By Rebecca Dopp
Times-News Correspondent
Dogs are still a problem in Mona, and council members need to do something about it soon. Mona City Council member Gordon Anderson read a letter submitted to the city by Scott Fullmer, a resident, about the dog problems.
In the letter, Fullmer informed the council of an incident where he had been approached and attacked by a dog and voiced his concerns about the loose dogs in town. He said he thought the city needed to do something soon.
The council discussed what should be done. They felt that the current animal control officer needed an assistant who would be available during the day to respond to complaints. Mark Kay, the current officer, works full-time during the day and is not usually available.
Anderson said that the city was getting several complaints and they needed to do something as soon as possible.
“The drop-off dogs are not the problem,” he said. “It’s the repeat [offenders] who have dogs and just let them run. They say the dogs “don’t bite anyone”, but people are intimidated.”
Council member Cody Adams suggested they increase the fines to get the dogs out of the pound. Mayor Bryce Lynn said some people would just leave the dogs instead of paying a steep fine.
Another problem was the city had nowhere to kennel the dogs, so a round up of loose dogs was not an option.
Adams also suggested that maybe the city should have a “free license” day where dog owners could come to the city hall and obtain a license. Then, he said, if they saw any dog without a license, it would be picked up.
“I think part of the problem is it’s too inconvenient for people to come down and write an $8.00 check,” he said. “Even if we have a booth [at the 24th of July celebration] and we charge them, make it easy.”
Anderson disagreed saying the ones who would license their dogs anyway, it would not be equitable to give licenses away to those who wouldn’t do it anyway.
Lynn said he thought one of the reasons why these offenders don’t license their dogs is because they don’t want a paper trail to link them to the dog in case their is an incident.
“If they don’t want to own up to an [incident],” Adams said, “then they shouldn’t have the dog in the first place.”
Lynn said the best option would be to get a daytime person to help Kay out and he would look into finding the right person.
“I think there is enough awareness being raised that I think we can correct the problem,” said Anderson. “Just waking people up to let them know we aren’t going to tolerate it anymore.”
