WOW that must be some big county! In my county we have one city one town with local government elected offices, and about 2 dozen unincorperated towns that many used to be about maybe a dozen buisnesses a couple of churchs a school perhaps and many of them now are a clump of maybe a dozen houses a church or two, a few (2-3) buisnesses (usually closed) and a sign if they are lucky saying "spot in the road" and if you blink you miss the sign and the town.
It's very interesting, it is a normal sized county with an unusual history. Almost every city in the US (actually all but 2), is a legal entity of the county in which they are located. As such, they can annex new land from the county as they grow. When Missouri became a state in 1821 all was good. But in the next 50 years, the city and county came at odds. By 1876 it came to a head and one choice was to create 2 distinct legal entities thereby creating a
county of the city of St. Louis - distinct from the
county of St. Louis. The plan was to be voted on by all citizens of both city and county. The separation appeared to be rejected by voters by 2000 votes. One voting district seemed to have some hundred or so fraudulent votes and a recount commission investigating reversed the will of the citizens and approved the separation.
The city then picked a boundary they thought the population would never grow beyond. Silly, that. It wasn't long before - one of the fastest growing cities of the time - the population rapidly grew beyond those boundaries and today encompasses almost the entire land mass. Everywhere a cluster of houses and businesses appeared, a few ambitious politicians created a new city, each of which - unlike the city of St. Louis - is capable of annexing land from the county. The result is 91 legal municipal entities, 9 unincorporated in addition to the city of St. Louis. The population of each of these 'cities' range from under 100 to well over 50,000. It has hurt the area in that each of these postage stamp size and larger municipalities must maintain a public works department, mayor, city council, town halls, etc.. Some have relinquished their police departments to save money and contract with St. Louis county police for protection.
Further confusing the matter is that school districts and fire protection districts bear no resemblance to those city boundaries. As you may surmise, there are common street names within several of the cities.
Just as an aside to this story and interestingly enough, last week, there was a fire at an address in Florissant. The 911 operator sent the fire department to the identical address in Ferguson. They arrived, and surprisingly there was no fire. At the same time the house at the same address in Florissant was completely destroyed.
What makes this tough for people wanting to have chickens, or do anything else they want to do on their own property, ordinances vary - sometimes wildly.
There can be one person that may be allowed an unlimited number of chickens and roosters. His neighbor directly across the street may be restricted to 4 chickens and the guy at the end of the street can have none at all. Bizarre and insane IMO. Another interesting thing is that the most wealthy areas are those most likely to have few or no restrictions, while the poorest most crime ridden areas disallow chickens. After all, I can only assume, they wouldn't want anyone to think they were uppity.
I, along with some of our 650+ member chicken meetup group have become very active throughout the county trying to get or keep chickens legal.
Uphill battle with so many cities. A couple years ago, I went to war with my city and won. I have a permit for 85 chickens and 5 roosters. We are 7 and 1 in other cities so far.
Thanks for reading. I know this may seem so strange to people living in normal city/counties.
I live in Franklin County, which borders St. Louis county to the west. The city I live in, the largest in Franklin county, has no restirction about owning chickens, however, residents in a smaller, more rural city just west of us is prohibited from owning chickens. I find that very interesting as well.
Nice to see someone farily local on here!
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