Recently in licenses Category

Dog licenses may get more expensive in Los Angeles.

A City Council committee today moved to charge dog owners $20 instead of $15 a year to license their canine that has been spayed or neutered.

If passed by the full council, the increase could generate about $600,000 in annual revenue.

We ran a story in the Daily Breeze about the Los Angeles Department of Animal Control's efforts to collect more revenue in dog license fees. The story also details department budget cuts being faced by Animal Services -- among them, the department's toll-free call center is in line to be eliminated, meaning more phone calls will have to be handled by already over-burdened shelter staffers.

(Interestingly, a City Council discussion on the matter prompted one councilman, Tom LaBonge, to actually get his dog licensed.)

I asked department Assistant General Manager Linda Barth during our telephone interview if the city was considering licensing cats.

As a matter of fact, she said, Councilman Bill Rosenthal did ask the department to study that issue. But she said the department's first focus will be on getting more of the city's estimated 350,000 canines licensed as required by law. Currently, only about a third of the dogs in the city have licenses.

Daily Breeze photo by Scott Varley

Desperate to find money for its growing budget deficit, the city of Los Angeles said today it may go after dog owners who have failed to license their pets -- and using a novel technique.

City Council President Eric Garcetti suggested identifying those dog owners by using a database that the Department of Water and Power created for the benefit of its meter readers.

The database lists households that are believed to have dogs so that meter readers can take the proper precautions when approaching a home.

I'm all for licensing your dogs, as I've posted here before (and here's another prior post on the topic). Involving the DWP makes me nervous, though, since I've had a year-long battle with that department in trying take an overcharge off my trash pickup bills. Let's just say they don't have my confidence when it comes to efficiency or accuracy.

But I suppose that's my own separate issue.

The city requires that all dogs -- and horses -- be licensed by the Department of Animal Services. Cats are exempt.

A license for a spayed or netuered dog in the city of L.A. costs $15 (up from $10 just a couple years ago). Garcetti estimates only about 20 percent of pet dogs in Los Angeles are licensed.

So what do you think? Is your dog licensed? Why or why not?