By LYNETTE SOWELL
Cove Leader-Press
A decision on whether to require microchipping of dogs and cats owned by Copperas Cove residents was tabled until March 3 by the Copperas Cove city council.
A proposed ordinance was brought at the Tuesday Jan. 20 meeting, and it would require all dog and cat owners within the city to microchip their pets.
Currently, the City of Copperas Cove requires pet registration for dogs and cats every two years. This would be added to the city code and come with a citation if pets aren’t microchipped.
Councilmember Howard Hawk said he was in favor of approving the ordinance that evening, and said bringing the same ordinance back at a future meeting, would be the same thing as Tuesday's meeting. The decision to table was not unanimous, with Hawk and fellow councilmember Christina Strohfus voting against bringing the ordinance back on March 3.
Councilmember Vonya Hart was the first to ask if a decision could be tabled, temporarily.
“There are a lot of different opinions in regard to this particular issue, and I'm trying to respect all of that. There are other opinions where people just don't want to do that with their family pets, they're considered family members, and some people do not feel comfortable with that. And people have multiple pets. So now you're increasing it, even if the costs are very low.”
She asked if the city could look at other incentives, or what other ideas are on the table.
“Because from what I'm hearing is a lot of this is because of animals being abandoned, and sometimes because of the military, because of them going overseas, or PCS moves. This is what has been explained to me…Even though you can put a microchip in, it doesn't mean that the owner is going to be responsible to update that information. And if it's a PCS move, then we're not going to be able to locate that military person anyway. So, I'm hearing these reasonings for the microchipping, but I'm just not fully on board with it.”
Place 7 councilmember Jack Smith likewise voiced his opinion.
“I'm not against microchipping. I'm against mandating it. I think everybody should have a microchip on their animals. But there's also people that their dog stays in their house, goes out in the backyard, comes back in. They're responsible pet owners. It’s just adding another fee or laying on another requirement on responsible people, and irresponsible people aren't going to get them microchipped even with the requirement,” Smith said.
Deputy Police Chief Jeremy Alber explained his department’s position.
“There's always going to be a group of people that are noncompliant. Our goal is to bring people into compliance so they can get their dog back. I understand the statement that, ‘Fluffy stays in the backyard.’ Well, it happens a lot, too, where Fluffy stays in the backyard until Fluffy doesn't stay in the backyard, and then Animal Control ends up picking up the animal, and Animal Control can't bring it to its home if the animal isn’t microchipped,” Alber said.
“The military issue is going to be a military issue regardless. And microchipping is not here to solve that. Microchipping is here to get people's pets back to their home. It's really nothing more than that. The way the city tags work right now, we get a tag, we try to find an owner. It's a needle in a haystack kind of thing.”
Animal Control then tries to adopt out the stray animal, at which point the animal would be microchipped upon adoption by the new owner.
Alber said that microchipping is a one-time cost to pet owners.
“We would really save a lot of money and time in taking it home versus taking it to the shelter and having it sit there for three days,” Alber said. “Once this this ordinance passes, the implementation will take time. We're not going to run around and just start issuing citations to people for their animals not being microchipped. We would do low-cost microchipping events, where the city would provide the microchip and do the microchipping for the people, and then every time that they your animal goes to the vet, your veterinarian would have the opportunity to do a microchip there as well.
“We typically buy them for $10 and we sell them for $20. We would do it for the cost of the microchip for the beginning of this program. If you take your animal to the vet and have a microchip done there, you're going to pay $40 or $50, so we're looking at it to get people into compliance and then look to enforce it.”
Deputy Chief Alber said that it would be more than a year from now before the ordinance is enforced, when citations would start being issued. He said the amount would be up to the court.
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