Help Stop Tulsa's Pet Overpopulation

OPEN LETTER TO THE MAYOR OF TULSA

Dear Honorable Mayor Bartlett,

    I am petitioning you to immediately initiate an assertive, goal-oriented and serious enforcement of Tulsa’s Ordinance Title 2 Section 101(17) regarding our mandatory Spaying and Neutering for all dogs and cats over the age of six months.  I am signing this Petition because as a citizen of Tulsa, I am demanding that you address our city’s needless pet overpopulation problem and respectfully request that the City of Tulsa become a greater part of the solution. 

    Specifically, I am a citizen who is concerned about Tulsa’s serious pet overpopulation problem.  I am very disappointed with Tulsa’s failure to solve this problem through enforcement of its existing spay and neuter laws.  Due to Tulsa’s lack of spay and neutering enforcement we are plagued with an overabundance of deserted and homeless animals.  Many of our citizens and rescue groups have taken the initiative and have spent countless volunteer hours and their own dollars to help alleviate this problem through adoptions, but there is a serious lack of adopters.  It’s a simple matter of more supply than demand.  As a responsible pet-owning citizen, I assure you I will stay compliant with Tulsa’s laws and continue to do my part in helping the demand side of the problem, but it is imperative that the City of Tulsa do a greater part by reducing our pet overpopulation problem through its enforcement against unlawful pet owners of unspayed and unneutered animals.

    Furthermore, I am also a concerned Tulsa taxpayer who realizes Tulsa’s Animal Welfare shelter is financially struggling to deal with over 11,000 pets which enter the shelter annually. Of those 11,000 animals, approximately 65% of them will be destroyed, mostly due to lack of accommodations.  Caring for that shocking amount of animals and then destroying and disposing of two-thirds of them is an unnecessary waste of  tax dollars, when simple enforcement of our existing spay and neuter laws would drastically reduce the amount of animals handled through Tulsa’s Animal Welfare shelter.

    I hope my signing this Petition, and the many others who join, will express to you my level of frustration against Tulsa’s lack of enforcing its spay and neuter laws. I further hope that you take immediate action in this matter so our citizens can be assured of a pro-active approach in dealing with Tulsa’s pet overpopulation, rather than a reactive approach that needlessly destroys countless numbers of innocent and unwanted animals.

Respectfully,

A Tulsa Citizen