See you at 7:45 tonight or thereabouts!

Chickens in the Yard (CITY) is rounding up people to come to the Salem City Council meeting this Monday, February 23, to speak during the open public comment period (i.e., not limited to agenda topics) that follows the scheduled business on the agenda. (See item 10 here.) A C.I.T.Y. leader sends:

. . . Re: the agenda for the City Council Meeting on Monday. Unfortunately, it is really long (5 pages). We can't speak until item #10; see the very last page. But I spoke with the City Recorder about this and she said some of the items will go very quickly. Her best estimate is that we will be able to start between 8:00 and 8:30. If we are not finished by 10:00, the council will vote to either stay late and keep going, or continue at another time.

Note to Speakers: If you happen to be speaking when/if they decide to wrap things up and cut us off, be sure to immediately request that we be placed ON THE AGENDA for the next meeting. Hopefully, this won't happen, but I wanted to have a plan just in case.

SEE YOU ALL MONDAY NIGHT - City Hall, 555 Liberty, Room 240!

So you probably don't have to be there right at 6:30 p.m. -- 7:45 p.m. is probably fine.

But please do come, and come early enough to make sure you're there to let the city council members know that it's important to you and that, even if you don't plan to keep any laying hens yourself, you want other people in resedential zones to be able to do so, for the benefit of themselves and of the community as a whole.

Note the map of Salem neighborhood associations that have endorsed the C.I.T.Y. campaign! And also note that just because other neighborhoods haven't doesn't mean that they don't have a lot of residents who would love to keep some laying hens -- each neighborhood has its own politics and personalities.