Here is the proposed Ordinance that the village manager brought to the council on this past Wednesday 4/13/16. He is a good guy but I don't think he was influenced by the " Anti Urban Chicken Establishment", Anti Chicken council members and this ordinance reflects it.
We debated it for about an hour. Well, that's not correct. I took the time, pre-meeting, to print up a fact booklet as a rebuttal to some of the negatives presented and to put facts in front of them. A couple of my fellow council trustees would not even take the time to look past the front page. We even had a local Veterinarian ( a leading expert in poultry and wild bird rehabilitation for MSU) in the room. A couple of the council members would not let the expert (that was invited by the village manage rand Village President) speak.
In the end we could only agree on sending the proposal to the planning board to try and draw up an acceptable ordinance. Our Vet and expert was invited to to the meeting to help.
I'm rambling!!!
My position: As elected trustees, our position should be to take what the community wants and do our due diligence to try and find a way to make the idea work. If there is no feasible way then we should ask for the community to help us find a way to make the idea work. Our position should not to sit there and say " I don't care what they want! I don't want Chickens next to me"!
On March 5 we held a Strategic planning meeting at the high school library. We invited the public and provided lunch. One of the top 5 categories from the public was to implement a farmers market and to allow urban chickens. We spent the money to run the meeting. The community invested 8 hours of their time on a Saturday.
I would think we owe it to them to do our best to create an ordinance that reflects our best effort towards success instead of dooming a poor ordinance to failure...
We debated it for about an hour. Well, that's not correct. I took the time, pre-meeting, to print up a fact booklet as a rebuttal to some of the negatives presented and to put facts in front of them. A couple of my fellow council trustees would not even take the time to look past the front page. We even had a local Veterinarian ( a leading expert in poultry and wild bird rehabilitation for MSU) in the room. A couple of the council members would not let the expert (that was invited by the village manage rand Village President) speak.
In the end we could only agree on sending the proposal to the planning board to try and draw up an acceptable ordinance. Our Vet and expert was invited to to the meeting to help.
I'm rambling!!!
My position: As elected trustees, our position should be to take what the community wants and do our due diligence to try and find a way to make the idea work. If there is no feasible way then we should ask for the community to help us find a way to make the idea work. Our position should not to sit there and say " I don't care what they want! I don't want Chickens next to me"!
On March 5 we held a Strategic planning meeting at the high school library. We invited the public and provided lunch. One of the top 5 categories from the public was to implement a farmers market and to allow urban chickens. We spent the money to run the meeting. The community invested 8 hours of their time on a Saturday.
I would think we owe it to them to do our best to create an ordinance that reflects our best effort towards success instead of dooming a poor ordinance to failure...
