The Owensboro Board of Commissioners will hold a city commission meeting on Tuesday. The meeting will include first readings for ordinances regarding the upcoming Castlen Dog Park and a second reading for an ordinance revising the City of Owensboro Employee Handbook and its drug and alcohol testing policies.
Presentations will be held Tuesday night regarding the city’s Katie Bouchard Day proclamation, which follows Daviess County Fiscal Court’s Katie Bouchard Day proclamation made last week. Mayor Watson and the city commissioners will also present a proclamation for Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month.
A first reading for an ordinance regarding the soon-to-be Castlen Dog Park will focus on the city’s adoption of the Daviess County Fiscal Court county-wide animal control ordinance. City manager Nate Pagan said the City is simply updating their animal control ordinance to match the county’s updated guideline from 2013.
“In order to open the dog park, we have to update the ordinance,” Pagan said. “It will reflect the county’s current animal control ordinance, with minor changes made. We will continue to prohibit livestock in the city limits. In the county, they can have livestock, but you won’t be able to have chickens, pigs, bees — those kinds of things — in the city.”
Pagan said the ordinance focusing on the Owensboro municipal code to address the physical control of dogs within the new park is pretty self-explanatory in that those who bring their dogs to Castlen Dog Park will be allowed to take their dogs off a leash while inside the dog park’s perimeters.
“Right now, the requirement is for dogs to be kept on a leash. That will remain the same with this ordinance, unless those dogs are in the dog park,” Pagan said.
A second reading will take place for an ordinance that will revisit the city’s employee handbook maintaining its drug and alcohol testing policies and procedures in accordance with the applicable law. This technical revision of Drug and Alcohol testing in Policy 319 of the handbook is a necessary change that must be made to meet the random drug and alcohol testing rates for employees who work for the Department of Transportation (DOT).
The revision to the city’s drug and alcohol testing policy means that at least half of the employees working for the Owensboro Transit System will be required to partake in a random drug test, which will divide employees into two random testing pools–Federal Transit Administration regulated employees (1A) and all other DOT-regulated employees (1B).
The city commission meeting will be held at 5 p.m. on the 4th floor of City Hall.
