Unleashed dogs spur call for dog park in Flat Rock [Update]

Update: My thoughts on the issue can be found here.

From the Times-News:

Faced with a pack of complaints about loose dogs at its new village park off Highland Lake Road, Flat Rock council voted 3-2 Monday to lay plans for a contained dog park and, in the meantime, increase signage that pets must be leashed.

“The park has gone to the dogs,” said former Councilman Dave Bucher, who now chairs the village's Park Advisory Board. When approached and told their unleashed canines are breaking park rules, “people have been pretty darn nasty and rude,” he said. . . .

“Let's make it official,” said Councilman Don Farr, who made a motion to erect fencing and establish a contained dog park. He later amended his motion to instruct the Park Advisory Board, working with Project Manager Ed Lastein and Park Development Director and Councilman Jimmy Chandler, to plan for a dog park.

But Councilwoman Anne Coletta said she opposed the idea because a fenced dog park wasn't compatible with the “look and feel” of the passive, dawn-to-dusk park, which she said was conceived by an advisory committee and council largely as “a nature park with observation areas to look at the wildlife.”

Coletta added that not every park has to “provide everything to everybody,” pointing out that Jackson Park has a dog park for those who want to exercise their pups.

“We're also rewarding people that are breaking the rules,” she said. “It's clearly stated that dogs must be on a leash. And I know that it's difficult to keep them on a leash and that right now it looks like a big, open field. But I think once the (new entrance) road goes through and once it starts to look like a park, that perhaps some of this problem will disappear.”. . .

Read it all.