Ordinance Change Passes First Reading!

Tonight's Council meeting was quite long, but we're a step closer to legal off-leash play. Good news!

I won't go into details now since I'm pretty exhausted, but here are the basics -
There was another speaker in favor of the dog park during public commentary. He was extremely eloquent and powerful, hitting all the right notes concisely. My public commentary was considerably less well-delivered, but I think I got my main point across.

Council discussed the ordinance change for quite a while. Concerns mostly focused on neighborhood opposition and safety issues. I think most of the concern comes from unfamiliarity and a genuine desire for more information. While I don't think anybody on the Council is opposed to off-leash play outright, there are some real reservations. A few members were very vocally in favor of providing this service, hopefully this will translate into some real representation in the near future.

Jayne Miller was questioned for a brief time. She was basically brought up to state that the city has committed resources to this and are trying to make something happen, but that there simply isn't any public support. I'll have more on this later.

There was one change to the proposed language. As written, the ordinance change would have allowed Parks staff to designate off-leash areas. An amendment was added that requires Council approval of any off-leash area. This means a little extra slow-down before anything can be implemented, but it's really no surprise.

In the end the ordinance passed its first reading unanimously with several members expressing reservations and looking for more information before the second reading.

I spoke briefly again at the end of the meeting. I essentially thanked Council and noted that many of the concerns they have would actually be alleviated rather than aggravated by implementation of controlled off-leash areas.

In all, the meeting went about how I expected. It would have been nice to see the change passed on first reading, but that was always a long shot. Not having a single nay vote at this point is really a very good thing.