[OKC] FW: Report on chickens -- maybe Seattle won't steal our thunder after all

[Shauna Lawyer Struby]

FYI and a big shout out and thank you to Sara Braden for her courageous
work!

 

From: Sara Braden [mailto:srbraden at gmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2010 2:44 PM
Subject: Backyard Chickens discussed at City Council meeting

 

Great news!  The City Council meeting was a huge success.  My technological
skills do not permit me to watch the video of the meeting, but I'll give you
a recap of it as accurately as I can:

 

Sam Bowman (Ward 2) read a report describing the two studies that have been
done.  Then he acknowledged that this issue is not going to go away!  He
suggested that we try legalizing chickens in one neighborhood, to see how it
goes; or that we let individual neighborhoods decide whether it should be
allowed in their neighborhood.  Either of those options, while not ideal,
would be a wonderful step forward!

 

Pete White (Ward 4) and Brian Walters (Ward 5) are both in favor of
legalizing chickens.  Walters particularly drove home the fact that chickens
are less noisy and less smelly than dogs.  He also stated that legalizing
chickens shouldn't cause an increase in the cost of code enforcement, which
was a wonderful thing for him to say; Sam Bowman and the Planning Department
are both concerned about code enforcement costs related to this issue.

 

Larry McAttee (Ward 3) is still as adamantly against this as ever.  He
pointed out that, although the Peer Cities study indicates that seven out of
eight of our Peer Cities allow chickens, some of those cities have such
severe restrictions (such as the chickens' enclosure must be 50 feet from
any structure) that they basically prohibit anyone from keeping chickens.  I
thanked him for pointing that out and requested that, if chickens be made
legal here, City Council not make our restrictions so severe.

 

Gary Marrs (Ward 1) and Patrick Ryan (Ward 8) didn't say much.  Meg Salyer
(Ward 6) and Skip Kelly (Ward 7), are not in favor of legalizing chickens,
but not vehemently against it.  Salyer's reason against it, for example, was
that since it's legal on more than one acre, that's sufficient.

 

Many, many thanks to Allen Parleir for the idea of looking up which NBA
teams come from cities where chickens are allowed.  Out of the 30 NBA
cities, 23 allow chickens.  I made two banners, one tiny one and one huge
one, to illustrate this point, and that made a big hit with the whole City
Council as well as the Mayor.

 

There will be an article about this in the Gazette next week.

 

I will wait a few days before contacting Sam Bowman and trying to figure out
where we should go from here.  Bowman mentioned asking for a report from
Planning in 60 to 90 days, so I'll ask him whether that's really going to
happen and what they're going to ask be included in that report.

 

Sara Braden

525-2693

 

 

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