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Regular meeting <br />July 18, 2005 <br /> <br /> <br />Ms. Brungardt, as a junior member, had a question on procedure. Mayor Adams had <br />said that if someone had voted in the majority, they could ask for the ordinance to be <br />reconsidered. During the time of writing the ordinance, why were the questions not <br />raised then? Admittedly, as a junior Councilmember, perhaps she didn’t understand that <br />by not getting involved, that she somehow was allowing the process to go forward in a <br />way that might not be most careful. She wondered why, we as a body of the community <br />got to this point of dissention, when the Mayor’s knowledge of procedure is much <br />greater than hers. <br /> <br />Mr. Sharpe stated that he was not involved with the writing of the chicken ordinance at <br />all. Most of what he heard was at the Council meeting. He had no information of it prior <br />to the Council meeting. In answer to Ms. Brungardt’s question, is that some of us, at the <br />time of it being constructed, did not know about it. <br /> <br />Ms. Colquitt in response to Ms. Brungardt’s question is that the Council was not <br />consulted or asked to participate on the construction of this ordinance. Ms. Brungardt <br />read her minutes from the last meeting, Ms. Brot had specifically stated that someone <br />came to her who was interested in raising farm chickens here in University City. So <br />there were several of us who did not have input on that. <br /> <br />Mayor Adams said he only heard rumblings of people talking about raising chickens, <br />and then saw the ordinance prior to the last Council meeting. He assumed that once it <br />was on the Legislative docket, there would be time to have hearings and studies. Also <br />Mayor Adams felt the Planning Commission should have looked at, since he believes <br />that it could be argued as being in their realm. That did not happen, so he also had <br />minimum input into it. <br /> <br />Ms. Brungardt still did not understand how we came to a point of such public discord, <br />when in fact; she did receive emails from citizens, because the City of St. Louis, <br />Webster Groves and Clayton had ordinances on the raising of chickens. She guessed <br />that when she received the emails, she assumed that other people on the Council were <br />hearing from citizens saying that they would like for the Council to construct an <br />ordinance so that they too could have chickens in University City. Communication as a <br />community, in managing this decision together, has failed us in this matter. She isn’t <br />quite sure how this level of discord rose to this pitch. She hopes that we can find a way <br />to manage it from a way that it can be beneficial. It is unfortunate that the citizens here <br />tonight were not here two weeks ago. Unfortunately, not all of our citizens are here <br />together at the same time to communicate effectively. She feels that this is a loss for us <br />all because the communication of the Council may not have been to the best regard of <br />all of our citizens. She said that the Council needs to reconcile ourselves to managing <br />our communications in a way that doesn’t put our citizens in a position of having to be <br />subject to not hearing each other’s voices. <br /> <br />Page 14 <br /> <br />