North Greenacres Neighborhood

A Source of Revenue Reverie

Mar 01, 2006

Never let it be said that City Council meetings are boring. I found there was information tonight that was worth a good laugh, if not at the council's expense. Why not, since most expenses are passed on to us. Morgan Koudelka represented the Spokane County Service Agreements and part of that was Animal Control. Apparently, the cost of Animal Control is $424,685.55. Mr. Munson was most concerned that we really look into being more aggressive about ensuring that dog and cat licensing is enforced to save the City money. He asked if the $424,685.55 included the license fees and of course they weren't. He was very serious and said we've got to keep this our on radar screen - this source of licensing revenue in order to lower our city's expenses. It was another garage sale moment. The evils of these petty crimes have got to be assuaged. We've got an ordinance and we can run with it. I think the phrase,?” we?’ve got to keep this on our radar screen," should not be taken as an idle threat. Last year, I sat in a city council meeting when we were given a presentation by the ordinance enforcement officer who demonstrated that with satellite imaging they can look right into your backyard and know you are harboring a "nuisance vehicle"; too many beat up old cars, or a dangerous slob. They even red tagged like a crime scene, someone's over cluttered back porch steps as too dangerous to be treading upon until they were cleaned up.
The city council individually own homes and recently received their tax increases along with the rest of us, that reflect the reassessment that brought us all up to the new market value. Their pocketbooks are also smarting. This should make for the camaraderie of one tracked, no mercy shown, revenue making. Remember it's for the good of all of us. Developers paying impact fees were too offensive, so several of us sitting at city council began to take notes of how we could help cash in on this licensing of animals. Why stop at dogs and cats? Why not create jobs? We'll hire a few more catchers and we'll include field mice on their hit list. It'll be a catch and release mouse program. We'll chip 'em, add up the number of "chipped" mice and send a bill to the developer with the big field of nefarious mice that are soon to be homeless as their fields are laid bare. We'll see how their attorney worm their way out of that one. They bought the mice with the field. Then any wayward mouse that comes into our homes, we can check to see who the owner is and we'll fine them again.
I can think of quite a few people who would gladly pay a licensing fee to keep pigs. Animal licensing may be the wave of the future. They might bend their sign ordinances in order to have "Wanted Dead or Alive signs for animal licensing."