Good for Councilman KipuKai Kuali’i in crafting regulation to bring back an ordinance to deal with excessive dog barking on Kauai. He recognizes this is an issue that must be addressed. Several citizens have reported that since the county’s dog
Good for Councilman KipuKai Kuali’i in crafting regulation to bring back an ordinance to deal with excessive dog barking on Kauai. He recognizes this is an issue that must be addressed. Several citizens have reported that since the county’s dog barking law was repealed two months ago, what had been fairly quiet neighborhoods turned noisy again due to canines in the area now free to bark to their heart’s content and owners without worry of any knocks on the door from authorities.
It makes sense for the county to take this on, get something back on the books, and it’s good Kuali’i is taking the lead. The primary difference between the old law and the new proposal is that it would require more parties to notify authorities of a potential problem before a dog owner could be cited.
“This newly proposed ordinance is similar to the prior one since we used it as our starting point,” Kuali’i wrote. “We primarily worked to make improvements that I found to be necessary based on the recent citizen testimony and council deliberations.”
That’s how it should work. Listen to citizens, chat about it as a council, made decisions.
It’s not unreasonable for residents to ask their neighbors to keep their dogs from barking too much. What’s too much? How about nonstop for 30 minutes? How about starting at 6 a.m. and going until noon? Or even all day and night, by some accounts. Fortunately, the majority of Kauai’s dog owners don’t allow their pets to bark so much that it leads to heated exchanges with the people next door.
But when dogs do bark excessively, which they do, there must be a process to deal with it. While it would be nice if someone could rely on the community spirit, good will and sense of fair play of their neighbor to keep a dog or dogs quiet, it simply isn’t always the case. Some owners aren’t particularly worried about how their dog affects someone down the street.
Written, specific rules, spelling out the infraction and the penalty, are more effective than vague, general ones subject to interpretation.
Yes, there could be a case when a dog isn’t really barking all that much, but one person is overly sensitive to it and is off-base complaining about it. That’s why this ordinance will require at least two neighbors to complain about the same animal before the owner could face being cited. As Kuali’i said, the previous ordinance didn’t give pet owners enough due process when a complaint was logged against them. This one that could go before the council next month will do that. There will be time to inform the pet owner of the complains and time for them to do something to quiet their pet.
Kudos to Kuali’i for working on this issue and bringing forth a regulation the council should approve. As he said, “Constituents want a fair and easy process to have their barking dog complaints addressed, short of having to take a neighbor to court as a first step.”
And it will result in peace, quiet and harmony in the neighborhood — we hope.
