more batshit crazy capitalism

[sharqi]

I've been informed by the solid waste coordinator that composting (any animal) manure in the city is illegal. Also found out that composting newspaper in the city is illegal. And so I continue to do what makes sense, and ignore bureaucrats' dictates.

carey

[ChloroFeelsNice]

Some laws trump others. Keep a low profile and your head down.

[jstorvick]

My grandfather used to say, "act normal and the boys in blue won't notice nuthin."

Its unfortunate that so many of our laws (and codes and regulations and so on) are essentially retarded. I suppose you could look at this as a form of civil disobedience, in addition to the benefits to your garden. Yay, another function! As long as you're not advertising the fact that you compost animal waste or (gasp) newspaper, I think you'll manage to stay out of trouble. I find it hard to believe that someone is going to start inspecting compost piles to make sure we're only using the "approved" list of ingredients.

[Justin Boland]

It would be interesting to start/float a Total Repeal movement on the local level. Most cities and counties have thousands of pages of laws that nobody is even aware of, in addition to the thousands of pages that few people know about enough to enforce. This is clutter, and clutter is seldom a good thing.

America, like any other nation, needs a culture of legal hygiene -- periodic cleanups.

Legal code, like any other code, can be written 10,000 ways, and 9,997 of them are convoluted to the point of stupidity. Even a minimal open-source movement with a couple hundred competent participants would yield a universal Town Legal Code Template that makes sense, works functionally, and takes up a small fraction of what used to be on the books.

[sharqi]

I've been in contact with the zoning administrator, mostly regarding micro-livestock within city limits. According to animal control, micro-livestock are perfectly fine The zoning administrator opines they are not legal. Perfectly legal in residential areas is crop production, and later on, it says "similar uses" are okay too, which apparently means gardening.

If you want to use your land for agricultural purposes, you need a conditional use permit, which costs a couple hundred dollars in fees, plus you have to show up at a few city council meetings, and they may or may not approve your permit. Specified as agricultural uses are viticulture (grapes for wine), apiculture (bees), floriculture (flowers), and horticulture, which seems to cover just about everything but bio-concrete (lawn).

Springfield's zoning laws need updating to reflect our world of food insecurity. We are surrounded by agricultural fields, and yet our state imports 95% of the food we eat. We find ourselves in the third world, growing crops for export, and buying imports. We live in a food desert. There is not much fresh and healthy available in this city at the moment, and increasing numbers of us do not have the means to leave town in search of farmers who are willing to sell or trade.

We're getting together an urban food task force to figure out what to do in official means. I will hopefully get the last clarification letter from the zoning administrator soon. I hope to find online some well-written zoning codes for micro-livestock, and educate myself on what all this means to us, our city at large, and to figure out how to acknowledge valid concerns. Then we'll start educating others, including those who have the power to change the law.

I'm kind of ambivalent about how all this is going to turn out. Partly, I feel constrained with food not lawns regarding animals. I have not yet suggested people get animals illegally. I stopped voting a long time ago, but I'll give entirely local politics one last hurrah. I figure next year at this time, I'll have chicks. It'll be legal or not. If not, I'll be bribing my neighbors with fresh eggs, just like all the other chicken bandits in town.

carey

[jezzicaz789]

I've been informed by the solid waste coordinator that composting (any animal) manure in the city is illegal. Also found out that composting newspaper in the city is illegal. And so I continue to do what makes sense, and ignore bureaucrats' dictates.

carey

Hi l!
I've just visited this forum. Happy to get acquainted with you. Thanks.

[silverwolf]

As for the composting comment - Composting animal manure, along with human feces is problematic because omnivores and carinores can carry pathogens in their feces that will remain active in decomposition. If your compost is being put into a food producing garden or there are fruit trees nearby, it can also affect their integrity.
Alpacas, along with Ilamas are great for manure because they eat grass, not grain or meats and break it down into a finer amount for your compost.

So it's not necessarily 'batshit capitalism' , just protective