EDITORIAL — More study of tethering issue was in order

EDITORIAL — Politicians are fully capable of hindsight critiques of their own performance, and even of laughing at themselves at times. Kamloops City council is probably having a chuckle or two today at the manner in which they handled the dog-tethering issue at Tuesday’s council meeting, though it was a serious issue.

Procedurally, it had its moments. When it came time to make a decision, Coun. Arjun Singh attempted to word a motion to set up an ad hoc committee to examine the possibility of a bylaw that would put limits on how long people can leave their dogs chained up unattended.

He couldn’t quite put it into a form he wanted — which isn’t unusual as councillors try to word motions on the fly — and decided to leave it to someone else.

Coun. Tina Lange then jumped in and made a motion NOT to set up the committee. It’s not usual to make motions not to do something when a thing doesn’t yet exist. You either vote against making it exist if somebody else says it should exist, or if there’s no appetite to make it exist there’s simply no motion because one isn’t needed.

At any rate, Lange’s motion was defeated on a 4-4 tie, with Acting Mayor Marg Spina, Lange, and councillors Pat Wallace and Ken Christian in favour of not doing something, and councillors Cavers, Singh, Walsh and Dudy against not doing something.

Walsh then tried it from the opposite end, moving to form a committee that would bring back a report to council. This time, Singh switched sides and voted against it, resulting in a 3-5 defeat of the motion. It didn’t affect the outcome, though, as the result would have been another tie and another defeat if he’d stayed on side with the pro-do something group.

So, council is not going to set up a committee, twice. But the purpose here is not to have a laugh about the odd ways in which decisions are sometimes made, but to look at the decision itself.

Those who opposed setting up a committee expressed concerns about potential costs of enforcing a new bylaw. Cost is always an important consideration in such things.

In this case, however, there was nothing to base the cost concern on other than expectation. Nothing was presented to council on costs of a new bylaw. The City is not in possession of statistics on tethering complaints (although the SPCA has some numbers) or person-hours that would be required to enforce a tethering bylaw.

A committee (or even just a report from staff) could have gotten that information because a growing number of other B.C. communities have established bylaws putting limits on tethering. It’s possible the bylaw wouldn’t increase costs at all, as bylaws officers would simply add it to their existing list of duties without the need for extra hiring.

Waiting for the facts to be presented via a committee report and then making a decision would have removed the fuzziness that now still surrounds the potential impacts of a new bylaw.

Coun. Denis Walsh contended that bylaws are as much about establishing social norms and standards of behaviour as they are about enforcing rules. Right now, he said, “there’s nothing there, it’s wide open.”

That’s the opposite of the viewpoint taken by Christian, who warned against trying to “legislate common sense.” He’s right — it’s hard to do, but that’s exactly what rules are for.

One last thought, this one on Lange’s comment that, “I wish we cared that much about the children in our community.”

No one should think council’s decision Tuesday reflects in any way a lack of caring for animals on their part but she indirectly raised a very important point — there’s overwhelming evidence that people who are kind to animals are also kind to other humans. Sadly, the reverse is often also true.

The saying goes that facts are friendly. Allowing themselves to gather more information may or may not have changed any minds around the table, but it could have provided for a more informed decision.