Item 2A: Approval of City Council Minutes

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smelled bad and attracted flies. Ms. Taylor also pointed out that chickens were hard to sex when young, and she asked what happened when a chick turned out to be a rooster. Mr. Clark thanked staff and the project advisory committee. He acknowledged that a three-day food supply could be a problem in the case of emergency. He had a large garden and said he would like to see more people have gardens. He said that access to the City’s community gardens was a high value for many residents, and reported that he had received a number of complaints about the recent fee increase, which he thought was a problem the City needed to address. Mr. Clark wanted to expand access to the community gardens to allow more people to participate. Mr. Clark noted the lack of information in the presentation in regard to transportation and the storage and processing of food from both a food security standpoint as well as from the economic standpoint. He called for a richer discussion of what the community could do to enhance its infrastructure for food transportation, storage, and processing. Speaking to the proposed motions, Mr. Clark indicated he would support continuing suspension of the ordinance governing the number of chickens that could be kept inside the city limits to permit further discussion. Mr. Poling thought the proposed motions related to the keeping of chickens deserved a separate work session. He said the issues raised by Ms. Taylor were also of concern to him. He cited potential safety concerns about home-raised eggs and the fact chicken feed attracted rodents. He also questioned the cost estimate for the code revision process. Ms. Hansen anticipated that most of the cost would be due to the cost of notice. It was possible notice of the process could be folded into the notice for the Envision Eugene process. Mr. Poling preferred changing the code to continuing suspension of code enforcement. He asked if staff was monitoring complaints about chickens. Mr. McKerrow reported that the City averaged six to eight complaints each year and all regarded the noise roosters made. Ms. Solomon agreed with Mr. Poling. She was willing to double the number of chickens allowed and perhaps even raise the number to five because otherwise she feared there would be abuse. She objected to the burden that fell on neighbors to have to be the complainant. Ms. Solomon did not see the nexus between food security and the issue of how many chickens one could keep. She thought people were supposed to be growing eggs for personal consumption, and was concerned that if people sold eggs there could be cases of salmonella. She expressed disappointment about how the item was presented to the council and said people who were following the issue would not be able to discern from the agenda item title that the discussion was about chickens. Mr. Brown indicated support for continuing the suspension. He requested a copy of the Lane County Local Food Market Analysis and a copy of the food security assessment. Mr. Nelson indicated he would provide that information to all councilors. City Manager Ruiz clarified that staff did not intend for the agenda item title to be deceptive and he anticipated additional public conversation. He said the City was not actively enforcing the limit on the chickens a resident could keep, and the proposed motions recognized that and moved onto the next step of MINUTES—City Council September 29, 2010 Page 5 Work Session