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