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.
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