The City Council convened for its final pre-2025 session on December 15, 2025, to review a comprehensive update to Chapter 5 (Animals and Fowl) proposed by the Board of Health and the Public Health and Human Services Department. Presented by Rebecca Roslin, Dr. Tom Rose, and Kevin Myers, the presentation outlined efforts to align city ordinances with county processes, clarify definitions, address animal neglect and tethering, revise feral cat colony management, and introduce a mechanism for households exceeding the four-pet limit.
All right, I'm gonna go ahead and call our final pre-council of 2025 to order. December December 15th, 2025. We have one item on the agenda and an opportunity for if there are other items that council wants to discuss. So our one and only agenda is from our Board of Health, Public Health and Human Services Department. Updates to Chapter 5, Animals and Fowl. So Rebecca Roslin, I'm gonna kick this over to you. Okay, thank you. Dr. Tom Rose, who is a member of the Board of Health will be here shortly to walk through the presentation. Just to just a reminder to council. We came to count the Board of Health came to council at the end of last year asking for counsel's direction to review chapter five animals and fowl. That request was initially came about because we had had an individual come to council who had more than four cats, which are currently allowed in chapter five, and there's not a provision in chapter five allowing the health department director to grant any type of variance as there are in other sections. I I can give a variance for livestock in the city limits, but not for five cats. So and then upon looking further into chapter five, there were some other things that staff recommended the Board of Health look at and consider updating. So the process, uh, we started this in January. We looked through the ordinance, um, our animal control supervisor who's behind me, Kevin Myers, he really um marked through the items that have been issues over the years and then as from his perspective. And we identified that there were going to be four topics that we felt the community was going to be most invested in giving input on. And so we intentionally separated those out into four separate meetings. So it would be noted on the agenda that this was the topic we were going to be covering. We promoted that on Be Heard as well as our social media so that individuals that were very passionate about that particular topic would be aware that that was the time that they could come and speak. Although, of course, they could come and speak at any time on any topic. So just for your awareness, those four things were changes to the feral cat ordinance, um, the vicious and nuisance dog hearings, which we'll talk about that more, and some changes to tethering requirements in the city. And then the fourth one was of course the number of dogs and cats that could be allowed in any one household. So tonight's presentation, we've got the PowerPoint, which is a high level overview, and then we shared with everybody the edited or the marked up chapter five. This has been reviewed by legal as well. So we can talk about any questions you might have in the full edited, um, but the we're gonna hit the main highlights with the PowerPoint, and then each slide has the page number for this document that corresponds to those recommended edits. Um any questions on that before we get started or on the process or anything. No, I appreciate the detail process and community engagement. Thanks, Melinda. Go back. Yeah. Okay, so as we walk through this, there are some definitions that we just change throughout the document. They're very minimal in impact. For example, Columbia Police Department's dogs are mentioned multiple times. We just changed that to law enforcement. In case it's a highly patrol dog or MUPD had a dog. Um, we also changed citizen to person every place that you see that, just so there's no question about that use of language, other minor changes you'll see throughout. So the first one. So on page one of your definitions, is this close enough to my mouth? Yep. Okay. Am I screaming? Yeah, okay. Sometimes people use the microphone, you still can't even hear them. So if you sit back, it will be too far. It will be too far. Okay. Thank you. Okay, so page one on the definitions under uh dangerous or aggressive animal advisory. So this is something we're gonna talk about a little further down the road.