Humboldt’s not the only city in Saskatchewan that has discussed and rejected backyard chickens.
Prince Albert’s council talked about the issue on July 13 at its executive meeting and decided to not move forward with a 5-4 vote.
Greg Dionne, the city’s mayor, did not vote in favour of the chicken pilot project because he wanted to see rules about it first.
“The most important thing to me, before I allow chickens, is if they get out and they’re causing a problem, we’d better have a quick solution for them,” Dionne said.
“My neighbour said, ‘I can’t support the chicken bylaw until I get ahold of the cats.’ There’s a perfect example. We’ve got to deal with cats. They’re everywhere. They’re in people’s planters, and now we want to have chickens,” he added.
Dionne said he understands why the Prince Albert Food Coalition wants to have chickens in the city and explained that he used to live on an acreage. He said residents choose to move off the acreage and farms to get away from farm animals, and rejected comparisons to other cities that have backyard chicken pilot programs.
“We’re not like Toronto where for miles and miles you have no place to do it, so people are putting gardens on the roof and stuff like that,” he said. “We have lots of land, lots of property available, if you want chickens.”
In a letter to Council dated June 10 the Food Coalition proposed the City work with them on a one-year pilot project to assess the viability of urban chickens in Prince Albert. In the pilot project a maximum of 10 participants would agree to keep urban chickens under a permit system.
Some conditions of the permit include that the permit holder must be an owner of single family dwelling with a city-sized lot, an adequate structure must be built to house and contain chickens on the property, and no roosters are to be owned. The urban flock must be monitored by the volunteer assessment group, and permit holders should comply with noise, odour, pest prevention and welfare conditions of the permit. All costs would be borne by the permit holder and permits can be revoked at the discretion of the city.
When the pilot was completed the volunteer group would summarize the outcomes, including input from the residents who live near the permit holders and make a presentation to city council to determine if the project was successful.
Councillor Terra Lennox-Zepp initially made the motion to approve the chicken pilot project. She said city council already considered proposed rules and guidelines two years ago, and urged them to take another look at it.
After much discussion, she altered her motion to have administration provide a follow-up report by the next executive committee meeting on Aug. 10. Previous votes on backyard chickens died after a tie vote, but Lennox-Zepp said there was still a lot to build on.
“Administration did a pretty thorough job of looking at regulations and strict regulations,” Lennox-Zepp said.
