San Antonio City Council will vote Thursday morning on harsher penalties for irresponsible dog owners.
Council members’ approval is needed before the city can raise fines for repeat offenders or begin sterilizing dogs before they are returned to their owners.
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The changes were prompted by a request from District 7 Councilwoman Marina Alderete Gavito, who also asked for a pseudonym program for residents to report dangerous dogs.
The City Council will also consider raising the fines for owners who fail to prevent their dogs from biting.
HIGHER FINES FOR REPEAT OFFENDERS
The city’s minimum recommended fines for ACS violations are currently $100 for the first violation, $200 for the second, and $300 for the third or more.
ACS Interim Director Mike Shannon says many of the violations are for loose dogs, and he recommended raising the fines for the second and third violations to $500 and $750, respectively.
ACS has also suggested the fines for owners who fail to prevent their dogs from biting be raised to a minimum of $1,000. A second violation would be $1,500, and a third or higher would be $2,000.
FORCED STERILIZATIONS
Nearly two of every five loose dogs returned to their owners in the city’s last fiscal year were still unsterilized when they were handed over.
But even though their owners are ordered to get their pet spayed or neutered within 30 days, ACS has been lax about ensuring they actually did it.
In the past three years, ACS followed up on as few as 26% of its sterilization orders, though that jumped to 69% last year. With council approval, ACS would begin sterilizing some dogs before they’re returned to their owners — specifically, the ones that are picked up from the ACS campus.
It would take too much time for ACS officers to bring every loose dog back to the campus, Shannon has said. Many loose dogs are returned directly to their nearby homes if officers can determine who their owner is.
However, Shannon said, “we absolutely have to ensure 100% issuance and follow-up of those sterilization orders now and in the future.”
Owners who don’t follow through on the sterilization order can be cited.
OTHER CHANGES
At an October meeting with the council’s Public Safety Committee, Shannon said ACS would begin working with the city attorney’s office to roll out a process for filing dangerous dog affidavits anonymously, at least in the initial phase.
The department is already proactively inspecting “repeat offenders,” he said, and the city also plans to push for stronger dangerous dog laws during the upcoming state legislative session.
See the Animal Care Services presentation below: