Tonight at Asheville City Council’s meeting, a change to the animal ordinance was debated for a couple hours. People showed up in droves to protest the chaining of animals. Chains, they said, made animals angry and violent. At one point, Councilwoman Robin Cape suggested amending the proposed ordinance to outlaw chains and tethers. Brownie Newman astutely noted that people would have to take their dogs inside or be criminals until they could get their fences built. (It was 10:00pm, and the hardware stores were closed. Furthermore, all the grandmas with fences had gone to bed for the night.) Nobody mentioned that a few years ago, council sent a huge development project belly-up by requiring it to remove its gate, and then sought to outlaw gated communities altogether. Only Dr. Carl Mumpower observed that people were passionate about the liberties of animals, but could care less about the liberties of people who own pets. The crowd scoffed, jeered, and shook their heads. Liberty is such an ignorant word.
Newman was concerned that some people might want to own a pet but be too poor. Kelly Miller objected, stating that pets require responsibility. Cape suggested amending the ordinance to require poor people to partner with a nonprofit that assists in building fences to get dogs off chains. Her motion was not accepted. Mumpower withdrew his initial motion because he did not want to be a party to empowering animals at the expense of humans. He said he wished council would spend as much time and enthusiasm rescuing “kids tied to drug dealers outside their bedroom windows in public housing.†Cape replaced his motion adopting the amendments but directing staff to revisit the tether ordinance with the long-term goal of outlawing tethers.
