Del Mar City Council members left open the possibility of pursuing an ordinance to more strictly regulate retail animal sales during their Jan. 21 meeting, following a petition the city rejected because the proponent was not a Del Mar resident.
“This will be the beginning of the conversation,” Del Mar Mayor Terry Gaasterland said.
Last May, Bankers Hill resident Amit Dhuleshia began collecting signatures for a petition to the city that called for a ban on retail sales and other transactions involving arachnids, birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and fish. The city’s current law only specifies dog, cat or rabbit.
Once the necessary signatures are collected and verified, the City Council decides whether to adopt the petition as local law outright or to put it on the ballot of a future election for residents to decide.
Earlier this month, when the council was set to make that decision, city staff said they needed time to investigate whether the proponent needed to be a Del Mar resident.
Dhuleshia said he asked the city if he needed to be a resident when he began the signature gathering process. He was referred to the state elections code, which does not explicitly say a proponent has to live in the city where they submit a petition. After visiting Del Mar every weekend for five months, he collected more than 300 signatures that are required to ask the city for verification.
Following a legal analysis that the city conducted between the previous council meeting and this week’s, City staff said legal precedent and state law appear to require the petition to be a resident.
“While the California Elections Code does not require a proponent of a local initiative to be a resident or elector of the city in which the initiative is proposed,” the released city staff report says, “case law and the local initiative power under the California Constitution authority appears to support the opposite: that the proponent must be a resident. The rationale is that proponents who propose amendments to local laws should be members of the political community that will be impacted by those laws.”
According to the city staff report, the council will be able to review that potential ordinance during a goals and priorities workshop that will be held in February or March.
“I do urge the City Council to follow the necessary steps to make an effort to adopt this ordinance now that the ballot initiative is thrown out,” Dhuleshia said during public comment. “The ordinance would be a proactive step that would position Del Mar as a leader in animal welfare, which we can leverage to pass similar ordinances around San Diego County. That was the overall plan, and we’re going to proceed with that plan.”
He added that Del Mar could take a stand against the “neglect, cruelty and overcrowding” in puppy mills and other facilities that breed animals at a large scale to be sold in stores.
“They’re not really treated as live animals, they’re treated as commodities,” Dhuleshia said.
