Things are progressing at the City of Airdrie in regards to an Urban Agriculture Pilot Project.

At Monday's (June 5) City Council meeting, Senior Planner with the City Gail Gibeau gave an update on their progress. The City is currently finalizing guidelines on a backyard hens project, and those guidelines are expected to be complete sometime this fall. Once that's finished, the City will begin selecting participants with the hopes that chickens could be kept in backyards by next spring.

"Prior to the implementation of the project, we're going to be doing a training session to build capacity within the community in terms of what's required in doing these kinds of activities on your property," said Gibeau

Stephen Utz, Team Leader for Planning with the City, said it's also important that the pilot project not intrude on neighbours. Good neighbour considerations will be finalized along with the guidelines, and will be kept in mind when participants are selected. There will also be some public engagement about urban agriculture.

"We'll probably do a general public engagement piece, but I would suggest also we'll be looking at what sort of notifications and guidelines, and we haven't determined those exactly at this point in time."

There is a possibility that a bee keeping project could also come to Airdrie. Gibeau said in the past, residents were closed to the idea of bees, but the City has grown substantially since public engagment was done in 2013 and 2014, and it might be time to revisit the idea.

"Twelve thousand people have joined the community, so we're looking at going back to the community and getting a good feeling of what public support we have for that component."

Gibeau said that things aren't firm yet, but that public engagment could come by this fall.

 

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