More News

Pending New Carrollton City Council approval, Police Chief David Rice hopes to hire an animal control officer by the end of September in response to numerous complaints about stray cats.

The New Carrollton City Council introduced an ordinance Aug. 18 to install a full-time city animal control officer, and Rice seeks someone with prior experience in trapping animals and citing residents whose homes are breeding grounds. The person would also serve as a parking enforcement officer when the demand for animal control services is low, Rice said.

Rice said the problem areas for stray felines are the 8200 block of Annapolis Road near 85th Avenue and Legation Road near Runford Drive. Rice said a city officer would place the trap and remove the animal for residents for free. Other nuisance animals include loose dogs, raccoons, possums and squirrels, and the traps would not harm the animals, he said. Currently residents would have to get traps from the county to capture animals for county pickup, Rice said.

"It's amazing what happens when people find out you do have the service," Rice said. "[There are] people that wouldn't normally call, because they can't wait around for animal control. Now they'll use the animal control because it's local."

Resident Mikel Murphy has lived in New Carrollton since 2008 and said the stray cat problem has made it difficult to maintain shrubs and flowers or even set foot into his backyard. He said he has put screen netting around his plants to keep cats from digging in.

"The stench of cat urine was so bad — and we didn't have any cats — that we couldn't even stand to walk out there," Murphy said. "It was just horrid."

Murphy said an animal control officer would be a "fantastic" idea that would suit the need of all residents.

"If New Carrollton wants to attract people to move here and to be a part of this community they need to be doing things like having an animal control officer and taking care of the matter," Murphy said.

The city budgeted between $38,000 and $40,000 for a combined animal control and parking enforcement officer in the fiscal 2011 budget, Rice said.

The City Council is expected to vote on the ordinance in September.

Rice said the city would need to form a memorandum of understanding with the Prince George's County animal shelter to be able to take animals captured in New Carrollton to the county's facility in Upper Marlboro. City Administrator J. Michael Downes wrote in an Aug. 18 e-mail to The Gazette that the city would still need an air-conditioned vehicle capable of holding, animals and Rice said he does not know where the money for a vehicle would come from.

Rice said the city did have an animal control program in the past but did not know how long ago it was in place or when it ended. He said he would check the city's inventory to see how many animal traps they have and how many more they would need. Those purchases would come out of the city's police department miscellaneous fund.

In the fiscal 2011 budget the city budgeted $2,000 in "miscellaneous" funds for police patrol and $500 in "miscellaneous" funds for police administration.

Danny Lawrence, an 18-year New Carrollton resident, remembers seeing a city animal control officer as early as 1992 who addressed the problem for about two to three years before the population escalated. He said trapping the felines did not always work and that any new animal control officer who comes into the city will need to be "aggressive." The last city animal control officer he saw was as late as 2002, Lawrence said.

"People don't really come out to physically try to catch them," Lawrence said. "There's so many that if you set traps you're not going to catch them all. That's how it is. My daughter said she saw a baby one yesterday."

Currently there are no plans to go beyond one officer, but Rice said if the city's animal control officer became overwhelmed they would have to wait until discussions of the fiscal 2012 budget about expanding the department.

Councilman Dick Bechtold said at times he sees animals, mostly cats, running loose in his neighborhood.

"I think it's a good thing because we'll have somebody here that can answer problems of animals that are loose, and we have a contact point," Bechtold said.

nmcgill@gazette.net