FARMINGTON — Selectmen voted 4-1 Tuesday night to keep a barking dog ordinance on the March 20 town meeting warrant, and directed town staff to revise it.

The vote came after a packed public hearing where dog owners and their neighbors expressed concerns about the proposed law.

Selectman Dennis Pike moved to table the ordinance, saying the measure was drafted in just two weeks and he didn’t want to see something that impacts people rushed through to make
a deadline.

Agreeing that wording was important, the rest of the board expressed
their confidence in the staff’s ability to revise it and get a legal opinion before town meeting. It would get a second public hearing then, they said, before the vote.

The ordinance was developed after the town received complaints about Jean Perron’s 20 sled dogs at her Whittier Road property. She faces 44 court summonses for civil violations of disturbing the peace as an owner of barking dogs. Each violation carries a potential fine of $35.

Perron’s neighbor David Lucas said, “It goes beyond normal dog barking. It doesn’t stop.”

“If coyotes howl, my dogs are going to howl. I can’t help it,” Perron told the board.

“It’s a matter of respect,” Selectman Jon Bubier told Perron. He said, “If she respected her neighbors, she’d quiet the dogs.”

Barry Weddle told the board each situation is different. “Most dogs bark for a reason.”

It’s about the dogs that are neglected or in confinement that bark constantly, Town Manager Richard Davis said.

“My dogs bark when they hunt,” said Larry York, raising concerns about hunting dogs and working dogs who need to bark, yet are kept in check when not hunting.

Some people were also concerned that the ordinance goes from complaint to court without use of a mediator to help settle disputes.

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