News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
A rezoning request for a dog care facility Tuesday night turned into a broader discussion of what Algood City Council can do to regulate noise from these types of facilities.
The rezoning covered a three-acre piece of land, off Highway 111. Council Member Ron Graves said the city needs to make sure they have ordinances in place that they can enforce if the business becomes a nuisance for citizens.
“I got a feeling we’re going to have a lot of complaints and a lot of ifs,” Graves said. “The ifs you put there was will they put them inside at night, or will that last two weeks or a month and then everything gets very lax and you got dogs barking everywhere.”
Graves said he has already received complaints from citizens concerned about the idea of a dog care facility in their neighborhood.
“There’s a reason that Putnam County put their dogs out at Hyder-Burks,” Graves said. “To get it out of the proximity of apartments and private housing. And I know that they can, they can build it there, but I think unless they have some foolproof plan that I don’t know of the dogs are going to bark.”
Codes Officer Bob Lane said he spoke with one of the owners and made sure they are aware of the issues they will need to take care of if they are going to start this business in Algood.
“They assured me, and it’s in the minutes, and she promised there’d be no dogs outside at night to bark, and we’ll enforce that one,” Lane said. “And they would deal with the waste from the dogs, that would be dealt with. And screening, might have to be some fences and some screening done, and she was open to that, too.”
Lane said the city currently has a ordinance against excessive barking in place. Lane said that excessive barking ordinance can be enforced by him or any police officer in the city.
“We can ticket them for that, and we will if they do that,” Lane said. “If the dogs are kept inside at night, I don’t believe you’ll ever hear a complaint. I don’t think you will.”‘
“It would be nice to have an ordinance in place in front of this that would say no dogs can be kept out at night. That when I take that in front of a judge, it’s there. We don’t have an ordinance that says that currently that I know. We just got one excessive barking dogs.”
The council agreed to review the city’s noise ordinance policies with the goal of creating new ones or strengthening the ones that exist.
“I appreciate them making attestations that this isn’t going to be a problem, but they could easily turn around and sell it to somebody else and it becomes a problem,” Vice Mayor Luke Hill said. “So I think we need to make it less about the owner and more about what arrows we have in our quiver to enforce a nuisance.”
