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The DeLeon City Council met in regular
session, Thursday, February 8, and heard more citizen feedback, from
Anita Gomez, on the recent animal ordinance amendment limiting
dogs/and or cats to four.
All City Council members were present for
the 6 p.m. beginning.
Gomez told council members that she’d
“been through a lot lately” and couldn’t bear to give up even one of
her six dogs, adding a few minutes later that her son had recently
died (in an automobile accident).
“My dogs are my family,” Gomez said. “I
have six dogs. August 26, I buried a son and I’m still dealing with
that issue. Then the dog control man (Chuck Crawford) comes to my
house and said there’s a new ordinance being passed that you can only
have four animals. I treat my animals like my children. How can
somebody tell me you pick this child, or this child, how can I do
that?”
Mayor Danny Owen asked Gomez if all the
dogs were outside dogs, and she said they were.
“They are outside, and they’re in a
fenced yard,” Gomez said, “but they’re on a chain because they are pit
bulls, and pit bulls have a bad rap.”
Gomez, whose house is on the corner of
Ayers and Carruth, went on to say that since she had all six dogs
before the recent amendment, she believed that her dogs should be
“grandfathered” as should pets of other DeLeon residents.
“But any newcomers, I believe they should
abide by that (amendment),” Gomez said.
Gomez then went on to say, again, that
her dogs were her “children” adding that they were well-cared for, and
well-fed.
Mayor Owen asked Chief Ralph Dickey and
Officer Robert Kluge if they were aware of any complaints on the dogs
at Gomez’ house, and both said no.
Owen then asked Gomez if her dogs had
their city licenses, to which she answered no. She did say that they
had their “rabies and boosters” and everything else, and that she
would get the licenses.
“I’m asking you, with everything I’ve
been through, please don’t make me choose one of my children,” Gomez
said, in tears. “Because I buried one, and if it wasn’t for my pit
bulls, I probably wouldn’t be here today. I would stay up all night
because I couldn’t sleep, and I would sit in the back yard and talk to
my dogs. The old saying is true, a dog is man’s best friend.”
More discussion revealed that Gomez lived
in the home with a son and daughter, and that her son owned three of
the dogs, her daughter owned one, and she owned two. But she
considered all of them her children.
“I read in the paper that there have been
problems with stray dogs,” Gomez said, “and yes, there are a lot of
stray dogs. My dogs do not bark unless there’s something going on
outside. One night I had to call the police...my dogs were going
crazy. There was a man laying on the side of my house. My dogs warned
me. My dogs are not trouble makers.” She noted later that her
“grandbaby” was allowed to play with at least one of the pit bulls,
even putting a hand and foot in the dog’s mouth. “He (the dog) is just
a baby,” Gomez said, “he plays with little kitties. It’s the way you
raise them.”
After more discussion, Mayor pro tem
Howard Gifford said, “If there have been no previous reports, and no
problem with the animals, I look at the ordinance as a
guideline...just to give us something to stand on. If there are no
complaints, I see no problem. I mean, we’re not going door-to-door to
see how many pets everybody has and telling them they’ve got to get
rid of a pet.”
“That was not my intention,” Mayor Owen
said.
“Chuckie, Mr. Crawford, he was going
door-to-door and he told me he was the messenger,” Gomez said, “and
that I would be given a courtesy letter about my pets.”
“He wants us to send courtesy letters to
everybody who is in violation of the ordinance,” Karen Wilkerson, city
secretary, said. “I told him we would not send those unless there was
a complaint.”
“Yes, that was my understanding,” Gifford
said. “When we went through with this, it was so that the ordinance
could be a guideline, if there were complaints.” He then noted that
since the concern was brought up last time about someone making a
complaint “just to get back at someone” that he thought they would
weigh the evidence first, and see if there were other complaints.
“I don’t see that we have a problem, if
we don’t have any complaints right now,” Gifford said.
After a bit more discussion, Mayor Owen said, “What I’m hearing from
the council is that unless this becomes a high complaint issue that we
will leave well enough alone” adding that Gomez should get the dogs
licensed.
“This is kind of what I was afraid of
when I brought up the question last time, of how did we arrive at the
number four,” Holdridge said. “I have no problem with you keeping your
six dogs up there, but if we do that, this will not be the last one to
show up here with this same problem.”
There was still more discussion with
Holdridge saying, “I think this is going to come up again, and again,
and again.”
“If we don’t have some kind of starting
place here,” Mayor Owen said, “we might as well abolish the ordinance
and let the land owners take care of their problems themselves. We
have problems of cruelty to animals, we have to have regulations to do
it. We have to have posted speed limits and I’m sorry, but we have to
have something to protect the entire community.” He later said, “I
guess the only way to really do it throughout the community is that
when there is a problem, they bring it before us and we evaluate it
and if there’s an individual who’s had a lot of complaints, and
officers and animal control have been called there numerous times that
we may have to act on it. But those who haven’t (had complaints) then
we’ll try to work with them and make it work. I don’t want people
moving out of town because they have more dogs than the law allows.”
Council members then voted to approve
Gomez’ request to keep her dogs on her property “as long as they don’t
become a nuisance.” Owen reminded her to get her pets registered with
the city.
“I want to tell you,” Gomez said, “that I
was scared to death to come here...if there’s ever anything I can do
for DeLeon...volunteer or anything, I would be willing to do it. God
bless all of you. Thank you for letting me keep my babies.”
After a brief executive session for
personnel evaluations, the City Council reconvened in open session and
voted to “retain all employees” listed on the agenda, which included
Marilyn Harbour, Dora Rangel, Karen Wilkerson, Juanita Gray, L.T.
Lewis, Dustin Paulsen, Robert Kluge, Ralph Dickey, Chuck Crawford,
Larry Solomon, Robert Duncan, Rebecca Hurteau, Mary Young, Tracy Gortt
and Brad Gray.
Council members also heard a report, during the update on the Festival
Park project, of a recent trip to Austin by Mayor Owen, Karen
Wilkerson and Howard Gifford.
“We visited the park grant auditors,”
Mayor Owen said, “and we came away very pleased with the information
that we received. The auditors were really impressed with the progress
we’ve made within the last six months. We voiced our concerns on some
of the conditions we still have to deal with, some of it is beyond our
control -- the wet weather and everything -- and they said there were
many other grants across the state of Texas that had the same issues.
I guess the main thing is, we still have a responsibility to get done
by the end of June, but they assured us that DeLeon will have a park.
They’re not going to come down here and yank it out from under us.”
Rob Duncan, Public Works Administrator,
noted that the playground area at the Festival Park was ready for
volunteers to start putting playground equipment together, and that
work was progressing on the volleyball court area and RV park.
During the open discussion between city
officials and city employees, Councilman John Holdridge noted that
this meeting would be his last, as he would relocate to Tyler before
the next meeting. City office employees surprised Holdridge with a
small farewell party, including cake and punch, immediately following
the meeting.
In other business, City Council members:
• Approved the January 2007 Tax
Statement.
• Approved, on second reading, Ordinance
# 003-07, ordering the May 2007 election.
• Approved Hepatitis B vaccinations for
street and water department employees.
• Approved the minutes for the regular
meeting January 25.
• Approved Ordinance # 004-07, amending
Ordinance # 08-99, adopting curfew hours for minors.
The changes involved removing part 5 of
the original ordinance which provided an expiration date. The new
ordinance was declared to be “permanent” for the City of DeLeon. The
ordinance reads, in part: “Whereas the City Council has determined
that there has been an increase in juvenile violence, juvenile gang
activity, and crime by and against persons under the age of 17 in the
City of DeLeon; Whereas persons under the age of 17 are particularly
susceptible by their lack of maturity and experience to participate in
unlawful and gang-related activities or are likely to be victims of
crime by adults or other youths; Whereas, the City of DeLeon desires
to provide for the protection of minors from each other and from other
persons, to promote general parental control over and responsibility
for children, in order to protect the general public, and reduce the
incidence of juvenile criminal activities; and Whereas, a curfew for
those under the age of 17 is in the interest of the public health,
safety, and general welfare and will help to attain the foregoing
objectives and to diminish the undesirable impact of such conduct on
the citizens of the City of DeLeon.”
The curfew hours are listed as: (a) 11
p.m. any Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday until 6 a.m.
of the following day; and (b) 12:01 a.m. until 6 a.m. on any Saturday
and Sunday; add (c) while school is in session, 8:30 a.m. until 2:30
p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. There are, of
course, exceptions listed for emergencies, employment, etc. |
