Finding out your town/county laws?

[raisinjelly]

Hello, new user here! I hope this is the right section to post this in. Little backstory: snakes - particularly ball pythons - are something I've wanted all my life but did not previously have the means to get. Now that I am able to, I've been spending the last couple weeks doing a lot of research. One of the care guides I read mentioned checking your state and city code to make sure it's even legal to own constricting snakes, which is something I hadn't even known was an issue.

My problem is I've been digging and digging, but there is no information online about my town or county regarding what animals you can or can't own. It's a very tiny 800-person or so town out in the country in Iowa. I'm not even sure how this is supposed to work - does each town in a county have its own code or do all the towns share one code under the county law? Because 22 miles from me is a larger town in our county, and I was able to find their's and it stated that no constricting snakes were allowed. Is there anyone I can contact personally to ask about this, since the information is unavailable online?

I'm starting to get extremely put out by this. There are two different cities around 15 miles away who also have a ban on all constrictors, so if they turn out to be banned here too the only way I could even have a single ball is if I sacrificed my small town life to move 40 miles away to Iowa City.

Thank you for reading. Any help is much appreciated

[bcr229]

Does your town have a council, separate tax structure from the county, it's own police department, a town council, etc? If not then your town is likely "unincorporated" (that's what we would call it in my state) and does not pass its own regulations, so you would only be dealing with county regulations.

[raisinjelly]

We have a town council, but our police department is hired from the county. I'm not sure on the tax structure

[bcr229]

Try asking your councilman or maybe animal control if there are any regulations on exotic pets.

[ER12]

Local and county ordinances for many municipalities can either be found on Municode or your city/township's municipal website. One word of caution though is do not ask or contact them directly about exotic pet ordinances. This is more often than not enough to bring the matter to their attention if there are not any ordinances already on their books.
https://www.municode.com/library

[raisinjelly]

Thank you for the URL, but it's not on there unfortunately. It's not on the county website or the town's little website either.

I've been planning to try asking about it at our city hall once the woman who works there returns from her vacation. I was going to ask if I could see the pet related ordinances or if she knows where I could find out, but should I word it differently or is that general enough? Though I'm not sure what to say if she starts to ask for specifics