Sandpoint repeals dog licensing requirement to address shelter challenge

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

The Sandpoint City Council voted unanimously Sept. 18 to repeal the city’s dog licensing ordinance. Removing the requirement is intended to solve an issue that arose earlier in the summer, when the Better Together Animal Alliance — which had been providing animal control services for area communities — came before the Ponderay and Sandpoint councils to tell them that the nonprofit needed more money to continue serving that function.

“[The municipalities] are utilizing a service but aren’t contributing to the overall impact of providing that service,” BTAA Executive Director Mandy Evans told the Reader in an Aug. 13 interview, pointing to rising costs for staffing, insurance, utilities and maintenance, and more.

Courtesy photo.

“When we say that we can’t afford to do it, that’s honest. We can’t afford to do it,” she added.

Idaho Code stipulates that political subdivisions requiring dog licensing are also required to shelter and care for stray animals, but provides no funding mechanism to cover the costs. By repealing the dog licensing requirement, the city is given more flexibility in how it handles the collection of dogs at large, Grimm said on Sept. 18, adding that a local veterinarian has stepped forward to work in conjunction with the Sandpoint Police Department and BTAA to house stray dogs for up to five days, “and then a very good price for Better Together if we have to actually surrender that dog because we can’t find an owner.”

The Sandpoint Police Department will continue to pick up strays, but “through a different concept,” SPD Chief Corey Coon said.

“If you find a stray dog, you need to call the police department; we’re going to evaluate that stray dog and does it fit our definition of what a stray dog is, which means we’re going to get into, ‘Is it running out into traffic, does it look like it’s injured, is it biting other people, is it going after them?’” Coon added. “Just because they see a black lab in a neighborhood doesn’t mean that we’re going to go pick it up and shelter it — it’s going to have to fit the criteria of being a danger to themselves or somebody else, and then we’ll take those dogs and shelter them.”

Under the previous protocol, any citizen of Sandpoint or county resident could pick up a dog and take it to BTAA, with the expense coming back on the city through its contract with the organization.

The city will maintain a contingency plan for sheltering dogs short-term at a secure shelter location in a building on city property. Meanwhile, the dog licensing program has been made voluntary and free — a change that Coon said has increased interest in participating, with about a half dozen residents coming forward to have their dogs entered into the system.

In addition, BTAA and local vets have also agreed to help the city collect information on dogs, including chip numbers.

The city is currently working on a memorandum of understanding with vet services and BTAA for how to move forward with the new policies, including working out prices.

“The long and short of all this is this brings us to a conclusion with a really elegant solution to the Better Together Animal Alliance challenge that we were facing,” Grimm said. “And the chief has worked closely with Mandy [Evans, of BTAA] on this and I take my hat off to both of them for finding this solution.”

More information on the free, voluntary dog licensing program is now available on the city’s newly revamped website, sandpointidaho.gov.