Permit Update

I've been getting harassed at work for not posting an update.  So much, yet nothing, has happened over the past few days.  There will be a few posts coming - each with a different topic.  Unless I start to ramble, then who knows what you'll get.

I finally got the permit application from the city.  To me, this should have been a no-brainer.  Fill out some paperwork, send in a check, and I'd have my permit.  But no.  Not so easy in a small town. 

I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but I live in a very small town in the middle of the Twin Cities metro area.  There are no city services - everything is contracted out.  For the permit, I'm actually dealing with two consultants that the city hired.  The city planner and the city Forrester.  Both are nice people, but there is a level of bureaucracy I have to deal with that I hadn't anticipated.  The Forrester is the person who will be approving the permit; however the city planner is the one who handles all the paperwork.   As there are no city employees, the citizens with permit requests are the ones who end up paying for the administrative work instead of all the taxpayers.  Fair, I guess, but not something I was expecting.  An unintended expense.

The Forrester stopped by last week (Wednesday) with the permit application along with some instructions on how to fill out the form, who to write the check to and to add some additional details to the application around what I will and won't do, etc.  The following day, I started to fill out the form and had a question.  Since I was sending the information to the city planner, I called her.  She gave me the answers I was looking.  As we were talking, I confirmed a piece of information that I got from the Forrester the previous day.  Each property can only have one primary and one accessory building on it, unless I applied for a conditional use permit.

My property has a house and a shed, so where am I going to put a coop?  See coop update for details.

Back to the chicken permit.

I wrote up my proposal - I would have up to 20 hens (something the city said I could have); no roosters into adulthood (I wanted to protect myself for hatching eggs), the chickens would be housed in an appropriate coop (again, see coop update for details) and run; and they would not free range unless under direct supervision.

Well, this wasn't thorough enough.  I had to revise my statement to add what materials the run would be made from, how I was going to keep feed, etc so as not to encourage pests, and how I was going to handle manure.

The permit is in the mail along with my check.  Now I'm just waiting to be legal.  Hope it comes before the chickens hatch.