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Did Guelph City Council put the chicken before the egg?

“We need to hear from other people who don’t necessarily appreciate chickens 10 feet from their door"
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Mike Craig holds one of the chickens he raises in his Guelph backyard. GuelphToday file photo

Guelph City Council backpedaled Monday on an earlier move to slacken its backyard chicken regulations.

At a previous meeting at the committee level, council backed a move that would reduce the distance a chicken coop needed to be from a neighbour’s home, opening the door for people with smaller backyards to keep up to 10 chickens.

The bylaw would change from 50 feet minimum from a neighbours home to 3 metres from a neighbours as part of the city’s new animal control bylaw.

But on Monday council decided at its last meeting of 2016 that it would keep the old distances until staff had a chance to do a more in-depth review of the proposed change.

It felt it was too hasty in supporting the initial changes.

Several councillors said they had heard from residents who opposed the smaller setbacks from neighbours. It was felt that perhaps their voice wasn’t heard clearly enough when the initial decision was made at a committee of the whole meeting two weeks ago.

“We need to hear from other people who don’t necessarily appreciate chickens 10 feet from their door,” said Coun. Bob Bell.

Mayor Cam Guthrie agreed.

“It’s an engagement/process issue,” Guthrie said in supporting the move to revert to the old rules until a further review could be done. “We need to get it right.”

The review will take place and city staff will report back to council by June of 2017.

City passed the rest of the new animal control bylaw, including a $25 cat licencing fee to come into effect in 2018. The fee is voluntary in 2017.

Councillor June Hofland led the way in opposition to passing two clauses in the proposed new animal control bylaw regarding chickens.

“It’s a quality of life issue for our residents,” Hofland said of opposition to the clauses that would have cleared the way for people with smaller backyards to have up to 10 chickens.

Three people spoke at the previous committee of the whole meeting in favour of lowering the setback distance. No one spoke in favour of maintaining the bigger distance.

Roosters remained banned.

The city spent three years in coming up with a new animal control bylaw, unifying four existing bylaws.


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Tony Saxon

About the Author: Tony Saxon

Tony Saxon has had a rich and varied 30 year career as a journalist, an award winning correspondent, columnist, reporter, feature writer and photographer.
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