Petition to allow urban chickens gains more support

Editor’s note: A version of this story in Thursday’s edition of Havre Daily News misreported that Havre City Council previously approved people having chickens in city limits, which it did not. Following is the corrected version in full.

Havre resident Al Garver is continuing his efforts to push the city to make owning chickens in city limits legal, gathering more than 450 signatures for a petition for the city to change its ordinance.

The city of Havre in 2015 considered a proposal to allow people to own chickens provided they met a number of requirements but voted it down 5-2.

Garver said he does not have much problem with the 2015 proposal, except for one of those requirements, is to have all neighbors with adjoining properties approve the resident having chickens, which Garver said he considers a “poison pill,” making actually owning the animals effectively impossible.

Garver has been pushing the Havre City Council to pass the proposal with that requirement removed, but said he’s made little progress despite having received a great deal of support for the change.

“They seem like they just want this to go away,” he said.

He said the council indicated that the issue should go to the voters in the form of a ballot measure, but he doesn’t see why they can’t just vote to pass the amended the ordinance proposed in back in 2015.

City Council President Andrew Brekke told the Havre Daily News that procedures have to be followed to change an ordinance.

“Changing an ordinance is not a simple matter that can be handled overnight,” he said, “The ordinance committee will need to meet to consider a proposal after which it may then call for a hearing to consider that proposal. After that process the ordinance committee can vote to forward that on to the full council for consideration which requires two readings and a 30-day waiting period before it can become law. 

“If the council were to choose to send the matter to the voters, there is an additional process to follow to have the matter placed on a ballot to be considered by the voters,” Brekke added. 

Carver said none of the other requirements in the ordinance are particularly troublesome in his mind, including getting a permit and being subject to enforcement, but given the number of people who signed an online petition in response to a couple newspaper stories, there seems to be a clear demand for a change.

Garver moved to Havre 11 months ago from Billings, where he’d always been able to own chickens on his property. He said he loves living here, but he wants to be able to own chickens again, and the current ordinance renders that next to impossible.

Since he took the issue up, he said, he’s run into people talking about the campaign to change the ordinance, unaware that he was the one leading it, saying they’re excited at the possibility of being able to own chickens, so clearly there is a desire for the change.

Garver said he was initially expecting around a hundred signatures, but after the second story in local media about the issue they went from more than 200 to more than 400.

He said he’s had conversations with a couple members of the council that seemed receptive to the idea, but since then he’s had no indication that there will be any action taken, which frustrates him.

“I’m just stunned by the reaction, or lack of reaction,” he said.

He said he’s planning to meet Monday with supporters at Pepin Park at the corner of Fourth Street and Seventh Avenue — just a couple of blocks from City Hall — to hand out signs before the next meeting of city council, and he’s willing to keep campaigning for this change, including knocking on doors around town to try to get further support.

Garver said he hasn’t had any pushback from people as he’s gathered signatures for their petition, but that isn’t surprising considering it was mostly done online.

More frustrating, he said, is that the council hasn’t provided reason for their apparent resistance to the change.

He said he doesn’t necessarily want to escalate his campaign, but now that it’s clear there are more vocal supporters than he originally thought, he feels compelled to.

“I’m committed to it because it’s not just me anymore, it’s hundreds of other people,” he said.

Garver said he has experience in campaign management so he’s confident he can get more support if needed, but he wonders if this issue might spiral into a larger conflict over the city’s responsiveness to citizens considering the amount of time and effort it’s taking to try to get them to make a decision on this matter.