Dog Fees To Be Reduced

The annual dog licence fee will drop more than $20 to $110 this year if Hastings District Council ratifies a decision by its planning and regulatory committee.

That committee agreed today (May 5) to drop the full fee from $131.50 to $110 (16 per cent) for the next financial year, maintain the Selected Owner Policy (SOP) fee at $73.50, and raise the rural dog licence fee by $1.50 to $48.

Those fees would only apply to people who registered their dogs by July 31. Late payers would pay $165 per urban dog, $110 for SOP licences (and lose their SOP status), and $72 for rural dogs.

The committee also agreed to a change in funding that would see general ratepayers carry slightly more of the cost of policing animal control, and dog owners slightly less.

Until now the funding split has seen dog owners cover 90 per cent of dog control costs, with 10 per cent coming from general rates.

If today’s decision is ratified at the next council meeting on May 28, general ratepayers will contribute 26 per cent of the cost (recognising the public benefit of the service), and dog owners 74 per cent.

Council’s animal control manager John Payne said the change in formula recognised that keeping dangerous and roaming dogs off the street benefited all residents, not just dog owners.

Councillors did not favour a proposition to drop the Selected Owner Policy and asked for a report so they could reconsider the options at the committee’s next meeting in August. Animal control management said that by phasing out the SOP fee over three years the full fee could be dropped to $90, however councillors were concerned that dog owners who went the extra mile to gain SOP status be rewarded.

Deputy mayor Cynthia Bowers asked that council staff prepare another report for the next committee meeting investigating the possibility of owners being able to “drip feed” the licence fee in advance, rather than have to pay it in one lump sum.

The budget for running the dog control department over the 2015/16 year is $1,145,288 - lower than expected.

Of that amount $300,846 would come from general rates and the rest from licence fees, impounding fees and infringement charges.

Mayor Lawrence Yule congratulated Payne on “stripping $100,000” out of the proposed budget. “It’s a very good result.”

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