Hot Springs suspends dogcatcher position indefinitely

The president of the Hot Springs City Council suspended the town’s position of animal control officer until a committee can be formed to review the town’s animal control ordinances and any complaints against the suspended dogcatcher can be resolved.

“I’ve suspended the position, the pay and everything right now, until we get this resolved,” said Trudy Berge, the council president and acting mayor, to a crowd of about 15 people at a special meeting at the Hot Springs’ town hall Tuesday.

Berge, who is acting as mayor, while Hot Springs Mayor Renea Keough is in Florida for adult blindness rehabilitation, scheduled the meeting after suspending Hot Springs’ dogcatcher Marco Angelletti at the Hot Springs Town Council meeting the week before.

Angelletti has came under fire recently for being Keough’s boyfriend and being an admitted felon without a valid driver’s license. People have also questioned if Angelletti’s payment method, where he is paid 50 percent of the money that is collected from the citations he writes, makes him overly aggressive. At the town council meeting April 1, it was reported that Angelletti wrote 21 citations for $1,100 in pending revenue during the month of March.

At the special meeting Tuesday, Berge said that anyone with specific complaints against Angelletti should do it in writing. “Any specific comment made about a specific individual are not to be given at this meeting. They are to be given in writing at the recommendation of the town attorney and they will be taken care of at a future time,” she said. Berge said the comments should be taken to the town hall or to her by 10 a.m., April 21. She said that after reviewing the comments she will either place the issue on the main meeting agenda or set up another special meeting.

Berge said that she would also like to set up a committee to review the Hot Springs’ animal control ordinances. She said she would like two council members and two residents from within the city limits to be on the committee. Council members Karen Evans and Leslee Smith volunteered for the committee. Berge said that any resident interested in sitting on the committee should get with her as quickly as possible.

Smith said the committee really needs to examine how the animal control officer enforces the ordinances. “Some of the methods that we’ve been using in order to implement ordinances may or may not be legal,” she said. At the council meeting, Smith had asked if it was legal for Angelletti to come into her fenced yard to take a picture of her dog.

Smith said when reviewing the ordinances, the committee needs to be careful not to over-regulate the public. “I didn’t move all the way out here in the middle of nowhere into a population of between 400-to-500 people because I want to be over-regulated.” she said. “Who’s going to want to live in the town if they don’t have any personal freedoms?” Smith added.

Smith said that before the ordinances were written Hot Springs was under-regulated and now they are over-regulated. “We need to find somewhere in the middle that everybody can live with,” she said.

According to the public ordinances, the fee for an unlicensed dog is the cost of the license plus $25 for the first offense, $50 for the second offense and $75 for the third offense. According to Hot Springs Town Clerk Julie Lazaro, the ordinance were written three years ago. She said the ordinances were written because the town had such horrible dog problems. She said before the ordinances that dog tickets were barely a slap on the wrist and had a maximum fine of $25.

According to Lazaro, Angelletti was hired “in response to horrendous complaints” in February 2006 by the police chief and Berge. She said at the time of his hiring, dog calls accounted for 40 percent of the calls to the police. Berge said that Angelletti was originally hired on and emergency 30-day basis. She said that after the first 30 days, they rehired him for another 30 days, but have kept him on ever since. “Unfortunately, we dropped the ball,” she said.

Angelletti has declined several request for an interview.