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Rooster bylaw gets the axe

SCRD
Rooster
Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) directors threw out a proposed rooster control bylaw last week, after asking staff to bring it forward following in-camera discussions earlier this year.

Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) directors threw out a proposed rooster control bylaw last week, after asking staff to bring it forward following in-camera discussions earlier this year.

Prompted by noise concerns, the bylaw would have banned roosters outside the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) in Halfmoon Bay, Elphinstone and the West Howe Sound mainland.

Speaking at the Sept. 18 planning and development committee, directors for all three rural areas included in the bylaw rejected it outright, opting in the end to send the staff report, minus the references to the bylaw, to their respective advisory planning commissions (APCs) for discussion.

“It needs to be a long discussion,” West Howe Sound director Lee Turnbull said, adding that rooster control was “not a topic of urgency” in her area.

One of the main reasons cited for rejecting the bylaw was the number of large or remote rural properties outside the ALR that are appropriate for keeping roosters.

“To paint it with a really broad brush, I think, doesn’t serve the population well,” Elphinstone director Lorne Lewis said.

Halfmoon Bay director Garry Nohr, saying the proposed bylaw “just doesn’t function,” said he did not want to make a decision “unless the community made a decision on whether we should have roosters or not, based on the property size.”

Complaints about roosters have been “strictly about noise,” Nohr said.

“In my view we need to look further into this concern, because there are some people on small properties that have roosters close at hand and it’s troublesome for them.”

Although Roberts Creek was not included in the proposed bylaw, director Donna Shugar spoke strongly against it, calling it “ill-considered on a number of fronts.”

Shugar also requested the amended staff report not be referred to the Roberts Creek APC for discussion.

“I don’t feel that they should be spending their time talking about this when, from my point of view, it’s a non-starter in Roberts Creek,” she said.

Committee chair Frank Mauro agreed to refer the staff report to the Pender Harbour APC, even though Pender Harbour, along with Sechelt Indian Government District, had been excluded from the proposed bylaw.

Mauro said the issue was not about animal control, and one option for the board was “to look at the noise control bylaw and look at enforcement.”