POLAND – For now, the town has an unenforceable ordinance against barking dogs that create a nuisance. And that’s the way it’s going to lie until voters have their way in April 2005.

The Board of Selectmen voted unanimously to forward a proposed new ordinance to the annual town meeting for a vote.

Despite more objections and hypothetical situations raised by residents, selectmen adopted the new version that took dozens of drafts and about a year to shape.

“I’ll vote to bring it before people,” Selectman Bud Jordan said. “But I don’t agree with it.”

Trying to anticipate every situation and writing an ordinance that will hold up in court dogged the selectmen for just about every meeting for the past five months. Each review of the latest draft brought up a new scenario:

What if the dogs are barking inside the owner’s house, but a neighbor still complains?

What if the dog is barking outside while the owner is inside?

What if the dogs are part of a kennel operation?

What if a neighbor has a grudge and uses the ordinance in retaliation?

What if the dog has a good reason to bark?

What if it’s the first time the dog has bothered anyone?

What if it’s a wolf or a hybrid and not a dog at all?

If it could happen, someone in Poland has had it happen and has brought it before the selectmen.

“I just can’t figure out where things are going to start and stop,” said Jordan. “How many dogs have you ever seen that didn’t bark?”

But because the town’s current ordinance was thrown out in court in August 2003 and cost the town about $2,000 in legal fees, the original resident who forced the complaint to court has hounded the selectmen to come up with a valid ordinance.

The current ordinance, adopted by voters in 1992, contained a Catch-22 type requirement of a sworn complaint being part of a summons, and the summons being a result of the complaint. The judge hearing the case threw it out before considering whether the dogs’ barking actually created a nuisance.

“You realize that we’re out of the barking dog business until April?” Town Manager Richard Chick asked the selectmen in getting confirmation that they wanted to wait until the annual town meeting.

The new ordinance, if adopted, will recoup legal fees from dog owners found in violation. In addition, owners will pay fines between $50 and $400 depending on the seriousness and frequency of the offense.

And the new ordinance applies to any canine animal that creates a nuisance by barking unnecessarily and continuously for 20 minutes or intermittently for an hour while it is unsupervised. The new version attempts to define words such as unnecessary and supervised, but so far this year, there has been someone at each hearing to bring an example that would be the exception to the rule.