The Common Council voted to approve Elkhart’s animal ordinance after months of debate. Mayor Dick Moore said he will sign it.

The focus, council members said Monday, is now to get Elkhart residents to license their pets. The council voted to waive licensing fees for 60 days in the city. The ordinance includes fines from $100 to $500 for those found with unlicensed pets.

Still, talk of licensing and fees is a far cry from talk of banning pit bulls or breeds, which was the focus roughly a year ago when discussion of an animal ordinance began.

“I think we lost track a little bit of the reason why the ordinance was drafted to begin with, we had a very serious injury to a young lady, to a girl,” said Mayor Dick Moore about a pit bull attack last July.

All these months later and an ordinance is finally passed. Council members and community leaders say it’s not perfect -- but it’s a start.

“Everything has to have a starting point, and that’s what this ordinance is, it’s a starting point for Elkhart to try and create greater owner responsibility,” said Anne Reel, executive director or Elkhart County Humane Society.

Currently, the pet registration numbers are extremely low: 647 dogs and 71 cats are registered in the city of Elkhart. Whether the ordinance and the publicity surrounding licensing actually push people to license their pets remains to be seen.

As for council member Rod Roberson, who has been working from the beginning to get an ordinance passed, he says the most important issues is public safety. He says he wishes the ordinance included language about pit bulls.

“We do have an abundance of animals, they are biting other animals and they are also biting other people,” said Roberson. “There are areas of the city – and, to a large degree, there are going to be more areas of the city – that could be held hostage by people who just will not license their pets, and we gave them another 60 days in order to go do it, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me,” he said.

To take a closer look at the ordinance, click on the Big Red Bar.