LONGVIEW, Texas — On Monday night, the public got to address Longview’s animal shelter advisory committee for the first time.
The meeting was prompted by the death of 46-year-old Kenneth Pierson, who was attacked and killed by loose dogs while riding his bike in early February.
Residents of Longview have said loose dogs have been a problem for years and it's only getting worse. City leaders asked Longview's Animal Shelter Advisory Committee to review current laws in place and advise on any changes they would recommend to those laws.
"First steps is public safety, so focusing on animal control, their hours, their times, to focus on the animals at large. And once we have hopefully a better solution to that, we will then move forward with possible ordinance suggestions for spay and neuter, over population, things of that sort," Longview's Director of Administration Bonnie Hubbard said.
Mayor Kristen Ishihara suggested that the two sides to this issue are public safety and the animal control side. The idea is to tackle the safety side of things first before considering how to curb the animal population.
Some at the meeting said the only way to reduce the stray population is a spay and neuter ordinance.
"We’ve seen an exponential spike in the numbers of unwanted, abandoned, and mistreated animals, and we simply cannot euthanize or adopt our way out of the numbers we’re seeing," Friends of Jefferson Animals Founder Dina Carroll said.
The animal shelter advisory committee is now planning its next meeting. At that time, they'll look into the way animal control is deployed throughout the city. They will then be in a position to consider animal population solutions at a later meeting.
"It’s in the best interest of the community that you live in Longview to be required to have a healthy animal, an animal that is under your restraint or your control. And not just healthy for you, but healthy for your neighbors and the community at large," Carroll said