| From
the Police Chief
Cottonwood Police has been getting several complaints regarding dogs, so we thought we’d send everyone a little reminder. Our City Clerk sends out notices regarding licenses prior to and including December of each year. These notices state that the dog license is due JANUARY 1ST of each year. I’ve met with many folks who have stated they license in February, March or April, of each year. Folks, the license is $5 if your animal is fixed….the citation for failure to license your animal is $72. Much cheaper to license the animal. If you check online at Sterling Codifiers web site you will also find that Cottonwood has an ordinance stating you MUST keep your animal on your OWN property. Now, if you are one of many that simply open your front door and let your dog out to ‘do its business’ in the early hours you cannot guarantee they only go on your property, despite us being told many times over the years that they ‘never leave my yard’. Just ask your neighbors as they are calling City Hall about dog droppings on their yard. Keeping your dog on your property is free, letting them go onto others is a $72 citation. Your dog’s yard does not include the neighbors, despite what the dog thinks. If you are walking your dog, it MUST be on a leash. Again, free if on a leash, $72 if not. And if your dog is doing their business while on the walk, you have to pick it up. Picked up, free, not picked up $72. Folks, you may be wondering why all this has come up. The reason is the dramatic increase in calls to City Hall. As such, Cottonwood Police has been talking with many animal owners and issuing many warnings. However, based on the increase these seem to be ineffective so please understand that we will be forced to issue citations instead. We don’t really want to issue a lot of animal violation tickets, but we have to also keep in mind the folks who don’t want dogs in their yard. If you have a dog within city limits it must be licensed. Yes, this does include dogs that are kept in your house and never go outside. ANY dog within city limits must be licensed. On another note seems the folks who don’t want to work are up to the scams again. A citizen of our community got hit with the ‘grandparents scam’ recently which resulted in a loss of money. This is the scam where someone calls up and pretends to be a grandchild in trouble. They convince you that you need to send money to get them out of trouble. These scammers are VERY convincing and good at what they do, so the best defense is education. It’s nearly impossible to track down who did the scam with cell phones and computer usage, etc. One new twist to this one is that they are having funds sent via an ITUNES card. I’d never heard of that one before so I guess we all can learn. In short, please be careful as there are people throughout the country who are trying to scam you out of money. If something sounds fishy call the local police to have them help out. Maybe the youngster got into trouble; but I can tell you that no police organization is going to have you pay off the bill with an ITUNES card. No court will have you pay money and the charge will simply disappear, and no public defender will sit in their hospital room while you send money electronically. |
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