Council’s April and May agendas were largely administrative, including more updates related to the Northland Blvd project as well as energy efficiency updates and staffing. Anyone looking for more frequent updates and if you are on Facebook I encourage you to join the Springdale Community Group. Feel free to tag me in any questions over there too, I try to keep up with it as much as possible.
As for recent meetings, there are two items I wanted to highlight:
- Urban Farming Special Committee
- Unlawful Camping
Urban Farming Special Committee
One item that has come up over the years is around Urban Farming – this includes activities like small scale backyard chicken keeping, bee keeping, and similar.
After multiple new Council members approached me on how to address evaluating our zoning laws around this after hearing from residents while campaigning I felt it best to form a Special Committee for the specific purpose to investigate and recommend back to Council updates to our code of ordinances to clarify and/or modify our code permitting or further restricting what is now commonly referred to as “urban farming”. This is referenced as “Husbandry” in current Code Chapter 153.252 Residential Zoning District (c) including fowl, rabbits, or bees.
This special committee will follow established processes and best practices including involving Planning Commission and City Administration (and its relevant departments) where practical and the Special Committee will include Council Member Mcfarland as Chairperson and Dan Jacobs as member.
Many local communities already have permissive laws in place for this including: Cincinnati, Dayton, Glendale, Wyoming, Sharonville, and Montgomery.
Springdale local laws already permit it in principle, however the way the laws are written – which include lot sizes larger than any residential lot currently in Springdale means they are in practice not permitted.
I want to highlight one resident who has been very vocal about the benefits of urban farming and even setup a very informative website with a lot of helpful information and I highly encourage you to check it out here.
Unlawful Camping
A new section to our local ordinances was proposed for action in June. I am including this here to put it on our radar The detail on the proposal from the Administrators report is below:
This is not intended to target any specific individual or group, Administration has simply asked for additional tools for this area where they saw existing regulations may not be sufficient. Our Police, Fire, and Health departments all have tools available to them as a first line of support for unhoused individuals that do no mean a trip to a jail cell or a ticket that could be an additional financial burden and those would remain unchanged by this proposed ordinance.
Also noteworthy – if you want full updates from the Administrators report they can be found on the City’s redesigned website here.
If I can answer any questions just drop me a line or tag me on Facebook in the Springdale Community Group!
What do you think? Let your elected officials know!
email and phone numbers of all your City Council members are online – https://www.springdale.org/city-council/page/meet-your-city-council
and
City Administration as well –
https://www.springdale.org/mayor-clerk-council
or
Connect with your Neighbors –
https://www.facebook.com/groups/333111242219243
Related Links
Past Minutes and Agendas: https://www.springdale.org/meetings/recent
Upcoming meetings: https://www.springdale.org/meetings
Request Public Records: https://www.springdale.org/living-springdale/page/public-records-access