Council calculates kennel costs

The owners of the planned commercial dog boarding facility were present at last Wednesday’s meeting of Moorcroft’s council to discuss the town’s previous decision to keep commercial license fees for dogs the same as hobby fees “for now” as the council seeks more information.

As this enterprise has no precedent in town, the fees are still in negotiations. The hobby fee is $20 per intact dog for the first three and each subsequent animal is $50 with a maximum of five animals.

Clerk/Treasurer Jesse Connally requested information from other municipalities regarding their responses to this type of facility, with no helpful response.

“A lot of the municipalities base their kennel fees solely on an actual kennel where the police house a dog that’s been running loose,” she said.

Kennel owner Anastasia Bopp applied with an anticipated number of dogs onsite up to 25 and spoke to this fee schedule that maintains the existing requirement of individual tags and fees.

“An umbrella [annual fee] would be nice to cover a certain number of dogs,” she said.

Bopp wanted to revisit the agreement next year after the town has time to evaluate the standard of care she and her associates take of the facility – noise or smell complaints, etc. – to discuss the possibility of adjusting the fee.

“I would like it not to be such a crazy number that isn’t comfortable for us to do,” she said.

The value of the hobby kennel oversight is the mandatory rabies shots and so on that the fee schedule monitors. According to Councilman Austin Smith, “I don’t know if I’m in favor of the license going away as a blanket deal. Instead, maybe just adjusting the fee some.”

Town Attorney Pat Carpenter advised, “I think you’re sliding down a slippery slope if you move away from a licensing requirement; especially because this really isn’t commercial in the true context of commercial. I would hesitate to move away from that, but I do agree that a flat fee is going to be a better structure.”

After listening to the issue, Mayor Ben Glenn suggested a resolution with recommendations from his council. The instated resolution reads, a commercial kennel fee of $1000 per year with no limit on the number of animals onsite and the adherence to current animal licensing guidelines and fees of $20 per each intact animal.