More Dog Parks for Duluth?
Posted at: 02/20/2013 5:09 PM
| Updated at: 02/20/2013 7:19 PM
By: Travis Dill
tdill@wdio.com
City councilor Dan Hartman wants Duluth's parks department to look for at least two more parks where dogs could run leash-free.
Lilly gets to run without a leash everyday at Keene Creek Dog Park according to her owner Amber Peckron. It's been too cold lately for others, but Peckron said the park usually fills with dog owners from around the area.
“I've seen people come from Hibbing. A lot of Hermantown people down here and Proctor, East End, Superior pretty much everywhere,” Peckron said.
Hartman said it's good for the dogs and their owners. But he wants residents to have more options.
“It's one thing to be able to go walk your dog. It's another thing to be able to let them loose and run around. And right now we have a lot of people using our trail system as that, but technically it's illegal to have off-leash dogs. So this is a way to legally be able to do that,” Hartman said.
Hartman proposed a resolution to look for dog park sites in central and east Duluth. He says it makes sense for a city with so many dogs.
“The number of people who own dogs in our city seems very high. If I had to guess I bet it's one out of four people I run into,” Hartman said. “Bottom line is there's a lot of people who want to use this and they want to have it instead of driving 20 miles across town.”
Hartman says Keene Creek's neighbors had concerns at first, but now enjoy the addition.
“So it was amazing to me to see kind of this transformation from 'I'm worried about this dog park,' to 'This is actually a great thing and I'm actually very proud of it,'” Hartman said.
The city council could vote as early as Monday on the resolution asking the parks department to look into the changes.
Hartman hopes to get recommendations back by April so changes could take effect this summer, but before that the city council would have to vote on those changes. Hartman said he wants vote sometime this spring.
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