BOISE — A Boise City Council member is working to update the city's ordinances to protect animals. He says the code is outdated and needs to be strengthened. TJ Thomson, a Boise City Council member is on a mission to protect animals he says are put at risk by outdated city ordinances.
"You may have seen recently that Idaho is the highest number of dog ownership in the entire country. Here in Ada County, they actually have to ship dogs in from other states just to meet the demand so we love our animals here and we want to see them treated well," said TJ Thomson,
"We now have a metro area that brings on a whole host of issues and also society has sort of evolved in terms of our human animal bond, things we're concerned about today, weren't concerned about in the past and some of the issues we have in the community involving animals omongst ourselves have changed over the years so the ordinance itself covers a wide ranges of topics from dogs off leash to animal cruelty concerns to keeping wildlife and exotic pets covering many many topics within that code that involve a lot of different interest groups.They all involve the Idaho Humane Society. We really want to see improvement throughout the code, modernization and we look forward to a process where we can get to the end result," Dr. Jeff Rosenthal.
Thomson says the change in code he wants to see would apply to any animals who are in city limits that would include traveling entertainment like circuses who want to come to town and fill arenas.
"You know let's bring the circus here. You know, I love to have the circus here, but let's leave the elephants in the wild." said Thomson.
The El Korah shrine facilitates a circus that comes in from out of state they would be affected by this change in code. A representative tells us, "El korah shriners are committed to abiding by all federal, state, and local laws and ordinances."
"Re-write our code and ensure that we're doing things like helping animals maybe a hot car component whether it be making sure that we have no puppy mills within the city limits and animal abusers fines. We still need to look at as a city whether we can increase those fines but it's certainly something I want to look at," said Thomson.
Thomson says he would like to see some progress for an updated ordinance within the next couple months.
