Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Update- Getting the City Council On-Board

Taking the advice of my contact with the Ingham County commission, I contacted two city council members (one for Lansing, one for East Lansing) on Monday to let them know that some goat legislation may be coming their way (I'm pretty confident at this point that it WILL be coming their way). I'm thrilled to have heard back from both of them already...and they both sound like they're on-board and maybe even excited about it!

Friday, December 9, 2011

Hypothetical Progress Is Better Than No Progress At All

My contact with the Ingham county commission emailed me today with some updates. He said that he has mentioned the goat proposal to some other commission members. None of them were super enthused about it, but nobody seemed opposed to the idea either. He is planning on discussing the goat issue at the next commission meeting next Tuesday December 13.

He wants to have a resolution written and ready for approval by the Law Enforcement committee in January. It sounds like this was how the chicken ordinance went about (approval by the law enforcement committee was the main thing that had to happen). He said he may want me to make a presentation to this committee similar to the one I did for the Animal Control Advisory Board.

Once the resolution is passed in Ingham County, we still have to get ordinances on the books for each city in Ingham County. He suggested that I contact the city council person for Lansing and East Lansing and give them a heads-up that this resolution may be on its way. I'm a little confused about this because I don't think Lansing added anything to it's municipal code specifically about chickens after the chicken resolution went through in Ingham County (so why do we need to do it for goats?). I'm assuming it's just for more protection from the law and to prevent Lansing from outlawing urban goats if the county adopts a goat ordinance.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Update: Waiting Game

It has only be about a week since I gave my presentation to the Ingham County Animal Control Shelter Advisory Board, so I'm assuming little has happened yet. The next county commission meeting isn't for another week. This would be the first opportunity for the representative from the advisory board to talk to the board of commissioners about my ordinance proposal.

I realize it's a busy time of year for everyone and a lot of people are changing positions or leaving certain board positions, so I'll have to be patient and see what happens in the next month or two.

I want to be persistent and keep in contact we the people who will be representing the goat ordinance, but I want to avoid pestering them much too!