Will Chris Toole, the deflocked chicken man from the city’s animal shelter, be around for this? Mayor Bill Finch on Tuesday (today) with representatives of the city’s Health Department will announce a training session at Connecticut’s Beardsley Zoo for folks desiring to raise as many as five chickens on their property, according to a proposed ordinance before the City Council.
City officials say a key component and prerequisite for a poultry permit is attending an April training session at the zoo instructed by University of Connecticut Professor Michael Darre. If you want your chickens roosting per city ordinance, the mayor’s announcement will take place Tuesday, 3 p.m. at the zoo, 1185 Noble Avenue.
Last year Toole, with permission from Finch, had turned the animal control shelter into an experimental urban farm including chickens, goats, donkeys and a pig. State inspectors, however, determined the venue was not an appropriate location for an urban farm and city police ordered him off the premises. City health officials had some concerns too.
Finch is the city’s self-styled Mr. Green Jeans. He enjoys living-off-the-land initiatives, and this ordinance comes as the mayor prepares for reelection in 2015. Talk about a chicken in every pot!
This is of course the best Finch can muster for substance. Wonder if those Parks Commissioners who changed their votes will show up? Think we can fry those chickens under the solar panel farm? Cluck, cluck, cluck.
OMGosh that IS very very good!
The parks commission, are those ass kissers still around? Shame on them.
So people in Bridgeport are going to be allowed to raise chickens in their yards now? Good grief … that can create a multitude of problems.
Wondering when the Fox will enter this hen house thread. 😉
Mayor Finch, you really are an asshole as is your whole council or at least anyone who votes for this. If I am woken up early because of these F’N chickens/roosters rest assured I will leave a flock in your yard for you. What a dumb ass.
If Finch gets a big donation from Tyson Foods or Perdue, you can be sure the chickens-in-every-yard ordinance will suddenly go the way of the dodo.
And, re the previous OIB post, keep in mind …
“Several animals in the US have been elected mayors of small towns such as Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, whose mayor is a black lab named Junior Cochran, and Lajitas, Texas, whose mayor is a beer-drinking goat named Clay Henry III. Both Rabbit Hash and Lajitas are unincorporated towns where the mayoralty is purely a ceremonial position, not an actual leader of government.”
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-human_electoral_candidates
Funny, Pete Spain!
Great research, Pete Spain. I like the beer-drinking goat, wonder if we can offer a nice incentive in tax breaks to have him move here and run for office.
Mayor Finch and the 20 idiots on the council: Have you all forgotten about the quality of life issues? The residents of Bridgeport are constantly bombarded with noise and mayhem. Every day at 4AM somewhere in this city garbage trucks are waking us up with their noise, truck brakes and general work. We have firetrucks and ambulances rushing to hospitals. Warm weather is coming and so is the motorcycle and dirtbike assaults. The motorcycles will be racing each other (not all), the dirtbikes will be just riding around with no mufflers and the list goes on.
We don’t need a rooster crowing at 4AM every morning ,what purpose does raising chickens serve?
I know someone is going to get on here and say it’s an ethnic thing, they do this in their home country. Well the door swings both ways. I have an Arab neighbor on one side and an African American on the other so I guess on an ethnic basis one can raise camels and the other elephants. Why not?
I don’t believe the Mayor posted this issue in his State of the City comments recently. (But Bill Finch has proven he is great in an emergency, hasn’t he?) So the desire to keep five chickens at your home has become URGENT and the City has responded with a training session at the Zoo on Tuesday at 3 PM with an expert from UConn?
I guess if you work 9-5 that eliminates your privilege of lawfully raising chickens.
But what about the “fox” question so often raised? It seems the “taxpayer roost” so often invaded by the City structural budget process leaves citizens in an equally uninformed spot. How about Adam Wood, Alanna Kabel and Tom Sherwood in the foyer of People’s United Bank providing guidance and answering any and all questions asked about “financial survival as a residential taxpayer” in Bridgeport? Expert testimony? (I don’t think they’ll be inviting Dave Walker anytime soon. It is too difficult to answer an informed question!)
And since “training” is critical, (what a concept, huh), why don’t we apply that to the City Council? To be fair, they do not require a “permit” to sit as a legislator in our City. They only require having the plurality of in-person and absentee ballots cast each election by about 10-12% of registered voters in their area. But what if all candidates for that office were:
* Required to read and understand the City Charter;
* Required to read and have a working familiarity with Ordinances in existence (previously passed or revised by City Councils);
* Take an oath to support our City Charter and Ordinances (as basic duty or premise) rather than the State Constitution as the ceremony provides today!
* Open Committee Meetings of the City Council to members of the public in attendance and provide them with materials the Council persons review at those sessions.
This is not Frank Perdue land. We are not about making tender chickens. We are trying to clean up the barnyard and make the farm healthier fiscally. Time will tell.
Hey Bill, what are you going to say when someone gets shot over these damned chickens? I can see it now, 4AM and the rooster is raising hell. The neighbor gets his gun, there goes the rooster. The rooster’s owner comes out with his gun and there goes the neighbor.
Bill, just when I think you can’t get any dumber, you up and show me I am wrong. Bill, you need a checkup from the neck up.
What a great image of the city this provides from an economic development standpoint. I cannot wait to see the list of major corporations wanting to come to the City. As stated, “what a dumbass Finch is.”
Bill, is this going to be listed as one of the major economic development achievements of your administration? Remember, we can have a chickenshit pickup day once a week and use the chickenshit for the community gardens. Anything left over we can sell.
Still on the subject of POULTRY and POLITICS, we have yet to touch upon ‘a chicken in every pot’ (and the subject was not medicinal marijuana).
“Chicken in Every Pot” is a quotation that is perhaps one of the most mis-assigned in American political history. Variously attributed to each of four presidents serving between 1920 and 1936, it is most often associated with Herbert Hoover. In fact, the phrase has its origins in seventeenth century France; Henry IV reputedly wished each of his peasants would enjoy “a chicken in his pot every Sunday.” Although Hoover never uttered the phrase, the Republican Party did use it in a 1928 campaign advertisement touting a period of “Republican prosperity” that had provided a “chicken in every pot. And a car in every backyard, to boot.”
Read more: www .answers.com/topic/chicken-in-every-pot
What we may be witnessing is a real economic development idea raised from the Hoover Republican campaign of 1928. Nothing like studying history to learn lessons is there. Let’s see, 1928 came just before the stock market crash of 1929 when the loss of those financial values caused the greatest previous damage to the US economy. When you add the name of Henry IV of France, you may turn to chicken cordon bleu on the menu, but at least Henry considered his peasants and wished them one meal with meat per week. How kind of royalty!
Some long-term market observers like Richard Russell are predicting dire market failure today or soon. Where are the politicians, incumbents or office seekers who will talk straight to the public and who can work to stave off the effects set in motion relative to our economy? Time will tell.
It just hit me, an idea that is.
Buddy Cianci, who served as Mayor of Providence a couple times, also served elsewhere where his life was more circumscribed for a period of time.
Two years ago or so Buddy authored a book that I purchased and read. Delightful stories. PASTA AND POLITICS …
Maybe an idea for Bill Finch’s retirement and personal ‘economic development’ could be called POULTRY AND POLITICS? Time will tell.
The ordinance committee is set to pass this ordinance. I spoke to one member of the committee and he said all of the safeguards have been put in. There will be no roosters. Yada, yada, yada. I then asked him how the curfew ordinance is doing and I got complete silence. I then asked how the ferries to Pleasure Beach were doing, again silence.
These people on the council are just a bunch of stooges and if they had a brain they would be dangerous. Screw them all.
*** BPT’S GOT TO EXCEL IN SOMETHING MUCH MORE ORIGINAL THAN EGG ON OUR CITY GOVERNMENT’S FACE; EVEN IF IT’S CHICKEN EGGS, NO? ***