Victory is at our doors!
Okay, so even though I had a strong supporter who believes that the ordinance excludes chickens as pets, I didn't have any luck contacting the city zoning department or going through a council member. So, with three kids, my hubby, my mom and her sailing buddy, as well as a 8X10 picture of my front-toothless 6yo hugging a chicken, we went to a city council meeting last night. And, although it was tough to wait out 2.5 hours of interesting-to-me-but-not-the-kids council business, we got up in the public session, shared our story of the citation to the council, and they were SUPER SYMPATHETIC!!! Apparently there's already something in the works to have a broad definition of "pets" for Gulfport residents (someone has a lemur that has been in news stories before), and they'll include chickens in the allowable category. AND the mayor was sad we had to leave with our citation, but to give us peace of mind, he and the council voted unanimously to have a moratorium on further chicken citations for a few weeks while they straighten it out!!
And, a local cable news station came by to do a story on it...I'll post a link when it comes up, it'll be on BayNews9.
So YAY!!! More happy chicken news!
(and, ironically, our landlord found out about the chickens today...yeah, that's another battle we had waiting in the wings, but once I explained that council was changing the ordinance and promised to fix up the landscaping he was okay...at least we always pay our rent, he's been doing evictions. So, we're totally out of the closet and in the clear!)
