A public hearing on Dade County's landmark zoning ordinance is scheduled for 6 p.m. this Thursday night, Jan. 30, and those who'd like a rooster, er, gander at it beforehand can now get one on the county website, dadecounty-ga.gov.
Or for a faster peck, er peek, just click the chick pic at left to go directly to the draft ordinance.
The new ordinance has, ahem, ruffled some feathers locally because between the first draft submitted by an ad hoc committee of citizens appointed to scratch up some rules for heavy industry and a review of same by the county commission, an extra section requiring chicken houses to be set back 500 feet from property lines somehow slipped into the flock.
The new draft at the website changes the setbacks to 200 feet from property lines or 500 feet to residences or bodies of water. The setbacks will not apply to existing operations but to new ones housing or confining 300 or more chickens.
The amended ordinance also, as agreed at the commission's special called meeting on Jan. 7, changes the fee for a "special use permit" (the permit to be issued by the special use permit committee the ordinance creates) (both presumably to be abbreviated "SUP") (which The Planet foresees inspiring yet more unfortunate puns) to $250 from the proposed $100, to cover the county's minimum expenses.
Further, it requires a public hearing within 45 days of a SUP application's filing, and requires the SUP committee to act on it within 60 days of the hearing, though one possible action is to table the application pending further investigation.
If readers are interested in, or outraged by, The Planet encourages them not to stay home and brood but to pluck up their courage, comb their wattles and flock to the Dade Administrative Building by 6 p.m. on Thursday. Central to The Planet's mission is promoting participation in democracy, but The Planet is not counting any chickens. To paraphrase the late Lyndon B. Johnson: Boys, The Planet may not know much but The Planet knows chicken poop from chicken salad.
