Four residents from three different homes located on Riverside Drive in Falls Township met with the Muskingum County Commissioners Thursday afternoon to express their concerns regarding the new Muskingum County Dog Warden and Adoption Center facility.

Riverside Drive, where each of the residents live, is positioned off Newark Road near both the adoption center and the Animal Shelter Society Inc. The new planned location is in the old Muskingum County Sheriff’s Office evidence building.

While Riverside Drive is not a highly traveled route, as it’s a dead-end, it’s home to a few residents that live in Falls Township.

“You don’t have an automatic right to build it wherever you want to build it,” Rob Guentter said to the commissioners as he voiced his reservations regarding the new facility.

Guentter said he was previously a zoning administrator for the City of Zanesville and took the liberty of reviewing the zoning code in Falls Township, which he stated the Muskingum County Commissioners were not following.

While the commissioners acknowledged that the zoning was overlooked when the project planning first began, they have since began taking steps to approve the project through the proper zoning channels.

Despite the lack of appropriate zoning permits, Guentter said he had other concerns as well, concerns that were echoed by the other residents present.

Some of the residents’ concerns included bringing the odor, loose dogs and noise from the center closer to their homes.

Guentter cited the number of decibels that a typical dog kennel would produce, which he said was equivalent, when dogs are barking, to the number of decibels heard at a rock concert.

“We don’t want a rock concert 24/7 just a few hundred feet from our bedroom window,” he said.

Agreeing with Guentter, another nearby resident, Danielle Fikes, also expressed similar concerns. Fikes, who called herself an “animal activist,” added that she has put a significant amount of money into her home over the past 17 years that she’s lived in her home.

She said she would not like to see the value of her home depreciate once the new facility is up and running, although she applauded the efforts of the county to help the animals.

Each of the residents sitting in the meeting also stated that they supported the rescue and aid to homeless animals despite their concerns with the new facility.  

“This just seems like a very dense place to put 60 dogs,” Janelle Guentter said.

Moving forward, the residents requested that they be kept informed about the plans and proceedings of the project and asked for their concerns to be factored into the future of the project.