Jersey City City Council fails, again, to vote on Animal Control Committee
Updated: Apr. 01, 2019, 10:57 p.m. | Published: Jun. 18, 2009, 1:18 p.m.
By Amy Sara Clark/The Jersey Journal
Amy Sara Clark / The Jersey Journal
Animal activists, including Kristine Murphy, center, without sign, listen as the Animal Control Ordinance is debated at Jersey City Hall on June 18, 2009.
About a dozen of people pleaded with the Jersey City Municipal Council to pass an ordinance to create of an Animal Control Commission to oversee the city's Division of Animal Control at last night's City Council meeting.
But despite their pleading, the council decided not to vote on the ordinance. Instead they decided to send a directive memo to Harry Melendez, director of the Jersey City's Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the Division of Animal Control Division, telling him to submit a plan for correcting the division's problems by August 1. Ward E Councilman Steve Fulop first introduced the ordinance in April, shortly after the notorious Daisy-the-cat incident in which two animal control officers dumped an escaped pet in Lincoln Park instead of bringing her to a shelter.
Since then residents have been coming to City Council meetings to complain that Jersey City's Division of Animal Control isn't doing its job. Several residents complained of rude and unresponsive behavior from Animal Control Officers including one who said that at least two stay cats had been killed by a dog that Animal Control officers refused to trap.
Last night he said it didn't seem as though the ordinance was going to pass, so he went with the memo as a means of at least moving the issue forward.
Afterward, Ward E resident Kristine Murphy, who supports the ordinance, said she understood why Fulop essentially withdrew the ordinance and pushed the idea for the memo instead.
What she said she doesn't understand is why the council is so against creating the committee.
"I'm just so very concerned about why the council people are against this ordinance passing," she said. "To me it's sort of a no brainer."
"She added, it makes me think that there's something going on that we don't know."