More on urban farming...

On Friday, October 1, all candidates for city council received the following e-mail:

Good afternoon, candidates.
The Standard is preparing a "Hot Topics" election story for publication next week on the issue of urban farming in St. Catharines.
If you have an opinion on whether this is a practice that should be permitted in the urban area (i.e. the keeping of livestock such as chickens or rabbits), please send reporter Marlene Bergsma a short email before the end of the day on Monday, Oct.  4th, clearly outlining your views.
Please also include a phone number where you can be reached during the day, in case I need to seek clarification.
As many candidate comments as possible will be included in the story and in The Standard's online election coverage.
Thank you for your participation.
Marlene Bergsma

As I don't know which (if any) of my comments will be printed with the story, I've chosen - once again - to post my full response here:

Laura Ip to Marlene
show details Oct 1 (3 days ago)

Hi, Marlene

Here are my thoughts on urban farming:

Chickens are currently legal in St. Catharines. It is legal to keep them as pets, it is legal to allow them to run in the backyard during the day, and it is legal to eat the eggs that they produce. What is not currently legal is to keep them in a coop in the backyard at night, while they are sleeping.

It is estimated by one of the local feed stores that there are currently 60 or so families who keep chickens. Until coops were requested, the public heard no complaints from residents about those who were keeping chickens. I don't believe that most residents are very concerned about this issue, as it has not come up at all in my canvassing or other discussions.

The group that presented to City Council back in September has researched by-laws in several other municipalites and been in touch with humane societies in other municipalities. They've done their homework on this issue.

If there were issues with avian flu or any of the other public health related concerns that some people have raised, we would have been hearing about them, as Niagara Falls currently allows residents to keep up to 10 chickens.

I believe that the request for a by-law change, which is modelled after the by-law in Vancouver, is perfectly reasonable.


My phone number is 905-984-0741. If I don't answer immediately, please do leave a voice mail, and I will return your call within a few minutes, as I am monitoring my phone for calls even while in class, etc. (though I can't answer the phone in class and must leave to return a call, of course).

Thanks,
Laura

~~~~~

To add to this further, not a single resident in St. George's ward has raised this issue with me. Through all of the door-to-door canvassing, e-mails and phone calls, it hasn't come up once. Unless a significant number of people in my ward come forward in opposition to this, I have yet to be presented with any valid reason to vote against it.

Those who have made the request have researched their issue better than a great many delegations to Council do (in my experience), which is not to say that no one else does thorough research, but this group has been able to answer every question I've thrown at them and backed it up with reliable sources.