I've recently sent in a few opinion pieces to the Citizen's Letters to the Editor, I'll include them below.
- There was a story in the Ottawa Citizen Dec 29 about raising chickens in urban areas – starting with The Glebe, of course, a trendy downtown area. Not that I want to get my own chickens (yet), but just to clarify - the article says in part “Cumberland Councillor Rob Jellett, who is chairman of the rural affairs committee, says he's not so sure the experiment would work. He notes that there were problems in Halifax with a chicken coop in a residential area that drew rats”.
In fact, if you look at the original reports on various Halifax news sites, while there were a few concerns at a meeting that a chicken coop could attract rats, there doesn’t seem to be anything in the news saying it actually had attracted them to the Edinburgh Street location. Rats could also be in an area for bowls of dog food left outside or someone’s scattered garbage or an abandoned house. And, as a busy port city, I’m sure there are more serious rat problems down near the Halifax docks.
If we were to allow chickens here, we would need to add some guidelines for things like fencing, noise, cleanliness, and put in place a chicken patrol. And of course, this is yet another opportunity for city licensing, to get us closer to a balanced budget. This would also stimulate the local economy as entrepreneurs design yet another line of pet accessories – little knitted vests for winter, prefab coops from a local artisans co-op, special organic feed blends, designer containers for kitchen scraps.
Councillors and buses - I’ve often thought that one way for councillors to stay connected to their constituents would be to insist that councillors occasionally use the bus, just like us regular folk. Do this for one solid week in a year, preferable in the winter, with no cabs allowed, no driving yourself downtown, no hitching a ride with a friend. Do bring your cell, so you can call to say you’re sitting on a number 2 bus again and will be a bit late. Or that so far two full express buses have roared past without stopping.
Rather than reading reports and statistics on average wait times, council will then have an excellent opportunity to learn what it’s like to use, and depend on, public transportation. The exercise would of course include the mayor, I know he has the luxury of living close to city hall, but I’m sure he has to go to the occasional meetings in other locations.
I realize many of our representatives work long and irregular hours, and some have to travel far to get to council meetings, but so do a lot of the people that voted them into power.
The first one above made it to the short list, the others not. It's still fun and challenging to compose them,though. It can be a challenge to be succinct. I know when I'm doing a post for here as a quickie it can extend into an hour's worth of my following related articles and adding links.
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