County passes law regulating puppy mills

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By Stan Welch

After nine months of public input, controversy and tweaking, Anderson County Council finally passed an ordinance regulating the commercial sale of dogs. The ordinance seeks to regulate the so called puppy mills and insure that breeders/sellers are legitimate and ethical concerns.

The bill, which sets a number of conditions related to the treatment and care of the dogs, applies only to breeders who sell more than twenty five dogs annually. Despite requests by members of the public who spoke about the proposed ordinance, asking that it be tabled while more tweaking was done, Council voted to adopt the regulations.

In other business, deputy county administrator Holt Hopkins unveiled the county’s new interactive software platform, called YourGov. (See related story elsewhere in this issue.) YourGov is an application created by Cartegraph, the software company which serves Anderson County and has for fourteen years.

The new app, which can be downloaded to the iPad, smartphones and other devices, allows citizens to immediately contact the county and its various support services to report a problem. It also allows the public to track the situation and see what progress is made in dealing with it.

For example, a citizen who discovers a bad pothole on his road can report it by the app, and then check back to see when it has been patched. The software automatically routes the various reports to the proper department. “The time and duplicated effort that we save will make a huge difference for us,” said Hopkins. “This will save a lot of effort and money for the county.”

Council also learned that the prestigious think tank, The Brookings Institute, has accepted the Upstate Alliance’s application for inclusion in the Institutes Global Cities Initiative; a four year study to determine ways to improve and expand efforts to more fully access global markets.

Clay Andrews , from the Upstate Alliance, explained that the study, which will incur no expense upon the county, would cost over $200,000 if done individually. He also emphasized how deeply involved the United States, as well as the Upstate area, is in the global marketplace.

“While five percent of the world’s population is in the US, eighty per cent of the buying power in the world lies outside the US. Closer to home, in the Upstate, sixty eight per cent of industrial investment is international, and forty four per cent of jobs created result from international sources. Our bonds to the global markets, which began decades ago with the textile industry, are even closer and stronger now,” said Andrews.