By Nate Jones
Staff Writer
Dog owners in South Portland sighed in relief when South Portland Dog Owners Group member Chris Kessler discovered last week’s city council 4 to 3 vote changing the hours dogs are allowed on Willard Beach, shouldn’t have been allowed on the agenda. They voted to allow dogs on the beach from 6 to 9 a.m. to 6 to 9 p.m until Sept. 30
“I just had a bad feeling about everything, looked at the city charter and saw that it was not right,” Kessler said. “It was a little shocking the city council didn’t know their own rules.”
City Clerk Susan Mooney confirmed the vote should not have been on the June 16 agenda because, the council agreed to add it with a 4 to 3 vote immediately before the vote, and such a motion requires a two-thirds majority in order to pass.
“They needed a 5 to 2 vote to put it on the agenda,” she said.
In a press release, Councilor Maxine Beecher, who first introduced the change in hours, stated she has no plans to bring the issue back to the table.
Dog owners will still be able to walk their dogs on the beach from 6 to 9 a.m. until a Willard Beach Task force – which met for the first time yesterday – determines a final arrangement between dog owners and property owners along the shoreline.
“Clearly, rules of procedure are put in place to prevent end runs around public process,” Councilor Claude Morgan, who voted against adding the item to the agenda, wrote in an email.
Morgan wrote he could not recall any other instance in which the council had agreed to suspend procedural rules to add an item to the agenda unless it was an emergency that “garnered the full, unanimous support of the council.”
“Gives you an idea of the weight that’s usually placed on waiving our standard rules of procedure,” he wrote. “We so rarely pull that trigger.”
If re-introduced to the council, the amendment would be subject to first reading and public hearing, making the earliest approval date July 21, and the ordinance would become effective Sept. 10, 20 days prior to the beginning of off-season dog access, Beecher stated.
“To reintroduce this amendment now would produce a very limited impact when approved,” Beecher added.