices. But when I treat someone with respect, and am met with disdain and a history lecture because I dared to express an opinion, is not an experience that makes me love living in the south.
And to get back to my original point, I wonder what this means for people who are hired to address real issues in this city who come from Connecticut or Peoria. If they have good ideas, will those ideas be listened to and considered? Or will they be rejected because they were not invented here? I doubt that Jose Lopez' ancestors were in the Union Army, and would it matter one iota if they were?
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Anonymous, at 8:57 AM
Mrs. D.,
I didn't mean to specify that you specifically were being rude or disrespectful. I mean to say that a lot of us have gotten the condescension so much that it's rubbed a raw spot, so that we react even when it's not really appropriate. (What can I say -- for an such a cosmopolitan and well traveled gentleman, I sure get provincial easily.)
The other point I would make is that every region I've lived in had differences in the conventions followed for making political decisions. In small town Minnesota, the one thing you never wanted to do was to seem to be in more than just the mildest disagreement with anyone else. In Durham, on the other hand, the important thing to do anything politically is to make sure you come to consensus with some reasonably large set of people, then move forward requesting the change from there (and if you have enough, there's no need to make nice after that).
I don't know the conventions in California, but from my trips there, I'm just going to hazard a guess that individual actions are more the norm. (But then again, everytime I've visited California, it's seriously given me the creeps.)
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Unknown, at 12:13 PM
basically, when i lived in California (which was not with Mrs D, by the way), many of these problems simply didn't exist. i lived in Stockton, Linden, Lodi, and Sacramento over an 8 year period. i never had a problem with neighbors allowing their dogs to bark through the night, or even through the day. (Mrs D can speak to problems she had in East palo Alto). I never had to pick up dog shit in my yard from the neighbor's dogs. Even in Linden, which is a rural, Central Valley farming community (cherries and walnuts, mostly) where i lived on 7 acres of orchard, surrounded by another couple of hundred acres of orchards, i wasn't concerned at all that my neighbor's dogs might not have been vaccinated against rabies.
Here in Durham, when the director of the Animal Control department has told my personally that she believes that as many as two out of three animals in the county are not registered, i am damn concerned about that. Rabid possum and raccoon have been found in my neighborhood (which is only a mile from downtown.) I've found dead possum in my backyard. I have no confidence that any of my neighbors on Avondale Drive, for example, have vaccinated their animals against rabies, and very little confidence that the Animal Control department has a clue how to eliminate this problem.
According to latest census estimates, Durham is up to a quarter million people. Being clueless about dealing with the problem of unlicensed and probably unvaccinated pets is simply not an option.
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Barry, at 12:23 PM
Michael, I agree with everything you said. I meant to imply that the process of newly-arrived Yankee condescension towards the south started with Reconstruction and continues today but apparently I didn't do it very well.
In my late twenties I lived for three years in Rockford, Illinois and spent a lot of time in the Chicago area. I can't count the number of idiotic ignorant statements I heard about the south. My initiation just after arriving was the grocery store checkout girl to whom I presented my home-state Virginia driver's license as ID to write a check on my new in-state account. She insisted that there was no such state and that it was a fake. And southerners are supposed to be uneducated!
When my wife and I began a family we left because the schools were so bad. They were mostly segregated, by the way, and nobody had bothered bussing them around to achieve educational justice. But I kept hearing about southern bigotry.
So we moved to NC. I got tons of remarks about how disease ridden the south is and why would I want to move there.
But my favorite after our return was the neighbor that eventually moved in across the street after arriving from Connecticut. In that first meet-the-neighbor sidewalk encounter they said to me "you must not be from around here either because you don't talk like it.." I replied that they had been watching too much Dukes of Hazard or Andy Griffith but that if it would help support their stereotype of southerners "I kin tawlk lik this iff'in you waunt me to". They somehow felt that they had the right to be offended.
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Locomotive Breath, at 3:02 PM
Michael, LB, no disrespect intended, and no offense taken. I guess I too have been a bit rubbed raw by some of the reverse prejudice I've received in my 7 years here. I can certainly understand how ignorance and condescension about the south would do more than merely get on your nerves. Even I have had to explain to one my relatives that I didn't "move to the country" when I moved to NC--she apparently didn't realize there were cities here (and she grew up in Texas).
I didn't even know my own grandparents, so the notion of a deep regional heritage--any heritage--is foreign to me. My heritage is one of movement: my grandparents to this country, my parents from the city to the island, myself and my cousins to points north and west and south. So part of my reaction is in coming to a place where I'm basically told that I'm unwelcome and should leave, or that my opinion is unwelcome and I should shut up, or that my accent is wrong and I should change it, or that I should lie about the fact that I ever lived in San Francisco, because...well, you know everyone from San Francisco is a whack job, right?
Durham is a wonderful place in a lot of ways. I have no complaints about the culture: there are always plenty of fun things to do, and I've met great people. My biggest complaint about Durham is that it's too far from the ocean and the mountains. (Oh yeah, and the litter. Lots of litter.) But as I expressed recently on the Duke Park list, I've never lived somewhere where I've had so much need to call multiple city and county departments over and over again. Barry mentioned my time in East Palo Alto: that is the closest place I've lived to Durham, in that it was high crime, multi-ethnic, and lived in the shadow of a major university and a major high-tech area. It had all the poverty of Durham with none of the wealth and little of the middle class. It was probably much MORE dysfunctional than Durham, but since I was renting long enough to save for the down payment on a home somewhere else, I didn't sweat it much. Except for the damn barking dogs. And to shut them up, you had to call the police between 10pm and 8am, and considering the submachine gun fire I heard nearly every night, I figured they had better things to do with their time.
My personal take is that if you want to live someplace where codes and regulations and speed limits are enforced, then you go somewhere with a low crime rate. As long as resources are sucked into making sure people aren't killing each other, there's not much left over for enforcing what I would call quality of life regulations.
I've actually been very interested in knowing what people's experiences are in other cities and counties. Sad to hear that at least the OC Animal Control isn't much better. But maybe their fliers are signs of change.
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Anonymous, at 6:01 PM
Well that's OK. All you have to do before making a suggestion is avoid saying "In [fill in the blank] they do it such and a such a way". Just pretend you thought the idea up on your own.
People make fun of Cary for being uptight and straight-laced. I will observe that they also don't have the problems you mention. Correlation or causation?
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Locomotive Breath, at 9:21 PM
Back to the animal control issue. I moved into my house in Durham county (in a subdivision outside the city limits) three and a half years ago. In that time I have been BITTEN TWICE by loose running dogs. The first incident animal control took over a week to respond, with the comment that they were short staffed due to vacation. The second bite (different dog) was more serious but it still took several phone calls over several days to find out if the dog was vaccinated and to get the dog picked up for the state mandated quarantine. I think it's appalling that I feel like I can't walk in my own neighborhood without risking a dog attack. When I walk my dogs I have to plan my route to avoid the areas I know I'll find loose running dogs. Do I sound pissed? If not I guess I should write this again.
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Diana, at 6:18 PM
You should be pissed off. That kind of lackadaisical response (to be generous)is simply inexcusable.
By
Barry, at 8:46 PM
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