Chicken Coops

Did you know you can keep chickens within the city limits? The ordinance got passed a few years ago after several years of work and our city streets have not been taken over by raging flocks of poultry. If you would like to see some of the coops and get inspired to host your own flock, good news! There is a chicken coop tour coming up in June though I am not sure how beautiful they will be. I  had to clean out chicken coops in my misspent youth and they get messy:

Keep Carbondale Beautiful is planning a tour of “Chicken Coops of Carbondale”, set for Saturday, June 3rd from 2 to 5 p.m.  Chicken coopers are still being sought to participate.  The tour will run like previous garden tours:  The self-guided tour will begin at the  Old Train Depot/Carbondale Main Street (121 S Illinois Ave), where maps and tickets will be available for $5.  More information will follow.  Coop owners who are willing to show off their chickens are asked to contact Sarah Heyer at 618 525 5525.

More about Chickens

Just got an email from city senior planner Chris Wallace clarifying a few things regarding the chicken ordinance.

The coop and enclosure do not need to be covered by mesh.

While there is a minimum floor area, there is no minimum height for the coop. There is a maximum height of 8' for the coop.  The minimum height for the enclosure for the chickens is 5', not the coop itself.

City Council Meeting

Figured it would be over by the time I arrived about 10 p.m. last night but nope, council was still discussing the solid waste/recycling scheduling issue, with Councilwoman Jane Adams offering an amendment to the ordinance that would limit trash pickup to two cans per household with an additional charge for extra cans.  Councilwoman Corine McDaniels came out strongly against this proposal, arguing that such a limit and charge would be unfair to larger households which would conceivably generate a larger quantity of garbage.  Adams' amendment lost, 6 to 1 if I remember rightly.  Then there was another clarification indicating that 4 apartment multplexes could now participate in the city's recycling program, whereas before no apartments were included.  After this, the original ordinance passed.

The chicken ordinance (allowing Carbondale residents to keep up to six chickens, no roosters) came up next with several members of the Sustainability Commission ready and waiting to promote the ordinance to the council.  Unfortunately, they didn't get the chance as, after some discussion, council decided to send the ordinance to the Planning Commission for evaluation and recommendation regarding what action the council should take.At least a couple of council members argued for a higher chicken tax than the currently proposed one of $5.

Council comments were enlivened by a brief argument between Councilwoman Adams and Councilman Lance Jack, with Adams taking Jack to task for comments he had made regarding the appropriateness of other councilmenbers, Adams included, to vote on liquor issues since they owned shares in the Neighborhood Food Co-op, which will soon sell beer and wine.  Jack retorted that, according to state law, even indirect ownership in an establishment selling liquor was enough to disqualify a member of the council from voting on the issue.  Adams then responded that the city attorney had looked into the issue and had said there was no conflict of interest.  It looked as if the two of them planned to go back and forth on this for several minutes until Mayor Fritzler stepped in and put a halt to the argument, saying that council comments was not the appropriate place for such a discussion.  Council then moved into closed session.

I missed the earlier section of the meeting when the council voted to pull funding for District 95's Summer Math and Reading program but understand that Councilwoman McDaniels and Councilman Chris Wissmann both spoke out in favor of retaining the funding, while Councilwoman Adams, while agreeing the program did show benefits, said the city could not afford funding it at this time.  City funding for the program was then cut, with Adams, Fronabarger, Monty and Fritzler voting in favor of the cut, while Jack, Wissmann and McDaniels voted to retain it.

City Council Meeting

Several interesting items on the agenda of what looks like a busy city council meeting tonight including the chicken ordinance, the establishing of a solid waste recycling fee schedule, and the termination of city funding for District 95's Summer Reading and Math Program

Council Meeting

Well, that was a comparatively short council meeting. Mayor Cole chose not to put the chicken ordinance on the agenda so, since the next council meeting focuses on the budget, chickens likely won't come up for discussion again until after the election. Tom Egert's request for a special use exemption for his property on Springer Ridge Road was approved after he withdrew the request for an additional three cabins and submitted a request for the city to just approve the three already standing there.

City Council

Apparently the city expects a large turnout for tonight's meeting as seating has expanded to twice the normal space. Guess lots of people want to weight in on the Cabin by the Lake zoning and the chicken ordinance.

Sustainability Commission

Either it's a slow news day or there is more interest in the chicken ordinance than I thought, as both Asst. City Manager Kevin Beatty and Councilman Joel Fritzler reported gettting contacted by various papers and television stations regarding it.

Meeting started with an update on the Koppers wood treating site cleanup, which is progressing glacially slowly, mainly due to continued revisions in the plan by the EPA. Then the commission moved on to the fun stuff, the chickens.

One local landlord showed up to argue against the ordinance, saying that the provision not allowing renters to keep chickens discriminated against renters and that chickens should be treated like dogs and required to get re-licensed every year, rather than the one time license proposed in the ordinance. When the commission asked if she would be OK with changing the ordinance to allow renters to keep chickens with landlords having the ability to say "No Chickens" as they can with pets, I found that renters abuse landlords horribly, as she indicated that, despite her policies, renters brought pets into her properties all the time and it was almost impossible to get them out once they did and she expected the same thing to happen with chickens. Both provisions remained in the ordinance, however, and it passed. The commission will send it on to city council, hopefully to appear on the March 22 agenda.

The meeting ended with after a discussion of bike paths and trails in Carbondale. Beatty mentioned several grants the city had applied for, however many of them required matching funds, which the city does not have available, despite the $500,000 included in the Saluki Way tax proposal. The commission decided to look furthen into sources of funding for bike paths and the feasibility of creating one running along the railroad tracks from North Oak to the University.

Sustainability Commission

Sat in on the sustainability commission's meeting last Thursday evening. Pretty good attendance with 7 committee members there and 4 onlookers. The two major topics were a report on the Koppers wood treating plan cleanup from Kevin Beatty and a discussion of the proposed ordinance allowing city residents to keep chickens.

The cleanup continues to move along slowly. Apparently part of the reason for the slowdown is continual changes in rules and requirements from the EPA. Although the entire area covers about 10 acres in northeast Carbondale, the actual area requiring cleanup only covers about an acre, it is just spread in several locations over the property.

The proposed chicken ordinance would allow a maximum of six chickens per household for egg production only (no roosters and no raising chickens to slaughter for Sunday dinner). The committee based much of the ordinance on the current C'dale dog ordinance. Chickens have to have a license ($5 per chicken) and must stay on a leash when taken outside the back yard. Whoops, scratch that last part. They will probably have a leg band to identify licensed chickens. Chickens must stay confined to the back yard and the ordinance has specifics regarding location and construction of their coop, based on ordinances passed by other chicken friendly cities (Napierville IL and Columbia MO).

One point inserted into the ordinance after listening to community input is a provision that a dog that kills a loose chicken shall not be considered, for that reason alone, a dangerous or vicious dog. Still under discussion are regulations regarding the disposal of dead chickens, which, since people don't eat dogs, is not an issue covered under the dog ordinance.