So, @jchny2000 mentioned me in regard to a post in this string from several weeks ago. Keep meaning to comment.
So here is what I discovered. Okay maybe I should say this is what I believe? The city government made a big show of pretending they actually cared what us, the normal citizens of Indy think about Indy Rezone. The reality is when the city gets a multi million dollar grant from HUD to rezone things, they are going to do whatever the **** they want to do. They really don't care what we think - whether it be about livestock or other crazy nutso things in the rezoning. I guarantee that not one person of the city council even read the whole thing, it is over 700 pages long! It all was a giant political game. Even those who really didn't like big parts of it still voted for it to be passed. I spent a year feeling like we (my hubby and me) were alone in trying to fight it fromt he poultry angle. We just came late to the table. Most of the chicken people had already come to the conclusion that the city really did not care what they thought and it wasn't worth all the time, energy and emotional drama to fight it.
We are grandfathered in. You are lucky to have nice neighbors - but will you always have nice neighbors? We have dream neighbors on one side and a nightmare crazy neighbor on the other. She really is the definition of a bully to us and other neighbors- most who rent and just move. It is an on going battle whether it be over our birds or something else. At least since April 1, they have a guy who actually knows something about poultry who they send out. Nice guy, has chickens and Turkeys. But now we are the unfriendly neighbors with no trespassing signs all over all 4 side of our property - we want to chance that they come on our property without us home. How will they enforce it? The only way they enforce is when there is a complaint. So the guy we drive past almost daily on a main road that has twice as many chickens/ducks/turkeys as we do, and at least half have been added since April 1 (and Turkeys are not even allowed anymore- he has 10 poults), if no-one complains nothing will be done.
Technically if a citizen in Indy was not Grandfathered in, they can get a livestock license. still only a Draft at the bottom of the page:
http://www.indy.gov/egov/City/DMD/Current/Pages/ordinance.aspx
We are supposed to be on the committee to help draft this. Not sure if they are just sick of us and stopped inviting us to the meetings or if the fight they have undertaken is way more than they expected, by I think it is the later. Last meeting we were invited to was March 24, but the draft has not changed since then. There was barely a chicken presence there, but the rabbit people were in full force. No-one was happy. I know some of those active in the chicken community were not even invited. There are so many problems with the draft that I do not know even where to begin.
So I feel like we already lost the battle - Rezone went in effect April 1 without our citizens having any clue what it was really about.
Now I'm depressed, I think I will go spend some time with my birdies!