Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Sarasota H-T Guest Column Provides Overview/Advice RE: City of Sarasota's New Chicken Ordinance

Today's Sarasota Herald-Tribune includes a CLUCK guest column, SUCCESS AT CHICKEN KEEPING, that outlines some of the basic provisions of the just passed City Ordinance 11-4955 and provides advice for would-be chicken keepers. 
Key recommendations include 1) Taking the Are You Ready for Backyard Chickens? QUIZ, 2) Taking an Introduction to Chickens class such as those offered by the Sarasota County Extension Office (next one April 2) and 3) understanding the city's constraints by reading an Annotated Version of the ordinance. Both the QUIZ and the Annotated Ordinance appear in the header bar of the Sarasota Sarasota CLUCK blog

Monday, February 7, 2011

Final Approval for City of Sarasota's "Chicken Ordinance" Today!

After 18 months of campaigning, negotiating, strategizing, constituency-building, lobbying, researching, blogging, compromising, organizing, listening, meeting, and arguing, it was all over in a few minutes. The Sarasota City Commission had the 'second reading' of Ordinance 11-4955 on the consent agenda and, since none of the Commissioners felt a need to 'pull' the item for further clarification or modification, it passed quickly and easily -- an anticlimax for what at some points seemed to some like a major neighborhood-destroying, real estate value eroding, public health menace community issue.