photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

The Douglas County Courthouse is pictured Thursday, Dec. 22, 2022.

Douglas County leaders will soon consider a new process for enforcing the county’s animal code — specifically, for handling cases where people with animals that are dangerous or a nuisance have repeatedly failed to comply with the rules.

At their meeting on Wednesday, county commissioners will consider implementing an administrative hearing process for animal code violations to either enforce citations or provide other avenues to resolve complaints. Currently, there are no formal sanctions or fines for violating the animal code, and cases are exclusively resolved through a process facilitated by the Lawrence Humane Society, which the county has contracted with since 2022 to enforce the code in unincorporated areas of the county.

“At this point, it is an effort on the part of LHS to bring the property or animal owners into compliance when all other attempts have failed,” Assistant County Administrator Jill Jolicoeur told the Journal-World on Tuesday. “In general, the district court and district attorney’s office deal with violations of state law, and are not responsible for enforcing the county code.”

The administrative hearing process, Jolicoeur said, would be “a mechanism for the limited number of citations that, for whatever reason, are not coming into compliance.” She said there could be many potential causes of noncompliance, which may include negligence, limited financial means or a combination of multiple things.

“You could have a limited-mobility landowner with a dog that just keeps getting loose onto other people’s properties and is doing damage to the property or is a nuisance,” she said. “And neighbors are frustrated that nothing is changing.”

Animals getting loose are among the most common reasons for complaints, Jolicoeur said, and that issue is not limited to dogs: “From what we know anecdotally, it’s horses and all manner of animals that are being kept on private properties in the unincorporated parts of the community,” she said.

If the commissioners decide to create a hearing process, Jolicoeur said, they will eventually select a hearing officer. The hearing officer won’t be a full-time county position — Jolicoeur said they will likely be a private attorney — and the officer will only be used when actual cases need to be reviewed.

In other business, commissioners will:

• Consider establishing an equipment reserve fund for Consolidated Fire District No. 1. As the Journal-World reported in July, the rural fire district did not previously have a fund to replace aging equipment, but it set aside $150,000 in the previous budget cycle to go toward an equipment reserve fund, and it plans to do so again with the next budget cycle to bring the total to $300,000.

As the fund grows, it should be easier for the district to make big purchases. In July, Mike Baxter, the district’s fire chief, told commissioners that the issue will only get more urgent, considering that 19 of the 37 vehicles in the district’s fleet are at least 20 years old.

• Consider approving an amendment to Lawrence and Douglas County’s joint comprehensive plan related to the proposed New Boston Crossing development along the South Lawrence Trafficway. The amendment would revise the comprehensive plan’s land use map and its residential and open space uses within the project area. According to a report from planning staff included with Tuesday’s City Commission meeting agenda, the changes aim to circumvent any concerns about the floodplain.

• As part of the consent agenda, consider joining a multi-county study of the types of road changes needed between Eudora and the upcoming Panasonic battery plant in De Soto. Specifically, the study will examine a roughly 2-mile stretch of 1061 Road, south of Eudora. Most of the roads involved in the study are in Johnson County; Douglas County would have to spend around $15,000 to be a part of the study.

The commission’s meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at the County Courthouse at 11th and Massachusetts streets. The meeting can be viewed via Zoom, and the agenda packet can be found on the county’s website, douglascountyks.org.