A bill for an ordinance amending section 8-67 of the Denver Revised Municipal Code requiring a provisional breed-restricted license for owners of pit bulls. A bill for an ordinance amending section 8-67 of the Denver Revised Municipal Code requiring a provisional breed-restricted license for owners of pit bulls. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 1-22-20.
Thank you, Madam Secretary. The communication regarding regarding the veto of Council Bill 2271 is received and filed. All right, Councilman Herndon, I understand that in on this issue, you have a motion to override the veto. On Council Bill 2071. Yes, Mr. President, I move the Council Bill 20 20071 passes, notwithstanding the disapproval or objections of the mayor. It has been moved and seconded. We will do questions and comments combined on this. So questions or comments, you can go ahead and chime in on Council Bill 2071. Councilman Herndon. Mr. President, I was going to allow my colleagues to ask any questions if they wanted to go first. And then once all the questions were exhausted, I would just leave with the comments. So if anyone, I do not have any questions, but if other colleagues did, I wanted to allow them the opportunity to ask before I went to my comments. I don't it doesn't look like. Councilman Ortega, do you have some questions? I do. My question is for Councilman Herndon. I'd like to know how many community meetings were held citywide to talk about this issue before this was brought forward. I was not aware of any that were held, and I think that is a concern that I heard expressed across the city from different neighborhoods in a lot of the communication that I received. And so I wanted to ask that I understand you've been talking about this for quite some time, but the first I heard about it was, I think the week before you filed the bill, you brought the information to me, gave me a copy of the bill. But prior to that, I was not aware that there had been any meetings held in the community. So. Correct. I did not hold any community meetings. Okay. Thank you. All right, Councilmember. Sorry. Thank you, Mr. President. Well, first, I want to thank all of the members who I have reached out to over the course of the last week and all of the members of the community who have reached out to me to urge me to look into this further. And, you know, I've spent a lot of time talking to Councilman Herndon about this in particular. Sorry for all the emails, Chris, but I. I do just want to say, you know, that this is a really difficult decision. And, you know, because I, I, I definitely feel for a pit bull owners. I feel for you guys. And after watching the Beyond the Myth movie last night, which was a total tear jerker, I it was really awful to watch and so difficult. I was truly in tears last night watching it. So, you know, this is a really difficult decision. And in all of the research I've done, in everything that I have looked into, I keep saying the same thing, which is I need to have some there has to be some factual difference. There has to be a factual change that would make me change my vote in some way. And at the end of the day, that factual change just hasn't come in in District five. The number one complaint that we receive when it comes to animals is off leash dogs in parks, and that is managed by parks and Rec . And there are 20 Parks and Rec rangers who manage that during the off season and 50 who manage it during the season. And they are not planning on asking for more in support of that. And it's not enough right now based on the number of of complaints that we receive. And so, you know, unfortunately, as much as I feel for, you know, all of the pit bull owners in the city, and as much as I hear you guys and as much as I hear you on breed specific legislation not working, this law is still breed specific legislation. So I think that, you know, given that the mayor has vetoed this and given that the community has, it doesn't seem that far apart. Right. The the the advocates for this and the people who are really concerned about it, the bridge the gap between you, it seems like it's not that far apart, like there's a real possibility to find some consensus here in our community. And so I think that the real solution here is to send it to the community and to have a real community discussion about this, because I think that we could come to something even better than what we have come up with at this point. And so I think that the real solution here is to let the community use its voice to, you know, send it to the ballot. We don't have to send it to the ballot if the community can between now and November, come to some sort of consensus that makes sense and bring it back as an ordinance. Let's do it. Let's do it and let's put it on the ballot as a backup if we need to. But I think that that's where this needs to go from here based on where we are right now. So thank you, Mr. President, and thank you, community and two council members for everything and all of this important discussion over the last couple of weeks. I think we will eventually come to a better place as a community, although we're not there right now. Thanks. Thank you, Councilmember. I just want to check in with you. That last one was comments or doing questions. Comments together give you one more chance as the making the motion. Did you want to go or you want to wait? Yeah. Did you want to wait? President, I appreciate. Thank you, Councilman Sawyer. And all the I see we got a few council members in the queue. I just want to explain why. I was at a community meeting and someone said to me, you know, why are you doing this now? And my response back was, we should have been doing this years ago, because here and when you're having these conversations, no matter what side of the aisle you're on, you can find facts to support your opinion. And so I want to take away dog bite numbers because those numbers are one, you don't know if that's an actual breed. And it's just it's really ineffective. But I think here are some facts that people can't argue with. So if you look nationally, subject matter experts, organizations that deal with animals have come out in force overwhelmingly to say that breed specific legislation doesn't work, and I'll just name a few of them. The American Animal Health Association. The American Bar Association. The American Dog Owners Association. The American Kennel Club. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The American Veterinary Medical Association. The American Veterinarian Society of Animal Behavior Association of Professional Dog Trainers. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Humane Society of the United States. International Association of Canine Professionals. National Association. Control Associate National Animal excuse me. Control Association. National Canine Research Council. Any Obama Administration 2013. So and I'll just quote a couple of paragraphs from the Obama administration. We don't support breed specific legislation. Research shows that bans on certain types of dogs are largely ineffective and often a waste of public resources. They later conclude that as an alternative to breed specific policies, the CDC recommends a community based approach to prevent dog bites. And ultimately, we think there's a much more promising way to build stronger communities of pets and pets owners. But let's say for a second, you just don't believe those national organizations. Okay, fine. What are other cities doing? Since 2012, cities large and small have repealed their breed specific legislation. Cincinnati, Ohio. 2012. Halsey, Missouri. 2014. Montreal, Canada. 2018. Castle Rock, Colorado 2018. Yakima, Washington 2018. Prairie Villa Candies 2020. Junction City, Kansas. Last week, 2020, there was an article that came out that Aurora is considering repealing their pit bull legislation. And I read that being from Kansas City, Missouri, the state of Missouri is going to consider doing it. So if you don't believe the national organization, so be it. Look at some cities like size it in smaller that are doing it. And I'm not aware of any city that has since repealed their breed specific legislation that they have turned around and said, whoops, we made a mistake and if you find one, please let me know because I'm still trying to do my research. So if you don't believe national organizations, you don't believe other cities. What is happening here at the state and city? We've had experts since this since this conversation became public that came to committee. Dr. April Steele, Denver, Dumb Friendly AG from the Colorado Veterinary Medical Association. Dr. Ariel Fagan, who's a veterinary behaviorist, one of two people in the state who have that certification. We heard from one expert today. Thank you, sir, for coming this year. They're all saying the same story. Breed specific legislation doesn't work. These dogs do not bite at greater offenses in others. The severity Dr. Fagan was here is not as a greater offense than others. So if you have these three, three different levels of experts, okay, so now I'm going to get into some data, but how about some data that comes right here from the heart of heart of Denver? Denver. Department of Public Health and the Environment. The decade study of all the dog bites that they had, 4.4%, I believe that was percent was from pit bulls, 4.4%. So I'm getting to a point where I'm running out of sources, large and small, to say this is why we should be doing that. But you know what? I still hear you for the communities in Montebello that have concerns about walking from the individuals that have concerns, because what we have before you, I don't believe, is an outright repeal. We may disagree on that, but we're telling these dog owners that you have to go above and beyond than what a regular dog owner like myself has is a way to find a middle ground. Take that new data in two years. Let's come back and see what that looks like. I cannot think of a better approach that we can hear from both sides of the issue and then say, This is why I'm doing this. These are the reasons behind it. I've reached out to Parks and Rec and they they request Parks Rangers every year in the budget process. Sometimes they get them. Sometimes it's not we as the authority, we approve the budget. So if we had issues with the number of park rangers that are in the budget, then let's make sure seven or nine of us agree to add more park rangers to deal with these dogs. Denver Animal Protection. Should this move forward, have the ability they're going to get to full after fees to help move forward with this because remember this doesn't take effect for 90 days because we. You need to have a ramp up period. We do need to have a community engagement period. So this is why I believe that this was the right decision to move forward a compromise. And while I respect the mayor's opinion, I have just listed a ton of resources and subject matter experts. And I have to admit I'm disappointed because there are not this entire conversation, not one time to the third floor, come to me and say, let's have a conversation. Multiple colleagues on this chamber came to me say, Hey, Chris, I have a conversation about a spay and neuter. I have a conversation. I have a concern about the five years. That's how the process should work, not just have the bill come to your desk and sign a veto five days later. That's what the most disappointing about it. Not that he vetoed it. He has that authority. He has that ability. But I would have preferred to have a conversation with him so that we don't have to come now and decide whether or not we're going to override the mayor's veto. So that's why I'm moving forward. That's why I'm asking for this vote to override the mayor's veto. If this is not if this is not successful, I will certainly have more conversations with my colleagues. I don't think we should do a ballot measure. I think this body, the majority elected by the city and county of the people of Denver, a majority of us felt this way. That's what we should move forward. But, you know, I believe strongly from all the reasons that I just listed why this is the direction to move forward. So I would ask my colleagues to consider. But if not, we'll certainly look at other ways to take these dogs out of the shadows and make our community safer with a more responsible dog ordinance. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank, Governor. Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen, I will ask, as I asked last time, and I really appreciate it, I held this up as a shining example of how our democracy can work. We are trying to get through lots of people. This is very emotional on both sides. This is not a competition for who can cheer louder or who can make the other side feel like their thoughts and their feelings are not as valid because they're not cheering as loud. I will ask you to hold your applause, so hold that in check while we go through this. This has been a very difficult and very emotional process for people on both sides, and that does not help. So I will ask you this one time, please keep those. You're cheering the noise down in this chamber while we go through our democratic process and allow everyone in this room, whether they're sitting up here and having to voice that in front of all of you, knowing that they're disappointing a lot of people in the room, no matter what they say or if they're sitting in here feeling very emotional right now about a pet that is family to them or a family member who they're worried about, that this is a safe place for our democracy to work and for everyone to feel. So I would ask that you please keep that down. Council member can each. Thank you, Mr. President. Pardon my voice. Next up, Kathleen Flynn. Where you first? Did you get skeptics? When I was actually. I will defer to Councilman Flynn. Oh, sorry about that. I'd had Kenny. Councilman Flynn, you are correct. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. President. Given the last couple of speakers, I had a chance to talk with a number of constituents in my district on both sides, and it's apparent that an override vote will fail. It will. It would fail 8 to 5 if we put it to roll call right now. And that means the bill would die. I know that there is an effort by folks on both sides. Paul I emailed with Paul Brandus to try to work on, try to get the communities together to work on something that they could then bring back to us. In light of that. Mr. President, I would like to move on to Rule 6.3. That item 20 dash 71 be referred to committee with the possible outcome that would be referred to the ballot, but invite the community to participate in that and reframe it and not let this bill die right now. I am looking at our table over there with legal and ah, Madam Secretary, for some guidance. Under Rule 6.3, that motion takes precedence. We have two lawyers checking on me now. But. I know that. Excuse me. Kirsten Crawford, Legislative Council. Councilman Flynn, that is not my reading of the rules. I think the motion that is standing takes precedent here and needs to be acted on first. All right. May I disagree? Mr. President, the rule says when a question shall be under debate, no other motion shall be entertained except the following procedural motions, which shall take precedence, and ab item F is to re referred to committee. That it always takes precedence. Our read on it is that as 7.8 special parliamentary role and as such, we are given only three options to do anything regarding Rule 7.8. So we have to operate under 7.8. All right. I'm going to go I'm going to continue on for a second. I see that our legal has given us a determination. That's what they're there for. So I'm going to move on to our next speaker and councilman. You can if you would like to go over there and chat with them, then you can. Councilmember, connect your next up in the queue. Are you ready? Yes. Thank you, Mr. President. Pardon my voice. I wanted to I didn't speak last week about my vote in favor of the ordinance, and so I will be voting to override the veto tonight if that vote proceeds. So just wanted to put on the record, I think the main reason why in noting the mayor's letter, he he mentions the low rate of licensure in the city. And that was the question we at council asked at several points. And what was very clearly laid out during the public hearing last last I guess it wasn't last week last time when that when that public hearing took place was that the process for licensure in this ordinance is totally different, that in this case there will be a summons to court issued to someone, and if they fail to do the licensure, there will be a home visit to go and take action with the dogs. So that I think I don't know if the mayor was briefed on the very different follow up procedures that were described to us last week. But that, in my opinion, is very factually different information. So we we all many of us had that same question, but we had a very thorough explanation that in this case, we do have very strict follow up and very strong assurances that any individual will license their dog because they will have both a court summons in a home visit. Neither of those things occur with a standard license today. So in my opinion, the mayor's letter does not adequately reference the record or the process that it was established under this ordinance and his veto message. And I'm disappointed that he missed that. And in his message, I believe that is the persuasive difference. I will I could call up the department and asked him this question, but I know what the answer would be. Can we guarantee that under the law we have in place now that no one will be hurt by a verbal . Well, no, because it has happened. Pit bull bites have happened in our city under the ban. So when folks say to me the ban works, I disagree, it's not working. There are bites that occur. So if that's the case, again, the second piece of the mayor's message is that we are safer with the ban than we would be with this alternative approach, given the fact that there will be court summonses in person evaluations of the dog's breed. If a dog is evaluated for their breed, they will be seen by someone. And if they are aggressive during that l'évaluation, that information can be taken into account and an action plan can be put into place. And so, in my opinion, I don't I don't believe the evidence points to less safety. I believe it points to more. I can't say to the community that if I if I say no to override his veto, that you're somehow safe. That's a false sense of security. So in my opinion, I have to go with both the procedural rigor that will be put in place with this ordinance that was not that was not properly documented in the mayor's letter. And then, secondly, the fact that the current ban has not been able to guarantee the safety that our community seeks. I don't know that any community can guarantee safety in either case, but I believe we maximize it with dogs being seen with court summonses and the follow up that occurs far, so far more so than we do now. So I will be voting to override the veto tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Hines. Thank you, Mr. President. I, too, will be voting to override the veto and partly because of the d d e information, but also the University of Denver did a study here in Denver that was just Denver came out in 2019. And and it also talked about the the the ill effects of BSL. It talked about the economic impact of initiating the breed ban of over $100 million we talked about we've also heard sorry, we've also learned about bite strength and how pit bulls are not. They have the strongest bite strength that there are many breeds that have stronger bites than than the breeds colloquially identified as pit bulls. BSL negatively impacts service animals, including port those right here. BSL creates a false sense of security because it makes people feel safe because the city has gotten rid of all the bad breeds. But in reality there are still unsafe dogs that are labs that are huskies that are causing are golden retrievers and German shepherds that are still going around our city. So that gives us a false sense of security. The also, what about all of the groups that Councilman Herndon mentioned that are against BSL and then the 20% statistic or 18% currently 0% of pit bulls are registered in Denver. They're pit bulls in my building. They're pit bulls on my block. They're pit bulls in my neighborhood. They're all over. And this would create a legal. For pit bull owners to register their dogs. In other words, if you take zero and add one, then we're getting a better a better approach than if we have them hide in the shadows. I'm assuming that there would be more than one pit bull registered in the city of Denver, but it creates a legal path for people to register their dogs. And and I think that that's important. And then finally, some of the language used in the mayor's veto like the risk to severe injury or make our neighborhoods safer or the risk to public safety. I hope we think about that in everything we do. Let's ban all cars in Denver. So the pedestrians don't have to fear for their safety. You know, to me, as a pedestrian, I don't have to worry about getting hit and killed by cars. That would reduce traffic fatalities by more than 90% in Denver. Well, let's ban all oil and gas in the city of Denver because we're seriously worried about climate change. And that would and I'm I'm afraid of it. And and it is against public safety. And so I think that there are a lot of things that we could do in addition to overturning BSL that would fit within the mayor's spirit of the ban and or excuse me, of the veto. But but I will be voting to overturn the veto. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilmember Councilmember Gilmore. Thank you, President Clark. I have been talking with a lot of folks in my neighborhood. I've lived in the Monticello community for over 25 years. Montebello is the only community that I have ever seen across the country, in the city and county of Denver, that our residents walk with sticks, with golf clubs, with broomsticks. Grown men and women who walk to protect themselves against dogs in our neighborhood. I agree with my colleagues. We should have been doing this years ago, but we should have been doing education and outreach. How are you, a responsible dog owner? What does that look like? How do you take care of your dog, especially if it's a member of your family, which a pet should be? How do you socialize it? How do you make sure that it has immunizations, vaccinations, microchipping? The due study mentioned a lot of great indicators to bring in revenue to our city. I have never seen a dog groomer come out to our neighborhood, Montebello or Green Valley Ranch, to throw a free seminar to make sure that folks who are maybe struggling to stay in our city financially but have a pet to make sure that they have some emotional support and help for them. I've never seen those resources. I've never seen dog groomers, veterinarians, other than what has been provided by the city boarding dog trainers. This should have been done years ago, but we need help from the industry, from professional associations, expecting a community that for decades folks have had dogs for protection. To all of a sudden flip on a dime and say, oh yeah, sure, repeal it. Whatever parameters you have in wool, believe that that's going to work when we don't have more than 20% of our population currently in Denver registering their pets, how do we start to drive up that registration and then also offering microchipping vaccination, vet care, dog training classes? We need those resources. I was elected to protect the citizens of Denver to make sure that their welfare was taken care of. And I don't see any way that the way that this ordinance is written. That I can support it. And beyond that. We need to make sure that we're talking to the very citizens who walk with sticks, golf clubs. Broomsticks to protect themselves. If you haven't been to our community, if you haven't talked to residents, you don't know and you don't understand. And so I would ask that this huge community, please come forward and be part of the solution. And if this is going to become a ballot referral, if this is going to be referred back to committee, I would ask that you allow community members to share their perspectives and their ideas to amend this legislation so that we can really accomplish what we want to accomplish at the end of the day. And that truly is holding pet owners responsible for the actions of their pets. But right now, at this point in time, I don't see us with a path forward around compliance and enforcement to ensure that the community members in my neighborhood are going to be able to have the same freedoms that others have in their neighborhood to walk freely and feel safe in our community. Thank you, President. Clerk Thank Council Member Councilmember Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. First of all, we've all received lots of emails, phone calls, communication from from folks on both sides of this issue. And I want to thank everybody for reaching out and sharing all of their information. The reason I will not be voting for this override tonight is because, number one, this is an unfunded mandate that is not in our 2020 budget. We heard at the public hearing that there would be a need for two additional staff people. I don't think that is sufficient to deal with enforcement of the current ordinance. There was no public outreach for my question in the answer earlier. When we all engage in something that has citywide implications. We all expect of one another to do broad community outreach, and that didn't happen. There was an advocacy group involved that, I guess convince Councilman Herndon that this was the right time and the right issue to bring forward. But typically, we have conversations with inner neighborhood cooperation, which represents all of our registered neighborhood organizations across the city. None of that happened. And I think for anything different to be brought before this body, it requires much, much broader input from our community on trying to find any kind of solution that deals with our current ordinance before I think we expand it to look at anything beyond that. All the data that I looked at and we all were inundated with data and I got a list, you know, that I can read off as well. It's a full page of of citations that show that, you know, this isn't just about dog bites, this is about Mullings. And that's the difference between this breed specific and all of the data. And I can read through them, if you want to hear them, show that this specific breed causes far more harm, especially to children, because children can't get away. They can't climb and jump a fence like in a video that I saw or a man ran on top of a fence to protect himself, and he stayed perched on top of this tall fence until the owner was able to pull its dog down. And this was a pit bull dog. A children, small children can't get away like that. Approximately a thousand citizens in the U.S. and a thousand cities in the U.S. and 50 countries have freed specific legislation. Less than 2% pet owners have obtained license. 20%, sorry, in in the city of Denver in 2009, the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marine Corps banned dangerous dog breeds from privatized housing domestically and abroad. And in 2012, the U.S. Air Force enacted a similar uniform policy. I believe that in the last 30 years this has worked because we have not seen a death. From pit bulls in this city. Do they exist in our city? We know that people people have them illegally in our city. And, you know, obviously, we're being lobbied to try to allow them back in. And here's the reality. We're spending more time on this issue than we've actually been spending in addressing a serious issue going on in this city of homelessness, where we actually have people dying in our streets from exposure that are sleeping outside, which is critical . And this is an issue that I would love to see you all engaged in as well, and as passionately as you are about your animals. I'm not going to read through the list of citations. I do want to read a statement from an ER doctor from Children's Hospital that has worked in seven regions in the past 16 years and personally witnessed the impact of vicious dogs on children. She's. Saying she's taken care of. Children with missing body parts faces, severe brain and head injuries. Some of who were near death from pit bull attacks. The bites from shit shoes and Chihuahuas are nothing compared to the severity of injuries occurred from pit bull breeds. She goes on to just talk about the impact to two children, especially so. I think, again, if this is something that the votes are there to have a broader conversation, I'm happy to be part of that conversation. But I believe we've got to deal with today's ordinance and look at how we address some of the vicious dogs . You know, and it's not just pit bulls, it's other animals that run loose. We have people throughout my neighborhood who never have their dogs on a leash. You know, that's kind of what our our dog park survived. Right. And we've got more dog parts in this city than we've ever had. So I think these are issues that we need to work with and address. And I personally want to thank the mayor for vetoing this because there's much, much more work that needs to be done on this before I would be ready to vote for approving something that I think, again, this this ordinance has protected for the last 30 years. Thank you, Mr. President. Councilmember. Councilmember CdeBaca. Thank you, Mr. President. Can you hear me? Thank you, Mr. President. Our office received 3000 replies in regard to this legislation. 411 came specifically from our district, and they were supporting. 385 were supporting the veto. While I personally believe that this effort in particular is breed specific policy. And I. I've heard over and over that breed specific policy does not work. I will be supporting an override of the mayor's veto. I do encourage people involved in this effort to really consider the fact that this is breed specific policy. And if we do put something to the voters, I would recommend a full repeal. I think that we have to recognize that this kind of legislation was designed to target people of color. The mayor's decision is really an illustration of his disrespect for council's power. And in a heavy mayoral control city, it's very important to take note of when this is done and what it's done for. And the language that was used in the justification for this veto is incredibly problematic, along for many of the reasons stated by Councilman Hines. I think that if we are making policy that is specific to exceptions to the rule or one incident and not making policy around things that we know have wild implications on our health and safety, that's problematic and backwards. I also think it's important to continue fighting for the repeal, but also recognizing that we need to test our mayor's commitment to public health and safety. If the mayor does believe that he cannot in good conscience sign this bill because of the potential life that would be lost. I think we need to hold him to that. When we talk about other repeals and so we are all fighting for a repeal of a ban on humans in this city, a ban on impoverished humans. And I cannot imagine that the mayor's veto justification will be acceptable in that conversation. And so I encourage you all to stay involved, to recognize that the use of a veto and the need for a supermajority always silences the minority. And that is something that transcends this moment and this issue. And we need all of you to stay engaged, to stay active, and recognize that if you're not happy with how people up here are voting, you need to be involved at the local government level to making sure that people up here are listening to you all. So stay tuned because I know everyone wants to leave after this issue. If you're here for pit bulls. But we've got bigger conversations tonight, including rules about how you all are allowed to engage with us. And I encourage you all to to stay engaged. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember Cashman. Thank you, Mr. President. I was going to play a hand raising game, but I'll say this all the time and let you know what my observation has been over these past two weeks of hearings. I think a large. Number. Of people who are here in support of overturning the pit bull ban, which I don't think is an unreasonable position. I think either we're not living in Denver in the mid 1980s or we're very young. And it's not that if you're young, you're not bright. But what my belief is that a large number of people who object to the pit bull ban were older in the mid 1980s. And I disagree with my colleague. I don't believe this ban was put into place, had anything to do with with putting down communities of color. We had a real problem in the mid eighties. The attorney who wrote the ban spoke of 20 incidents of severe attacks which are animal protection officer was was not familiar enough with to be able to dispute we had a serious problem here. And so that's where that. Ban came from. I've seen all the lists of all the cities across the country that have overturned the bans. The vast majority of them, the vast majority of them are. Nowhere near. As large city as Denver. Some are, but the vast majority I had one proponent of overturning the ban. Send me a list I think was like 67 cities. One of them was Denver size. The vast majority are small areas. Why does that matter to me? Okay, we're 720,000 people in this city. There are tens of thousands of of devoted, wonderful dog owners. In a city this size, there are going to be hundreds, if not thousands of irresponsible bad dog owners. So. With promises of a more aggressive licensing system and promises of more aggressive public information and training. My preference is I'd like to see those numbers of registrations go up. First, I'd like to see a public relations campaign and education campaign on responsible ownership. First, I told Councilman Herndon last week, I. Can't imagine that there's not a path forward with this. My preference would be to see it go to the ballot to see what really is the community will on something like this. What else? Yeah, that's. As I said, I mean, I was here in the eighties. I was a journalist at the time. And I. Remember. The concern in the city. It was real. I understand. That. The. The. Vast majority of. Animal rights organizations talk against breed specific legislation. Again, that makes sense to me. But we have as I'm not talking about studies and where do you got 103 million? I don't know that I care about the dollars. It's about public safety. But I think we have work to do first. This is a real city with a real number of people, with real issues to be faced first. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Sandoval. Thank you, Mr. President. I just wanted to start by saying thank you to everyone who's sitting here and thank you for having reflective democracy. I know this is an emotional topic, and I too, would hope that this goes to the ballot. I don't think that it's our job often to send things to the ballot. I think that's what we have elections for, is so that things don't go on the ballot. But in this particular instance, it is a really emotional topic. And the fact that there's more dogs in Denver than there are kids in DPS schools right now is obviously is a main concern. And so for me, when we are updating our schools, we go to the ballot because they are our kids. So obviously we mean it. Maybe need to change that and have dog issues go to the ballot because they're so emotional. So with that, I will not be changing my vote from how I voted two weeks ago. But I do agree with the fact that this should go to the ballot. And thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. All right. As I'm not seeing any other comments. So first, I'll say thank you to all of you. Thank you for, you know, listening to my plea. And I appreciate once again you creating a safe space for democracy to flourish on a really, really tough issue. I will not go in depth because I said my piece last week or two weeks ago. I echo a lot of what Councilman Herndon, Councilman Kennedy, Councilman Hines and others have said that because I was going down my checklist as they were got there, got to a lot of the stuff that I was going to say. So instead, I will just say this before we vote. I am disappointed that the the mayor decided, although well within his purview to veto this and veto a majority will on the council and my plea back to the third floor, because it does not look as if this is going to have the votes tonight for us to override that veto is twofold is number one, everything that's in that letter about public safety, we have people walking around Montebello today with this legislation in place carrying things to protect themselves from dogs. If if this mayor is serious and I believe that he is from his words in his letter about public safety when it comes to dogs, then resources have to be deployed immediately to address that. This this legislation staying in place is not making. That community safe or safer. That is a problem right now under this legislation. And just simply by vetoing our legislation, which I do believe makes us a safer community, does not solve that. So those resources need to be deployed immediately. Also, we had two different experts last week testify about the inaccuracy of identifying dogs that have the blood that this veto seems to imply. They cannot escape the genetics that they cannot escape. And yet we had experts say that when scientifically tested on whether you can visually identify the genes in a dog, it is inaccurate. 75% of the time, it is completely and totally irresponsible for this city to continue to uphold something that I believe is not based on science, but to at least say what we believe and going to take a stand with a veto. That the science says that if it has this gene, if it has this blood, then it's dangerous. And then to potentially be turning 75% of dogs that do not have that blood and do not have that gene. And telling dog owners that they cannot keep their family member, their pet based on a visual identification, that is wrong. At a minimum, we need to deploy immediately the resources to test genetically. Every single dog that this city is saying does not belong based on this legislation until a point where we are confident that our system somehow outcompete the other systems that have been scientifically tested. And we can 100% of the time identify this evil gene that somehow exists or we need to. And if we can prove that our system does that, then we can stop genetically testing, I guess. Otherwise, it is my belief that every dog needs to be genetically test before the city has any authority to ask an owner for that dog to be removed from the city. If it is the intent of this mayor to continue to fight this hard on keeping a piece of legislation that I don't believe works. But if it is, then at a minimum, resources need to be deployed to keep people safe today. And resources need to be deployed immediately to prove that when a dog is being kicked out of our city and told that it can't be here when it has no history. We have aggressive dog ordinance now that protects our citizens better from dogs of all breeds that are aggressive. But this dog that has no history of any of that being told, you can't be here because you got the wrong genes, you've got the wrong blood. Then we better be sure and be able to show through science that that blood and that gene is in fact in there. Or I believe that is an overstep of the enforcement of this ordinance and should not be allowed with that. Councilmember Councilmembers This is a reminder that nine affirmative votes of council will be required for the adoption of this motion to override the veto. Madam Secretary, roll call. Herndon. I black. See tobacco? I went. No. Gilmore. No. Hinds. High Cashman. No. Kenny Ortega. No. Sandoval. Sawyer. No. Torres, I council president. I. I'm secretary. Please close the voting. Announce the results. Five knees, eight eight eyes motion fails. Five nis eight eyes. The motion to override the veto of Council Bill 22, 71 has failed. Council Bill 2271 has successfully been vetoed. We are going to continue with the rest of our meeting and as my colleague invited you. We always invite you here tonight and every Monday night to participate in our democratic process. But I also understand that many of you may want to leave at this point, so we're going to give you a minute to do that as quickly and quietly as you can so that we can continue with the rest of our meeting . Thank you. All right. We are going to continue long. There are no proclamations this evening. So, Madam Secretary, will you please read the bills for introduction.