SCARBOROUGH – Fallout from the July 15 mauling of an endangered piping plover chick at Pine Point Beach continued Wednesday when the Scarborough Ordinance Committee agreed to recommend the adoption of further restrictions on dogs at public beaches.

Following more than an hour of public comment, the three-member committee scheduled a special meeting for 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 8, at town hall, when changes to the to town’s beach and plover protection ordinances will be voted on and forwarded to the full council.

“I feel 100 percent there has to be a change,” said Councilor Kate St. Clair. “This can not continue. I don’t want to hear any more complaints about people being attacked because dogs were not on leashes, I don’t want to hear any more reports of endangered animals being killed because a dog was not on a leash.”

What the amendments will look like was unclear. The committee agreed only that it will stop short of banning dogs from public beaches altogether.

In Scarborough, from June 15 to Sept. 15, dogs can roam free “under voice control” on municipal beaches from sunrise to 9 a.m., and on a leash from 5 p.m. to sunset. Dogs are not allowed on the beach during the summer months between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.

Committee Chairman Richard Sullivan cautioned that the Aug. 8 session is to be a working meeting, at which he will not allow public comment. The next opportunity for the public to weigh in, he said, will come at the regular Town Council meeting on Aug. 21, when the committee recommendation is considered at a “first reading.”

Barring unusual action by the council, a public hearing, second reading and final vote would then be set on the ordinance update for Sept. 4.

Meanwhile, an investigation into the plover death is under way by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Although law enforcement agents with the federal agency have refused to confirm as much, or even to acknowledge being in town, Town Manager Tom Hall said he has turned over minutes and video from council meetings in 2004, the last time a rules governing dogs on public beaches were debated.

Hall said he asked for an expedited decision and was told a decision on whether to proceed against the town with criminal and or civil penalties “will come sooner rather than later.” Fines could be set, he said, at $25,000.

“The federal government is pretty much mandating that something be done,” said Sullivan. “If it [a plover death] happens again, it’s going to be even worse for the town.”