The South Portland City Council passed an amendment to the city’s dog laws Tuesday after months of public debate and also approved wording changes to laws about public nudity.
While the amendment includes roughly 20 additions and tweaks, the big ticket item revolves around when dogs are permitted at Willard Beach. The amendment allows dogs to be on the beach from 7 to 9 a.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. from May 1 through Sept. 30. However, from 7 to 8 p.m., dogs must be leashed.
Dogs will be permitted at Willard Beach all day from Oct. 1 through April 30 but must be leashed from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Dogs at Hinckley Park must be leashed from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. year-round.
Other provisions include prohibiting dogs from athletic fields and fenced-in playgrounds, requiring owners to pick up and properly dispose of their dog’s waste, and if a dog acts aggressively toward another dog or person, and does not respond upon command, that dog must be leashed.
The wording of the nudity laws was changed in an effort to be more inclusive of non-binary and transgender residents, officials previously said.
For the nudity laws, the council now defines a “nude state” as “the showing of a person’s genitals, pubic area, or buttocks with less than a fully opaque covering.” It also scratched the phrasing “showing of the human male or female (body parts)” from the city’s definition of nudity and replaced it with “the showing of a person’s (body parts).”
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