Will you please rise for the pledge of allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, we'll start off with a statement from from the Councilperson, Highland, Hesse, and Lease. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We'll start off with a statement from Councilperson Eileen Hesch and Wies. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Members of the committee. I would like to state why we came here today. Some members of our community came forward and wanted to have this ordinance proposed. I met with some 30 people at Christine Pocate's house. Well, actually, it wasn't her house. It was a neighbor's house, excuse me. And discussed with them the positives and negatives of what would be proposed. They asked me how they would go about doing this. They did a lot of work on the background and proposed it to us and ordinance has been submitted and that is what we are discussing today. So I'd like to recognize Christine Poquet to give an opening statement. Good afternoon members of the Lafayette City Council. It is great to be with you today. My name is Christine Polkett. I was born and raised here in Lafayette, graduated from Central Catholic High School and then Purdue University. I live in Lafayette with my husband and six children. I am here today to discuss the importance of legalizing Hans Lafayette. I first reach out to my district to representative Eileen Hessian Weiss. In January of this year, she attended a neighborhood gathering in February and has been a great support along the way. Thank you again, Eileen. I would also like to thank the members of the City Council for this ordinance modification under consideration and for allowing all of us to speak with you today. We come before you today because we love hands and we want them to be a part of our daily lives. Hens are remarkable animals that have survived since the time of dinosaurs. They were first domesticated roughly 8,000 years ago and have continued to play an important role in domestic life a few months ever since. Hens make wonderful pets, Hens are quiet, Dossile, largely-sufficient, and green. They eat a variety of weeds and disease-carrying insects like mosquitoes and ticks. And unlike our beloved cats and dogs whose waste kills our grass, Hens waste a fantastic fertilizer, high in nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Hens are remarkably intelligent with the ability to distinguish and remember up to 100 different human faces. A Hens powerful memory allows them to recall experiences with individuals and report positive and negative experiences with the other members of the flock. They're also tetra chromatic, meaning they can see more colors than humans. In lane eggs, hens provide us with one of the healthiest foods there is. Often referred to as nature's multivitamin. They have 13 essential vitamins and minerals. They are a staple and meals throughout the day, and they're versatile food, and they're more cost effective and a healthier way to feed a family. Plus, raising hands allows for a great opportunity to teach children's responsibility and educate them on exactly where the food they eat comes from, something that is needed now more than ever. Eggs from backyard flocks are healthier with a deeper yellow color and a richer taste, due to the fresh air, sunshine, and very diet. Some examples of Indiana cities that have hens legal are Richmond with three hens per lot, up to half acre. Valparaiso, chickens are allowed in parcels less than five acres. G ocean in Mishawaka allows urban chicken raising. South Bend, six hens, Evansville, Six Hens, Bloomington, Five Hens, Carmel, Six Hens, and Indianapolis with 12 Hens and Rooster in West Lafayette with no limit. I have personally spoken with officer Samuel Brown of Carmel, who has been in animal control for 10 years, starting in Indianapolis and whose current position has been in Carmel for the last seven years. He was very surprised when I told him that they aren't legal in Lafayette. He said there's been maybe three calls and none of them resulted in legal action, just education on the ordinance and a follow-up. I spoke with Jeffrey Ray, who's title is West Lafayette Code Enforcement, who has been in his position for 14 years and stated that not once had he received a complaint on a hen. The majority of their calls are on dogs. And an interesting fact is a dog bark is around 90 decibels, which is equivalent to a lawnmower, while an occasional hen clock is around 60 to 70 decibels, which is similar to a conversation. I spoke with Virgil Saudder, the director of the City of Bloomington Animal Care and Control. He stated in the years of enforcement, they have seen very few issues or violations of ordinance. Violations that have occurred have been minor and easily remedied. I also spoke with three different South Bend law enforcement employees. Lisa in the call center, who stated the only complaint they had was on an illegal rooster. Tracy on the non-emergency police line stated she cannot recall any complaints on Hens, but she did put me in contact with Ashley O'Chap, the director of communications for the South Bend Police Department, who verified that they have not had any complaints since Hens have been legal there since 2013. This proposed ordinance modification provides citizens with the opportunity to raise their own hands without infringing on the rights of their neighbors. Passing of this proposed change will allow both families and individuals in Lafayette to take part in what 93% of U.S. cities already experience. The joy of raising their food in the most local, of all sustainable and educational environments, their own backyard. We deeply appreciate your time and consideration you have given to this measure. Thank you very much. Kristen, can we get your address, please? 2301, Bennett Road. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, We'll now get ready for other public comments. You get three minutes to speak. You're encouraged not to repeat points that are you been made by others? And please be respectful and courteous to everyone here in the room. Okay. We would like to comment. I think we have carried our city tourney. She's gonna kind of go over the highlights of what the drafted ordinance has in it. Yeah, so just to go over some high level things in the draft. So we are only including chickens and not other waterfowls. So turkeys, peacocks, and other ducks would not be allowed. So this is strictly related to chickens. Additionally, the chicken flock definition is limited to five hens, no roosters, as was mentioned. Some additional highlights, I believe, are the pin and a cuphur required. So So, a coupon is where the chickens would reside in the evenings, whereas the pin is more of their move about space outside of that coupon area. This would have to all be enclosed, and it does have space requirements for block size. Additionally, the each coupe and pen must be at least 20 feet from any home that is capable of human habitation. So any neighbors homes, it cannot be right up against your neighbors' house. And if you wanted up against yours, you are more than welcome. However, it needs to be at least 10 feet from all property lines. It also has to be located at the behind a residential structure. So trying to keep them in people's backyards and contained. Additionally, if we do have some strict nuisance requirements regarding health and human safety, so we are trying to be conscious of the fact that chickens can be a nuisance if not well cared for. So we want to ensure that we have enforcement, capabilities, and our animal control department would be able to remove chickens if there's a violation of any of this fragments. So there's some high level over here. Thanks. Thank you. Pearl speaking in 923, South London, second street, not fit in there. I was four this ordinance 15 years ago. It's an American right. Chickens like Kersen, chickens doesn't call out my trouble. I care for 15 stray cats in my backyard. So I don't mind looking across the fence at chickens. So I say that you guys should take real thoughts in this. Give them the rights and make an ordinance ordinance and please when you make an ordinance don't make a territorial ordinance, make an ordinance that means everybody within the city limits whether it's in that woods or 20th century. Hey person for public comment? My name is Colleen Defi. I live at 2309 Bennett Road. I lived in Lafayette for about three years now. I used to reside in West Lafayette. And when I was there, because there we have ability to have hands in West Lafayette, I had two different neighbors that had hands. And I have never had the first problem or complain about having hands there. And I'm in full support and encourage you guys to consider this. Thank you. Thank you. Just in honor, 211, Cheshire Lane in Lafayette. I grew up in rural Ohio. I was a member of FFA. I raised chickens. I had over 200 head of chickens at one time in my property. Obviously this was on the countryside, but when I moved to Lafayette 20 years ago, I was shocked that we couldn't have a chicken in our yard. I can go over to Roaking in Lafayette property and buy baby chickens, but I'm not allowed to raise them in my own yard. It taught me a lot of lessons going up, not only to be a part of FFA and active in activities in my school because of it, but it gave me after school activities to take care of animals. I had responsibilities in the morning, responsibilities in the evening, and it gave me something to do. It allowed me to keep my time out of bad things. I wasn't watching TV, I was actually outside taking care of animals. And it gave me something to do. It allowed me to keep my time out of bad things. I wasn't watching TV. I was actually outside taking care of animals and it gave us food. Not only did we have meat chickens, which I don't know that anybody would want in Lafayette if you can only do five, but we had egg-legging chickens as well. Neighbors got them. You became better friends with your neighbors because you can give them eggs. A lot of people will like that. And I don't foresee any problems with people having chickens because I've been attacked by dogs that have gotten loose to my own neighborhood. I've been bitten by dogs, people have been molded by dogs, people have even been killed by dogs. That's not going to happen with a chicken. And so I think you should support that and give the people the right to be able to have them in their backyard Thank you for your comment Hope I'm John fry live in West Lafayette the own properties in Lafayette I don't know what address you want. I was actually calling neighbor so I was glad to hear that she didn't was embodied by my free range chickens I've had chickens for Probably 12 years and come from a family of chickens, and I'm very pro this. One question I have is as a property renter, can my renters have chickens, if I say it's okay? I am a bit concerned about the two square foot to five chickens, they live their whole lives. The way this is set up like in my house, my chickens are out, I go walk out there there. chickens are are going to have their own house. They're not going out of that. So we're only going into their house and that's only 10 square feet for five chickens as a minimum. So just that the square footage stuff is a little bit restrictive I think. Again, if you can police that are not it's one thing, but one thing to consider is that's a small place to live the rest of your life. Thank you. Hi, I am Amy Armentraoud. I live at 2713 Sleepy Hollow Drive. I've never spoken at a city council meeting before. So we homeschool, I homeschool three kids. And six months ago I had started a petition to have chickens in the city of Lafayette. And I don't know anything about petitions, but I thought that's the best place to start because the power is in the people, right? And that's what so many homeschool families want. And that is a community that's growing rapidly here in Lafayette. I had about 100 signatures and a thousand views and then it fizzled because I didn't do anything with it because I didn't know where else to go and I'm very glad that she did. As someone that wants to homeschool my kids and I want to teach them how to supply for themselves and how to live for themselves and how to be as self-sufficient as we can. We also don't have a desire to have a farm. I don't want five or six acres. I don't want horses. I don't want all of the large animals. I just want to teach them where their food comes from and I want to teach them how to care for the vulnerable animals that give us our food and provide for us because everything that we get at our house we purchase from the store and it would be really awesome to just have the experience of saving money because we have our own chickens but also teaching them in the process because I plan to homeschool until they graduate and that's just like one more benefit in such a growing homeschool community and this growing Lafayette community, it's just one more benefit to homeschooling here. Thank you. Hi, my name is Mary Lutz. I live in downtown Lafayette 417 South Forest Street. I am a home school mom, this is my son. I've homeschooled him his whole life and I'm a graduate from Purdue in the Botany department where I would did a lot of work with small-scale agriculture and help start the student farm that is now a bigger deal there. But we started with chickens, and it was a special thing to offer Purdue students interested in small scale ag that wasn't currently being offered there. The chance to experience caring for chickens. It changed my life doing that. It was the first time that I ever had experience doing that. But making a connection with another living thing that is not a cat or a dog was really important for me. And I would like to offer that to my son. And I would like to offer that to everybody in my community. And including the ability to make protein source for myself in the city. also eat all the food scraps, or way they would eat a lot of them. So I could remove that from my waste in the city and my neighbors as well. It would bring me and my neighbors together more by being able to share the experience of the life of the chickens and caring for them. It would create more educational opportunities for adults and children. It would get people talking about life in a way that I think is essential to keeping communities working with neighbor to neighbor, especially when there are a whole myriad of different views happening. People need something to connect over and the more that that can be offered the better in my opinion. Also I think that it is just a human right to be able to provide healthful food for myself. I don't actually need permission to do that, but I don't care to have fines or breaking laws on my conscience or record. So please allow me my human right to provide healthful food for myself and to teach my son the exact same thing and provide connections in communities. And one thing I did want to say about the rules that were put in the citation, or I'm sorry, the ordinance. Thank you very much. I thought that some of them could be slightly unachievable and become a bit of a thing to monitor a little too closely. I think that some one of the things where every day, all right, it was section 10.11.030. And I highlighted the words every day in sanitary and I wasn't sure if people would understand the rhetoric or even be able to achieve that in a small space or if they were sharing the activity with their neighbors. And then I would also urge that anybody who is checking on the rules, like somebody who you might send out, if it's just the animal control, people, or if it is other people, they definitely would need to have chicken knowledge, because there's a lot of understanding that needs to happen with chickens, not just following rules. These are lives, the circumstantial, and a lot of people coming in that don't know anything about chickens might just make snap judgments and give people fines and make it a bad thing when it's not really the case. But either way, I really appreciate you considering this because I also was a group about 10 years ago that wanted to make this happen and so I'm really happy to see it coming back around. Thanks. Thank you. Good afternoon everybody. Nathan McBrownette, 802 North 9th Street Unit 31. Thank you for drafting this ordinance. Thank you, Cara. I'm assuming you wrote it up. So thanks for that. I had a few kind of questions or points that I wanted to touch on. I'm a renter. I know renters were just mentioned. So I too share in that question of whether renters would be allowed to keep chickens at the consent of the homeowner. Thinking of this specifically as the ability to provide our own foods, eggs are really expensive right now. Renters are generally more low in come them home owners. So if you're looking at a at the net positive impact of an ordinance like this, I think you should definitely focus on trying to make it equitable and achievable by renters as well. Some questions I had are regarding multi-unit buildings, like two family dwellings, four family dwellings. I know that there's a distance requirement from other units. I know other localities that have chicken ordinances. They often allow a waiver for if the property owners surrounding consent to it, and they provide that written consent to the city, they allow for a waiver of that setback, specifically with a two-family dwelling, it'd be very hard to maintain that setback. And I don't see why, just because you live in a two-family dwelling, you shouldn't be able to have chickens because you can have a yard. We also have some unique situations where there are homeowners who live in two-family dwellings like on Third Street, near Civic, there's a planned unit development where their renters live beneath the primary unit on top. So in those kind of unique situations, I think it's important to kind of tweak it a bit for those. Let me see what else. Oh, I was wondering if the city would be willing to entertain a more liberal setback specifically for the chicken pen or the structure that's not the coupe. If it can be allowed within that 20 foot area, that would allow it to be more achievable within urban lots, properties that are generally narrow. Again, just because you live in an urban lot near the core of the city, I don't feel like that should exempt you from being able to have chickens. Let me see. Oh, and then I was wondering. I know some other localities allow chickens to free roam during the day when they're supervised. I thought maybe that would be a great idea here as well since they can help with maintaining the yard, you know, picking those bugs and other things. And since there's a provision specifically for like sick chickens, it says that like sick chickens are ones that are ill in some way. And especially if they're contagious, they should be removed from the rest of the flock. So if you have to remove them for the rest of the flock, does that mean that they're able to exit the coop or the enclosure, or they're able to be kept somewhere else? And then I was just wondering if the city would be interested in pursuing a zoning ordinance amendment. I think something like this would be beneficial to other localities. So thank you. Thank you for your comment. I'm Elisa Leid. I live at 22 21 North 21st Street. And I'm someone who's never actually own chickens, but I was very excited when I heard about this because I have many friends who have owned them and growing up in Frankfurt while I didn't have chickens. I did raise rabbits on a very small scale. It was nothing I was ever going to get rich from or anything, but as many other people have stated, raising animals, even just on a small scale, is a very educational experience as a kid and a teenager I studied animal biology and health and nutrition just through having those few bunnies. And I think a lot of those same things will apply to people raising chickens. And I know for me, I was really involved with 4H as well, and there's so many wonderful programs to help our youth and our community to learn and grow such a healthy and wonderful skill of taking care of animals, learning responsibility and empathy, and I think it would be a wonderful benefit to our community and personally as a new homeowner in the area I'd be happy to have a neighbors with chickens by me. I know there's many other animals whether it's feral cats or dogs It's sometimes bark a lot and I love them don't get me wrong, but honestly, I think chickens will be less of an issue compared to some of the animals We already allow in the community so I'd strongly Would desire for this to pass. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else for public comment? Hi, I'm sure you guys recognize me. I'm from over the river in West Lafayette. I'm irisodonobelosario. I do not live here, but I am a chicken owner. And I live around people who do own chickens, so thought I'd share a little bit about that experience. So I'm here today to speak in support of allowing chickens within the city of Lafayette. As a chicken owner myself, I found tremendous joy caring for my flock that each have. They're very own unique personalities and I even take them on leashes on walks. And my neighbors love them. They also enjoy the perks of having free eggs because they produce too many for one person, one person household. I know many people over the river have been able to keep them responsibly and not have a lot of issues with them. And so did want to share that experience that we have not had a lot of issues with responsible owners for their chickens. If they're cared for properly, they can be very quiet, clean, and a valuable part of a sustainable household. I would like to address one part of the proposed ordinance, the section. I mentioned something regarding daily cleaning. While cleanliness is obviously important and that is a factor and something that I do throughout the summer, there is something that is called the deep litter method in the winter where you actually allow the litter to build up with a mix of volcanic ash, wood shavings and other things, and that is how they naturally insulate their coop. It should not be built up outside but within the coop itself that's contained so that there is not odor being shared so I would encourage you to allow that build up of that natural insulation over the winter. It's not just about leaving that waste necessarily but done correctly. It's a safe odor controlled and actually provides a healthy habitat for those chickens. Thank you for considering a very thoughtful chicken-friendly ordinance that supportsiverdale Drive, kind of on the far limits of Lafayette. And I should preface saying I've kind of always wanted chickens, but Lafayette hasn't allowed that. And we got to hear a little late. But to piggyback also on the deep litter method, it self composts. So you end up with rich material for a garden bed in the spring as well when you clean your coop out. I'm shaky. And also it, it, having chickens, it, it's almost like you have self composting animals because you can't compost dog poop, you can't compost cat poop, but you can compost chicken poop and you can use it in your garden after it's been composted for a while. So you can really use every part of what a chicken provides. You can use the eggs, you can use the feathers. You can cut them up the compost too. Feather meal is actually a fertilizer byproduct that you can buy at the store. And chickens are, they're just so quirky, they're fun. And they're just, they're useful, but they're also really good pets when you're allergic to furry animals like I am. And we have a friend that I've been building a flock without Nauromni and it's just, it's a hassle to go back and forth. It would be really nice to have our own cooping enclosure if it were allowed, which I hope it is. So that's everything I had. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else for public comment? Anybody else like to make public comment this time? A couple of reminders at the next City Council meeting this will not be discussed but there will be another public hearing right here on May 8th from 5 o'clock to 6 o'clock. It's just one thing and chair. This is government at its best and I'm so happy that you all came out to express your views. I'm a little surprised there wasn't more negative. I have to be honest with you. But thank you for taking the time, Christine, and all of your neighbors for coming forth with this and your issues, and we really much appreciate it. It's what we're here for, so please do not ever be nervous about coming and speaking at a public meeting because that's what we're here for. Okay, we have a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Goodbye. Thank you.