After over a year of preparation and weeks of discussion the Junction City City Commission has finally passed the new animal control ordinance for the city.

The new ordinance has been up for debate since it was first presented to the commission during the October 15th meeting. The debate revolved around a section of the ordinance that limited the number of pets per household to five cats, five dogs and five ferrets. Members of Friends of Animals in Junction City spoke out against the limitation.

During the Nov. 19th commission meeting the governing body failed to pass the ordinance with or without the limitation. Linnea Alt, President of Friends of Animals, said that,”It was disheartening to see that it wasn’t passed that night without the limitation.”

During that meeting Commissioners Mick McCallister and Mike Ryan were in favor of passing the ordinance with the limitations removed, but Mayor Cecil Aska and Commissioner Jim Sands were not and moved to pass the ordinance as is. Both motions failed to pass. Commissioner Pat Landes was absent from the meeting.

All of the commissioners were present Tuesday night and once again McCallister made the motion to pass the ordinance without the limitations and this time the motion was passed 3-2 with McCallister, Ryan and Landes in favor and Aska and Sands opposed.

Landes, who was a part of the committee that put together the new ordinance, explained that originally he was in favor of the limit but that he now doesn’t think the extra work it would take to enforce the limitation would be worth it.

“I get how we can do it, but is it really worth the exercise,” Landes said Tuesday night. “That to me is the biggest problem with it. Could we do it? Yeah. But is it worth it in a community that fluxes and flows everyday in population based on people coming and going?”

After the ordinance passed members of the audience began to applaud the city commission.

At the end of the meeting during commissioner comments McCallister commented that even though the process was difficult,”This commission did their job and listened to what the people had to say, and discussed it among ourselves and did the best for what the community was asking.”