The City of Cortland Common Council is looking to resolve an apparent city-wide exotic pet permit issue, especially with snakes.
At Tuesday’s meeting, councilperson Tom Michales (R-8th Ward), who handles and runs through a majority of the exotic pet permits in the city, has had two reported incidents with pet snake owners.
Michales recently had an individual request a permit for 70 rats. The permit request was immediately halted by the Cortland County SPCA, due to the individual’s intention to feed the rats to its pet snake.
“The biggest problem here is that the individual doesn't have a permit for the snake itself,” Michales said.
Another incident occurred with a family living in an apartment in the city. While sitting down for dinner, Michales said, a 3-foot python appeared on the floor.
“It turns out that the previous tenant owned a snake and it had babies,” he added. “This is uncalled for.”
Michales noted that the city “needs to do a better job on tracking these snakes.” He added that when a pet snake owner doesn’t renew its permit after a year, there’s “no proof if the snake died, moved on elsewhere or reason why the permit wasn’t renewed.”
Council will now put forth a resolution at a future meeting to be determined to help “crack down on the use of the permit,” Mayor Brian Tobin said.
Michales said the SPCA should be the lead agency “to track these permits.” He also wondered if the city would be able to get a count on how many snake permits are in the area.
“We need to revise our applications as to what we expect from individuals that own these exotic snakes,” he added.
Watch last night's meeting here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmDyjpc17sg.
Item #31 – Discussion on problems arising from Exotic Permit applications. (Starts at 2:07:39).
Council approves referendum for council member, mayoral term extension
The Common Council at Tuesday’s meeting unanimously voted in favor of a referendum for a local law to extend the mayor and council member’s terms from two to four years.
The potentially new local law will now appear on the ballot for this year’s election for November. Mayor Brian Tobin noted that if the law is approved by the community, the term extension wouldn’t take place until Jan. 1, 2024.
“Whichever way the public goes is OK with me,” Councilperson Tom Michales (R-8th Ward) said.
Despite voting to approve the referendum for a local law, council members John Bennett (D-4th Ward), Bruce Tytler (D-3rd Ward) and Katy Silliman (D-2nd Ward) disagreed with the extension.
“I’m not for it, but it’s up to the public, not me,” Bennett said, adding he hopes the community members notice that it's on the ballot due to “votes on local laws like this end on the back of the ballot for some reason.”
“I wouldn’t want to see any of these positions become four-year terms, but it’s for the people to decide,” Tytler said.
Watch last night's meeting here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmDyjpc17sg.
