Help!! Kennel being put in across the street

[LarryD]

Bill Tolle is right about the sheriffs dept. having jurisdiction over animal control. If you wish to PM me I may be able to provide the name of a local Horse Rescue operation that can give you a POC that can offer assistance, no guarantees but my wife has a pretty good list of contacts.

 

[LarryD]

Bill is right on about asking questions, particularly with regards to waste disposal and odor. 200 animals can generate a lot of s***. In fact, you might have those questions with several copies to present to the board so they can read along with you. I have been to many gov. meetings where no minutes have been kept (or written copies provided later) but if I submit a question in writing, I can always go back and ask for a written response.

150 dogs sounds like either a rescue operation or a puppy mill. They may be operating on a shoestring budget and your peace of mind is not really their concern. We have seen several "horse rescues" that exceeded their capabilities and didn't "rescue" anything, merely relocated them to another bad situation. I'm not writting this to generate animosity towards animal lovers, I have two confiscated horses I'm feeding and paying ferriers and vets to rehabilitate. I hate to see people with good intentions unable to fulfill their goals. If this is destined to be some sort of rescue operation, I doubt there is a dime of tax payers money available for assistance. If it's a puppy mill, they still need a GOOD plan on operational proceedures.

 

[Freds]

Lots of interesting reading in this one and one that touches near my heart... I own a boarding facility located in a rural area.

Junkman's post pretty much sums it up. A business has to be located somewhere. In my state the "care and boarding" of dogs falls right under the states Ag laws and they issue me a license at $150/year. That is why most kennels are rurally located, they need to be on Ag zoned land. I am small, just 24 dog runs or my license would be a lot more.
I pay a lot in taxes also and employ people, all things that come into consideration for county gov't because my businesss increases the county's revenue.

Traffic is negligible because it is pretty much spread out throughout the day. My neighbor with two daughters and lots of friends and relatives has more traffic that I do on a daily basis.

Smell is a non-issue in a well run kennel. It gets scooped and bagged like any responsible pet owner would do. Daily disinfecting is a part of life and I never have a smell or fly problem, but I run a clean type of kennel, too. Not all kennels are run the same, but someone investing into a 150 dog run operation is throwing out a lot of jack, they had better know what they are doing and most, not sure about Kansas, get surprise inspections.

Sure there is noise at times. Playtimes, feeding, new dogs coming and going, but the noise, at least speaking from my experience, is generated during "normal" business hours and comes in bursts rather than continual. I sit on my deck and hear neighbor's dogs barking and not a peep out of my kennel more often and any time during the day than coming from my place.
On the other side, I've been woken up at 1:00 in the morning from tractors out spraying the grapes to keep the frost off them in the spring, or harvesting late in the season. I got used to it and like I said, boarding falls right under Ag, so if I generate a little noise at times... well, so do farmers and most other businesses.

Hair in the septic? That's a good one. Why would a business want to deal with clogged drains all the time? /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif
Any kennel I'm in contact with doesn't hose the shed hair into their drains, but there are provisions for this if it becomes an unavoidable problem. They are called filters.

Do you even know if it is going to be an indoor/outdoor facility or one that is completely indoors? They have them you know and are becoming more popular.

I'm told I have a neighbor that tried to circulate a petition. The neighbor to the one side said he didn't sign it because I had a right to put whatever I wanted to on my land and he didn't want the alternative fron the other person intersted in it and a connecting piece, a subdivision.
The petition neighbor and I have since exchanged favors for each other, but his garbage burning and outdoor woodburner are nothing pleasant to smell in the morning when the smoke hangs low and rolls over to my place. I put up with it, though. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif It's what being a good neighbor is all about.

Oh, almost forgot about the vaccines. There's quite a bit of difference between a shelter and a boarding facility. Shelters usually don't vaccinate a pet unless it becomes adoptable. Boarding facilities make sure there client's shot records are up to date, in my case at least the Rabies since it is the state law, DHLPP within reason since none of the vets here haven't agreed on whether it lasts 1 year or 3. Kennel owners don't want to be sending their client's pets home with any virus, but sometimes it is unavoidable, just like your kid is more likely to catch something at school with a higher concentration of people than if they were home schooled.
I consider this a non-issue along with the dog feces smell and most of the other things I read.

Feel free to ask me any questions.
If you haven't been to a modern, well run facility, you have no idea how far kennels have come along from the dark, damp places of yesterday... some of which are still out there unfortunately.

 

[Henro]

<font color="blue">Junkman's post pretty much sums it up. </font>

Yes, it does, except for one small, but very important point:

<font color="green"> This week we got a letter about rezoning the 90 acres across from us as a kennel. </font>

It seems the owners of the land want to change the status of the land to suit their own desires at the expense of the neighboring land owners, at least one of which only recently bought/moved onto his property (jpierce) and doesn't want the change.

The reasonable counter point to Junkman's position would be that the owner of those 90 acres should sell them to someone who will use them as "intended" and buy land elsewhere that is zoned for use as a kennel (or whatever) already.

After all, why do zoning laws exist to begin with? At least in theory I suppose they are there to protect property owners' interests...

Using Junkman's logic it would be equally acceptable to propose rezoning for a noisy race track of some type. Racers got to race somewhere, right?

 

[jpierce]

Thanks for all the feedback. The kennel will sit just off the road across from us and our property. It will not be place in the rear of the property. The access road to the place is not very good and barely supports two cars getting by with blind hills on both ends (almost been hit twice.)

We did talk to the proposed owners and got some more info. Business hours are 7am - 9pm at night with lighted parking lot from Monday to Saturday. They did send a threat of selling it to a pig farmer if we didn't support it. Rubbed us the wrong way as all we were doing is asking questions and not making any decisions at this point.

Bottomline, this is a commercial business in a rural, residential area. If it was a quickie mart or a nursing home, we still don't want commericals to start up out here. We like the countryside and the peacefulness it brings us. We are entitled to make an informed decision based on the facts we gather and we are going to present it to the zoning committee and go from there. If it goes through, we will accept and move on, but now is the time to let our voice be heard.

Again, great responses and opinions. Really enjoy this forum and can't wait till I can get my Kioti CK30 HST to start on my many projects!!

 

[Freds]

OK, OK... you caught me before my coffee this morning /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif and getting it rezoned is something that the neighbors can put the kibosh on. After all, it's their elected officials that would have to rezone or apply a variance to the land, but money talks and they will be losing a lot of revenue to have the land sit vacant.
I actually did go to a zoning meeting once and was granted a variance on some other property I was looking at. It was my impression at this meeting, from the questions that the supervisors were asking the neighbors, that they wanted my business in their township irregardless of the neighbors who didn't want to see change.

Getting it rezoned for a use not intended is a good point, but some of the arguemental points I read weren't good points at all.

On another note, the township above me did rezone some ag land and put a racetrack in. Not really sure if I would rather live next to a couple hundred head of dairy cows, what used to be there, or a once a week seasonal noise from a racetrack. Guess it depends on which way the wind is blowing. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[sneaky_pete]

The good news about living in the country is, you can do what you want with your land. The bad news is, your neighbor can too! As it happens, we have good neighbors for the most part, but we still wish we had more acreage as a buffer between us and them. My wife raises chickens (on a small scale) and the neighbors like the fresh eggs and haven't complained about the single rooster crowing or anything so far.

 

[Bob_Skurka]

First make sure you only deal in FACTUAL information, and do your RESEARCH before you go to any zoning, variance meetings. The lovely Mrs_Bob used to be on the plan commission in the town we moved out of, but where my business is still located. I was also on some lower level committees in the town. If I was you, I would get together with some neighbors and I would have a couple meetings with them. Find out what they think and also figure out who are the good ones who will follow through. Work closely with the few who can deal in FACT and leave the EMOTION out. There will be some who will simply deal with the emotion, to be blunt, the committee members will politely ignore them. Get the traffic counts for the road, check sewer and septic, etc. All of that was recommended early on, and it is exactly what you need to do. But don't do it alone, do it with 6 other neighbors who you can count on to present LOGICAL and FACTUAL arguements againt rezoning. Consider a petition opposing it too, those take time, but they are a way of getting many voices into the meeting that simply cannot make or are not vested enough to want to make it to the meeting. Let some of the "emotional" people work on the petition.

As for the threat about the pig farmer, guess what, if there is no pig farmer there today, then the likelyhood is there will be no pig farmer when these people move on. I got a varience for my business property, I am zoned for 100' tall structures, I wanted to put up a 260' multi-array cellular tower. Nobody objected at the meetings, but one board member asked what I would do I they didn't pass the varience, I said I would put up several 100' towers to accomodate the antenna arrays that were planned. It was within my rights. I probably wouldn't have, but it was a reasonable retort. It was the same veiled threat that you got with the pig farmer threat.

 

[heehaw]

the neighbor behind me put in a kennel, he remodeled one of his turkey houses, i can see the houses very easily, and can hear the dogs when i'm outside, but its not loud...and its been a lot better than the turkey houses, or the short time he tried hogs...plus my daughter and son-in-law have a fairly large kennel...but its out in the middle of nowhere...and there sure isn't any traffic to worry about...90 acres is more than enough to have them far enough away from you, i hope it works out that way...
heehaw

 

[EastTexFrank]

Freds, I think you explained the situation very well. My S-I-L is in the exact same situation as you, she runs a 25 dog boarding kennel at the farm. Personally, I can't believe how labor intensive and time consuming running even a small operation like that is, if it's done correctly. It's a 12 to 16 hour day, 7 days a week operation. I can't imagine looking after 150 dogs and 50 cats. Perhaps they think they need that kind of volume to make an operating profit because I know how tough that can be when done on a small scale. I would have thought that the cost of the facilities alone would have been prohibitive. The outlay for a properly designed and constructed 150 dog kennel would make even Bob Skurka gripe. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif Sorry Bob, how is your garage coming along?

I wouldn't have thought that with construction costs, maintenance costs and the labor costs associated with an operation of that size that there wouldn't have been much room left for profit unless they charge a darned sight more there for boarding dogs than the market will bear here in Texas.

As to the zoning question, I fall on the side of the "It's their land, let them do what they want with it" lobby but I can't help but think that they will be cutting a lot of corners or they haven't done enough research on the project. Hey, the bright side is that the land may be up for resale pretty soon.