Council wants faster animal-control response

If you call for animal control in Salt Lake City, be prepared to wait a while.

The City Council learned Tuesday that even on the most serious of animal calls — things like rabid dogs running loose — it takes officers an average of 22 minutes to respond. While that time is less than the 30-minute target Salt Lake County Animal Services sets for its officers, it isn't good enough for some council members.

On less serious calls — like a dog running through a school yard or park off its leash — it takes animal control officers 69 minutes to get there. Again that's below the two-hour time limit for "priority three" calls, but too long for council members who want off-leash dogs kept away from the city's children.

"When there's a dog loose in the park and there's kids playing and it takes 69 minutes to respond — I don't know how to address that, but that's not good enough," Councilwoman Jill Remington Love said.

Officials from the county's animal services department, which has a contract to serve Salt Lake City, agreed. But they said they have limited resources and are stretching their existing enforcement as far as it can go.

One of the problems, Capt. Shon Hardy said, is that officers are forced to spend too much time on fairly minor barking-dog calls. Those calls chew up much time as officers determine whether a dog is really barking too much or if the complainer is just overly sensitive. Officers, then, often have to play referee between upset neighbors with little resolution. Such calls take about 25 percent of all the time officers spend doing animal control.

"We spend a lot of time on those barking-dog calls," he said.

Hardy said the county is considering how it can spend less time working on such lesser matters and more time focusing on bigger issues.

Council members want more random patrolling, especially of school yards where they say many dogs run off leash. But with only three officers on staff to cover all of Salt Lake City and long response times, stepped-up patrolling seems unlikely.

West-side Councilman Van Turner said he sees the most animal problems on the weekends. That's the time when animal control is staffed the least, Hardy said.

Salt Lake City has few options to solve its animal control issues.

There are no other agencies the city could contract with for service and the city doesn't have more money to throw at the problem. Already, animal services officials are warning the costs could go up if the department contracts with the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office to do its dispatching.

Still, council members feel something should be done, even if they don't have the answer.

"That's one of the things that I get a consistent amount of calls about is animal issues," Councilwoman Nancy Saxton said.

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