SCARBOROUGH – In the wake of a special election on Dec. 3, in which voters overwhelmingly rejected a leash law that turned out to be as controversial as it was comprehensive, the Scarborough Town Council has agreed to create an ad hoc committee to work out how best to rein in dogs and protect the endangered piping plover.

Last week’s 2,880-1,059 vote reset the town’s animal control ordinance to how it looked before Oct. 2, when the council voted 5-2 to require that dogs be on a leash at all times when on any public property, including beaches, sidewalks, parks, play fields and wooded areas.

With 3,939 voters turning out, 73 percent said they did not approve of the change. According to Scarborough’s town charter, a minimum threshold of 2,379 voters – 25 percent of the total number of residents who voted in the most recent gubernatorial election – had to participate in the overturn vote in order for it to be considered valid. That threshold was easily met in what was reported by Town Clerk Tody Justice to be a near-record crowd for a single-issue special ballot in Scarborough.

As a result of the vote, there is once again no leash restriction in Scarborough other than on municipal beaches between June 15 and Sept. 15. During those months, dogs are banned from the beach between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. and must be on a leash from 5 p.m. until sunrise.

The ability of dogs to run free on town beaches from sunrise to 9 a.m. was a compromise created in 2004, the last time Scarborough tried to address the plover issue. But this summer, on July 15, a dog mauled a plover chick on Pine Point Beach, setting in motion a federal investigation and a $12,000 fine levied against the town by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which held the town culpable for failing to heed its advice that dogs be leashed on beaches between April 1 and Aug. 30.

An agreement signed between the feds and the town knocked the fine to just $500 in return for a host of concessions, including adoption of a stronger leash law. With those rules once again allowing dogs to run free during the plover mating season, Scarborough faces possible reinstitution of the larger fine.

“I don’t expect to find a registered letter on my desk tomorrow saying they’re taking action against us,” said Town Manager Tom Hall on Monday. “However, I think they do expect to see some progress. The decision by the council to create this committee does, I think, buy us some time.

“I have spoken by phone with a Maine field office biologist who, although not directly involved in the enforcement action, says they are taking a ‘wait-and-see’ attitude,” said Hall.

At a special workshop meeting held the day after the leash law vote, the council told Hall to bring to their Dec. 18 meeting a draft charge for a committee of between five and seven people, who will advise them on how best to proceed.

“I’ve not put pen to paper yet,” said Hall. “I hope to have something drafted by the end of the week. The intent is to have an action item at the next council meeting that would create the committee.”

The first task for the committee will be to decide how, or even if, Scarborough should amend its animal control ordinance to restrict dogs from plover nesting areas.

Fish and Wildlife’s minimum expectation of no free-run and leashes of no more than 8 feet in length on beaches should be in place by April 1, said Hall. To navigate the requisite council readings and public hearings, as well as a possible side trip before the Planning Board, the new committee will probably need to have a recommendation in hand “by late January.”

Newly elected Councilor Bill Donovan said he couldn’t imagine the committee recommending anything other than the minimum Fish and Wildlife guidelines, at least between the recommended dates of April 1 to Aug. 30.

“To do otherwise, that to me is nuts,” he said. “I’m not a big biologist or environmentalist, but I do know I would never want to put my town in a position where it is thumbing its nose at the Endangered Species Act.”

Chairman Richard Sullivan, who drafted the amendment that extended the leash law townwide, far beyond what the feds demanded for plover protection, admitted during Wednesday’s workshop that if the council had stopped at that, the decision probably would have been veto-proof.

That assumption, he said, was based on five emails and three calls he received in the hours between Tuesday’s overturn vote and Wednesday’s council workshop.

“They all said they would have voted yes if it had dealt with just the plovers,” he said. “They felt that we went a little too far, maybe, that we didn’t do our due diligence. It was a little humbling to hear that.

“It’s a learning curve,” added Sullivan, now in his seventh year on the Town Council. “We’ve upset a lot of people, and it’s been a heated controversy.”

The decision to create an advisory council is, in part, recognition of the controversy that erupted when Sullivan submitted his townwide leash law at the 11th hour. Many dog lovers, expecting only to lose a few hours of early-morning, free-run time per day during the summer, said they felt “blindsided” by the amendment.

Councilor Kate St. Clair, who made the motion for Sullivan’s amendment, said Wednesday that she had learned a lesson from the resulting public reaction. Setting up a review committee was the better alternative, she said, even if the council could just as easily adopt the Fish and Wildlife guidelines on its own.

“This needs to be a discussion,” she said. “I’m not comfortable agreeing to any kind of ordinance tonight. That feels rushed, and I’m not going to make that mistake again. I’m just not.”

That said, the council did agree that, given the recent controversy, the review committee would need to look at a host of issues relating to endangered shore birds, dogs and leashes. There is no time limit for that discussion, and the committee could well continue to debate where and when dogs can run free in town, and what other measures the town should take to protect the plover.

“It was pretty loud and clear,” said Councilor Jim Benedict, referring to last week’s repeal vote. “It’s not worth our time to deliberate whether the vote was right or wrong. It was the vote. But I do think we need to take some time to discuss all of this. Openly. Nicely.”

“There’s got to be some bend, and probably not 100 percent of [either side is] going to be happy with the outcome, because this is all too much of a mix to go completely one way or the other,” said Benedict.

“Well, I think we need to decide as a group, do we support protecting the plovers?” said Councilor Ed Blaise, simplifying the issue.

Katy Foley, who led the repeal campaign on behalf of grassroots group Dog Owners of Greater Scarborough, said her members would work with the council going forward. The group quickly organized on an ad-hoc basis to lobby the council into resisting state and federal pressure on behalf of the plovers, claiming that despite a single incident on record, dogs are not the reason the shorebird is struggling to maintain a toehold on its traditional habitat.

The group rallied to conduct a marathon petition drive aimed at overturning the council decision, then evolved yet again into an official political action committee to advocate for the “no” side. Now, said Foley, DOGS members stand ready to work with those who supported the stricter leash law.

“I want the ‘yes’ voters to understand that we hear them, too, and hope some of them will join the conversation so that we can make this a town we all want to live in and be proud of,” said Foley.