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By Jim Buice

For the Clemmons Courier

With a light agenda for Monday night’s meeting, the Clemmons Village Council turned its attention to dealing with a barking dog.

It started in public comments when Derrick Boone of 7617 Rolling Oak Ct. in Clemmons approached the podium to voice his concerns.

“I’m here to find out about an excessive barking ordinance,” he said. “My neighbor’s dog barks excessively for hours at a time and I’ve tried calling, I’ve tried texting, and I’ve tried talking, and nothing seems to work. So I called the sheriff’s office and was told that the city of Winston-Salem has an excessing barking ordinance but Forsyth County does not.”

Boone later said he was told an excessive noise ordinance only goes into effect if it’s after 11 p.m. 

“This is all during the day, evening and at night time,” he continued in his comments. “So I was wondering if there is a possibility that the village of Clemmons could adopt an excessive barking ordinance similar to the one that Winston-Salem has and that is excessive barking is anything over 15 minutes. And if you’ve ever had a dog barking for 15 minutes, that seems like an eternity.”

Exchanges from the council with the speaker are not permitted during public comments, and Boone departed after speaking, but later in the meeting at the end of council comments leading into a closed session to discuss a personnel matter, council member Michelle Barson said, “Goodness, wait. I didn’t know we were going to fly through it that fast. I just wanted to tell our friend Derrick to wait a second, and we could have addressed his concern.”

Barson went on to say that she has heard complaints over the years involving barking dogs.

“Like he said, having an 11 p.m. noise ordinance to fall back on isn’t extremely helpful when you want to sit on your deck and enjoy it or on your front porch,” she said. “But he’s right. Fifteen minutes is insanity. So it’s a very reasonable rule that the ordinance Winston-Salem has in place. I think as we’re overhauling our own ordinances and we’ve most recently taken a step back and looked a lot of our uses’ ordinances that haven’t been thought of yet for us to discuss and perhaps include.

“And again I say this as a lover of dogs and a very barky one but certainly not one that lives outside and barks and ruins other people’s enjoyment for hours on end, but understand the pain that some of our neighbors go through with that. I’d like for us to take this into consideration. Can we ask staff to look into the Winston-Salem one at this time?”

Mayor Mike Rogers then interjected: “That we can. Maybe we can just morph theirs into our policy and adopt it in one of our ordinances here — something similar, I don’t know if it would be exact. I don’t know what theirs says.”

Council heads bobbed in agreement with Randy Wooden saying, “I think it makes sense to look at it for sure. Absolutely.”

And finally, after a closed council where no action was taken, Rogers asked if there were any council comments, and Mike Combest said he wanted to respond “to Mr. Boone’s concerns about the excessive barking of a dog and calling the sheriff’s office and basically being told there’s not an ordinance, and I guess it’s the manager I’m asking…

“I don’t understand that response because I’m literally reading from Forsyth County N.C. Municode Section 15-1 (Loud and Disturbing Noise): At any time during the day or night, the keeping of any animal which, by causing frequent or long continued noise, shall frighten or disturb the quiet comfort and repose of any reasonable person of ordinary sensibilities in the vicinity is considered a violation of this code.”

Combest added he didn’t understand “either the sheriff’s office’s lack of interpretation of that or a belief that a cause doesn’t exist. So either I don’t understand or it’s worth exploring, so I say that in response to Mr. Boone’s concerns.”

Also in Monday night’s public comments, Mike Sullivan, speaking on behalf of the Clemmons Food Pantry, said he wanted to thank Lynette Fox, events coordinator, for all the promotion and awareness she has provided to benefit the effort over the last months. “We’ve had people who have never reached out to us before bringing in donations,” he said.

Council member Bradley Taylor also spoke briefly on the walk audits, described as “an assessment of the walkability of pedestrian access of an external environment to promote the needs of pedestrians as a form of transport,” that have been held over the last two weekends.

Taylor said he wanted to give a “shout-out” to planning director Doug Moore and planner Caroline Drake on the work they’ve been doing.

“Both of those walk audits we were able to get citizens who live in that area to actually join us,” Taylor said. “We actually had a gentleman who lives in Waterford and noticed that we were walking the same walk that he does on a daily basis. And he said, ‘I want to join this.’

“We interfaced with a lady over at Peace Haven who regularly walks in that area and gave us so much insight into her daily experience beyond what we were seeing and experiencing ourselves. I think it’s just a wonderful opportunity to really get feedback.”