Proposed changes to city code regarding animals will go before Springfield City Council Monday night.
The proposed revisions to Chapter 18 include raising fees for having a dog running loose and creating a more efficient and graduated process to increase the consequences for repeat offenders.
“We’ve had some ongoing issues of animals, especially dogs, running through neighborhoods and kind of creating some both fear and safety issues and frustrations for neighborhoods,” said Jon Moody, assistant director of the Springfield-Greene County Health Department. “We’ve had our animal control program and our officers do an outstanding job with responding to the calls, but they have some limited capacities. And as we took a look at the tools that they have at their disposal through the ordinances, we realize that there’s some opportunities to create some improvements, just to be able to better respond to those animal issues in the neighborhoods and help improve neighborhood safety.”…