St. Tammany Parish Council approves pet sterilization ordinance

ST. TAMMANY PARISH, La. (WGNO) — Animal shelters in St. Tammany Parish are packed.

“In this facility alone, there’s about 1500 to 2000 a year. You’ve got an animal control, which is a municipal shelter, and there are a couple of others. At any given time, we all have 600 animals under our care,” said Northshore Humane Society CEO Scott Bernier.

Under a new ordinance passed at Thursday night’s council meeting, pet owners are now required to spay and neuter their dogs and cats if an owner does not get a waiver.

The new law was sponsored by Councilmen Joe Impastato and Jeff Corbin, who say if you’re a responsible pet owner, the change will not affect you.

“The only way this ordinance is going to come into play is if your animal’s doing something they shouldn’t be. If you have mouth wandering around, if it’s aggressive, if it gets picked up for some reason, then your animal is going to be in the system,” said Councilman Jeff Corbin.

A first offense would cost $75 and the second would be $150. The ordinance would also require owners to spay or neuter their pets if that animal is impounded due to a violation of the leash law or taken due to animal cruelty.

However, both Corbin and Impastato say they are working with local veterinarians to offer vouchers to pet owners for spay and neuter services.

“This is a big component, and within six months we should have something brand new that will get a lot more animals fixed, and a lot lower cost to people, ” said Impastato.

“We would like to make it possible so that essentially any vet has the opportunity to participate via coupon to get reimbursed the full value or the full cost that they charge for getting this spay or neuter,” said Corbin.

Bernier supports the ordinance, saying in the long run, it’ll help prevent having to put down pets.

“The problem is, at the current rate we’re going, it was going to be unsustainable. The parish really is overfull. We’re overfull. And every home-based rescue is overfull. So something had to be done to be able to maintain that,” said Bernier.

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