At this week’s Lubbock City Council meeting, numerous citizens showed up to voice their concern for or against the possibility of mandatory spaying/neutering and microchipping of all pets within the City of Lubbock.
The City’s Animal Services Advisory Board this month recommended making spaying or neutering all pets within the City mandatory by a vote of seven members for, and two against. For mandatory microchipping of pets, the board approved recommending the measure to the council unanimously, and requiring a permit to sell animals by a vote of seven members for, and two against.
As it stands, the City’s current ordinances require the owner to have their pet sterilized after its second impoundment by the city, and according to Assistant City Manager Quincy White, the measure has around a seventy percent success rate.
Lubbock Animal Services takes around twenty-thousand calls per year, and picks up around forty animals per day across the city. Over 7,500 animals are euthanized by the City of Lubbock each year.
Currently, only one Animal Services field officer position remains unfilled, and two additional field officer positions have been allotted in the proposed budget for next year.
White and the Animal Services Advisory Board presented a list of pros and cons to each of the three items presented. On the pro side, for mandatory spaying and neutering, the board says that the measure would reduce the number of unwanted litters and euthanized animals, and mandatory microchipping would help reunite lost pets with their owners quicker and reduce the euthanasia of healthy animals. On requiring permits for private pet sales, such as the ones that might be conducted on street corners near Slide Road and South Loop 289, permits may reduce the number of litters per year.
As for cons, the board said their troika of recommendations had the same negatives, such as regulating the City’s responsible pet owners, mandates their manner of keeping pets, and results in a one-time expense by all pet owners. The issue of requiring permits to allow private animal sales was presented to the council last October, but they decided not to implement the measure.
White and the board also presented other possible options to the council, such as banning all animal sales in the city, and increased redemption fees and registration fees for animals which were not sterilized or microchipped.
Mayor Tom Martin called the recommendations a “pretty draconian set of measures” and suggested that the biggest possible improvement that could be made for Animal Services was to move them under the purview of the Lubbock Police Department, as was done with the City’s Code Enforcement.
The recommendations were also received coldly by some other councilmembers as well, such as District Five Councilwoman Karen Gibson. During the discussion, Gibson said “I really don’t think we can mandate responsibility.”
In a nonbinding poll, a clear majority of the council did not want to proceed with the Animal Services Advisory Board’s recommendations, but did ask for their recommendation on the possibility of giving the Lubbock Police Department control over Animal Services.
One thing most of the council could agree on was stepping up enforcement of the city’s current animal ordinances.
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