Clark County commissioner Chris Giunchigliani talks to other commissioners Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012 during a meeting of the Clark County Commission.
Somewhere, St. Francis must have been smiling.
After a resident invoked the patron saint of animals and the environment, Clark County commissioners voted down a proposal to criminalize the feeding of pigeons.
Commissioner Sue Brager didn’t like the idea that violating the ordinance could land someone in jail.
Tom Collins said he’d blow pigeons away with a shotgun in the country and might use some antifreeze to poison them in the city, but he thought nuisance laws already on the books adequately address any pigeon problem.
“If you’ve got a bunch of pigeon crap collecting and falling around, you’ve already got a nuisance,” he said, then hearkened back to his days on the farm. “Going to feed chickens and pigs, when the pigeons got too many, I’d get a shotgun. In town, antifreeze worked. Let it be an individual thing.”
After the 5-2 vote, Sally Larimore clapped. During the public hearing, she said St. Francis “would have been imprisoned and been forever labeled a repeat bird-feeder” if the anti-pigeon code had been in effect. She called the code amendment, drafted by Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani, “criminalizing kindness.”
Another woman listed numerous ways people can ward pigeons off their homes, including spikes, whirligigs, strips of plastic and even explosive party favors — though no commissioner dared ask how to deploy them for such a use.
Giunchigliani said the proposal was merely to give residents a tool “when people do nothing but dump food in their front lawns.” She disagreed with Collins, saying that according to the Southern Nevada Health District, current code does not cover nuisance pigeon feeding.
“That just means someone doesn’t want to do their job,” Collins replied.
Part of the ordinance included a potential $1,000 fine or six-month jail term. Brager said she just couldn’t vote for it because she didn’t want jails filling up with people.
Giunchigliani countered that no one in Las Vegas or Henderson had been jailed for violating similar pigeon ordinances.
County staff added that state law forced the code change to include the hefty maximum fine and jail time. State lawmakers would need to change a law to allow the county to create lesser penalties.
Commissioners then talked indirectly about perhaps creating public messages about not feeding pigeons.
Instead of voting on another animal ordinance introduced by Giunchigliani, this one to ban pets on the Las Vegas Strip, the commissioner agreed to give the idea to a special committee studying how to clean up numerous Strip nuisances and problems. In coming months, that committee is expected to produce a number of remedies to problems of outcall-service handbillers, illegal vendors and other issues.
Join the Discussion:
Check this out for a full explanation of our conversion to the LiveFyre commenting system and instructions on how to sign up for an account.
Full comments policy