Complaints led to dog feces, furniture ordinances

MOULTRIE — Citizen complaints spurred a pair of ordinances that city leaders hope will help clean up Moultrie.

Both ordinances were passed at the city council’s May 5 meeting. One prohibits furniture outside a house if it wasn’t made for outdoor use, and the other requires dog owners to clean up after their pets if they’re outside their own yard.

Moultrie City Manager Mike Scott said the furniture ordinance came out of citizen requests and complaints that were addressed at a series of neighborhood input meetings held in 2008. It was brought back up during a cleanup contest in Northwest Moultrie and when a winner was announced last summer.

“We told them we would check into it,” Scott said. “We did not want to make the ordinance something way overbearing.”

To enforce the new ordinance, Scott said the city will rely on its residents to let them know of any violations. The city will send a code enforcement officer to the house to let the person know they are in violation of the ordinance and how to correct. If the problem persists after the courtesy visit, a process that could involve legal action will be done to correct the problem.

The dog waste ordinance came out of compaints about the condition of the Tom White Linear Park, also called the walking trail or bike trail. Users of the trail complained other people were walking their dogs and leaving their piles behind.

With the popularity of the trail and continued complaints about dog feces, the city began to question why nothing was being done about cleaning it up.

“In order to do something,” Scott said, “There has to be an ordinance in place for enforcement.”

With the new ordinance, Scott said, it is a dog owner’s responsibility to clean up all dog feces on all public and private property outside of their own property. The dog owner will need to have some kind of device to clean up any feces left by their dog and dispose of it into a proper container.

Scott said the city has received a grant for upgrades to the walking trail, and some of that money may help the problem. The grant will allow the city to put up new signs and mile markers, and officials will look into costs to add dispensers that will provide bags or plastic gloves to clean up any dog waste left on the trail.

“We may be able to get more out there to encourage people to clean up after their pets,” Scott said.