Please Help!!! City Council meeting today!!

[erinm]

I don't understand why anyone would be bothered anyway. This society has become too intolerant to many things and the opposite can be sais also. Too TOLERANT of things it should not tolerate. A bunch of chickens cackling should be the least of any city/towns problems. Erin M.

 

[chickaboo7]

How did things go? Hoping to see lots of smiling ckicks!!!

 

[V Chic Chick]

I want to know how it went too!

 

[SeaChick]

Okay, here's the update!!!

First of all, here's the local news story (click the "play video" link http://www.wcsh6.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=64471)
Those aren't our birds, by the way, they belong to an underground chicken owner we know.

It started off badly, with one guy (not a councilor) really trying to get the others to drop this. he is the one who had written up the language requiring neighbor approval, and then he said "Well, we can't do that, it's unconstitutional, so we should drop this." !!!!!!!

Luckily, several of the other councilors said, let's figure out a way to make this work. One woman even said, "I can't believe I am saying this, since I really don't want to live near chickens, but surely we can figure out how to pass this." It is so gratifying to see all of our hard work over the last 2 months come to something. We had about 25 supporters there, even though it was just a workshop and they couldn't speak. And over 250 signatures we'd collected. And I KNOW that lots of people have emailed thier councilors... it's really made a difference.

So the upshot is that they changed the way they're doing this... they're making it a licensing ordinance instead, with restrictions along the lines of:
$50 application fee first year, $20 annually
~No roosters
~Kept fenced/enclosed
~Some amount of distance required between coop and property line or neighbors residence (One copuncilor wants 20' from property line but we recommend 25' from neighbor's residence instead)
~Permit subject to owners keeping hens in sanitary manner with no odors or nuisance noise
~Permit subject to coops not being an eyesore
~One of the councilors said, "All lighting has to be on motion sensors".. I have no idea what she's after with that. Predator protection? Anyone have this? I would think that the lights going off would startle the hens and make them case a ruckus at night- which we DON'T want....
~(they dropped the neighbor approval part)

Unfortunately, the Public Hearing and Council Vote isn't till August 6th. I'm worried we'll lose our public support and media momentum. We'll have to work hard at the end of July to remind folks and get them to speak at the hearing. Sigh. This is totally exhausting and we're not getting ANYTHING else done in our lives. but we can't back out now, Olivia is really determined about this.

Stacey

 

[BeckyLa]

Congratulations! Sounds like you're making an impression. It's so good to hear of politicians trying to work with people. I really hope this works out for y'all. After all, wasn't it one of our Presidents that said " a chicken in every yard?" (Becky's translation)

 

[DementedHam]

i would say 50 feet. that is more than enough. at that distance you can't really hear or notice them.