The U.S. Postal Service wants to stop the kind of dog attacks that happened last spring to Hopkinsville letter carrier Jill Cooper, who was mauled by a dog on Jessup Avenue and still faces several more surgeries to her right calf.
Cooper spoke Tuesday night at the Hopkinsville City Council meeting as a postal official introduced a program called PAWS that will help identify homes where carriers and others should be alert to a dog.
“My biggest fear is that nothing gets done,” Cooper told council members.
In the next week, Hopkinsville residents will receive a postcard explaining how PAWS works, USPS Kentuckiana district safety manager Allan Lewis said.
PAWS relies on two types of dog paw print stickers to alert mail carriers and others about the presence of dogs.
An orange paw print sticker on a mailbox means a dog resides at that residence. A yellow paw sticker means a dog resides next door.
The stickers are not intended to identify any animal as a nuisance, said Lewis. The purpose of the stickers is to make people aware and reduce risk. The program was created by postal employees in New York state.
Anyone who objects to having a sticker placed on their mailbox may call the Hopkinsville Post Office at 270-886-5259 to have the sticker removed.
Lewis said 6,755 postal service employees across the country were attacked or bitten by dogs in the last fiscal year. There were 117 incidents in the Kentuckiana region, which includes 108 counties in Kentucky and 11 in Indiana.
“We need you to welcome the initiative,” he said.
In other matters at Tuesday’s council meeting, the council voted unanimously on second reading for a measure that will let the city seek ownership of an abandoned Jewish cemetery on Hope Street.
The Elb cemetery, established in 1865 by Louis Elb, Henry Oppenheimer, Bernard Rosenstein and other members of the Israelitish Church, is in a “state of disrepair” according to the ordinance.
The city wants to preserve and maintain the cemetery out of respect for the people buried there and for the historical significance of the site, Mayor Carter Hendricks said.
In other matters, the following appointments were made to boards and commissions:
- Council member Jason Bell re-appointed to Hopkinsville Cable Television Authority.
- Council member Terry Parker re-appointed to Hopkinsville Electric System Board.
- Council member Paul Henson re-appointed to Hopkinsville Solid Waste Enterprise Board.
- Council member Tom Johnson re-appointed Hopkinsville Water Environment Authority Board.
- Council member Don Ahart re-appointed to Hopkinsville Surface and Stormwater Utility Board.
- Council member Tom Johnson named mayor’s designee to the Chamber of Commerce Military Affairs Committee Advisory Board.
- Council member Terry Parker re-appointed to the Christian County Weather Spotters Board.
- City Administrator Troy Body named mayor’s designee to Christian County Ambulance Board.
- Chief Financial Officer Robert Martin named mayor’s designee to Westwood Senior Homes Board.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. Brown was a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era, where she worked for 30 years. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board past president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition. She serves on the Hopkinsville History Foundation's board.
