Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Small Town Politics

#1
Zinjanthropos Offline
For you people in the big urban centres the problems that go along with running a city are huge. From mass transit to services, all colossal undertakings. Things are a little less intense in a smaller township, such as the one I pay taxes to. Until recently I never realized the importance of a good town council but ours is so bad that making the distinction is easy. 

I watched the town council one night argue 3 hrs over bits of toilet tissue left on the floor of a town owned washroom in one of our parks. Their latest night of wrangling actually produced what one councillor thought to be a great proactive reaction to a problem we never really had. Even the mayor seemed flabbergasted but this is small town politics at its best, dealing with issues of massive importance to its residents. 

The latest:
Quote:The town won’t be going ahead with a proposed pilot project that would allow residents in rural residential areas to raise chickens on their property.
At Monday’s council-in-committee meeting, town politicians voted against directing staff to draft a temporary bylaw that would have given the pilot the go-ahead but residents in approved areas in town will be allowed to keep up to five chickens.
“This is a solution to something that has not been a problem,” Mayor Wayne Redekop said, adding that during his many years at town hall, there had only been one complaint and that was for a Stevensville * resident who was keeping chickens within the urban boundary.

“We’re going to be setting up a large amount of work for a small amount of people.”

*I never knew I had a neighbour who raised chickens. Stevensville is roughly 10 km from anything that could be classed as urban. Stevensville is part of town of Fort Erie.

We have a new KFC on the town’s main drag if any of those poor poultry farmers needs a chicken that bad. 
Reply
#2
stryder Offline
Sounds much like the village politics that occurred where I grew up as a kid. The village council was a collection of people from the village that I assume volunteered themselves to aid in making village decisions. The problem was that some of them literally were bullies and they would go out of their way to make life miserable for other village committee members if things didn't go their particular way.

The problem then was it meant they literally got to dictate exactly what they wanted, if they wanted to have something done to their house which might otherwise have caused objections from their neighbours they could press people to go along with it, however if there was something that you wanted done to your house and they didn't want it, it would be made to go the other way. I wouldn't be surprised if the ownership of chickens cropped up a couple of times (I'm not sure if we kept them as pets or just to wind up that bully from nextdoor), Cockerels do like to crow and funnily enough neighbours like to moan.

I guess during that time it wasn't particularly pleasant for their meetings.

However much of their meetings were straight forwards considerations like which clubs in the area needed support, what needed to be done about high grasses and hedgerows in rural areas, or lighting in specific areas as well as the plans for their annual fayre's (amongst other events)

The village meetings however for the most part were closed sessions, it would be rare for them to open the meeting to a public audience unless they were actually dealing with something that effected the whole village (like an eventual bypass that was planned at that stage)
Reply
#3
Zinjanthropos Offline
Quote:The village council was a collection of people from the village that I assume volunteered themselves to aid in making village decisions. 

Ours are elected. There was one councilwoman who applauded the chicken ban and in my mind has the greatest surname of any politician I’ve ever come across......Noyes, that’s right No & Yes. Plus the added bonus of being a homonym of noise.
Reply
#4
C C Offline
(Mar 20, 2019 11:28 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: . . . The latest:
Quote:The town won’t be going ahead with a proposed pilot project that would allow residents in rural residential areas to raise chickens on their property. [...] “We’re going to be setting up a large amount of work for a small amount of people.”

*I never knew I had a neighbour who raised chickens. Stevensville is roughly 10 km from anything that could be classed as urban. Stevensville is part of town of Fort Erie.

We have a new KFC on the town’s main drag if any of those poor poultry farmers needs a chicken that bad. 

I remember a water tower town (pop. 5000) that had one inspector, surely saddled with loads of other duties, that included checking to see that chickens and other poultry weren't being raised by residents. This woman had a penned flock in her backyard for probably a decade (according to neighbors, anyway) before the official finally, incrementally made the rounds to her particular neighborhood and discovered them.

Some of the larger city birdbrains -- far more alienated from rural surroundings -- probably would have considered even a common pet chicken like a Silkie, equipped with diapers, to be a plague hazard. In fact, I recall a lady in Albuquerque describing how she became the center of that very kind of public mayhem, with emergency and medical vehicles clogging the street and police ushering her out of the home which safety authorities condemned afterwards. They literally put her in an ambulance and took her to hospital to examine her for disease -- all that because she had a freaking little pet chicken, fully equipped with hygienic nappies and whatever else, coupled with a call made by a vengeful neighbor.

###
Reply




Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)