Anyway, the whole experience was interesting. Over the past 20 months, I learned that some people are kind and sensible and straightforward -- the code enforcement officer who gave me good advice and warned me. The city prosecutor who started me on this road but who didn't fine me because I was trying my best. The city attorney who worked hard to change my Madison, Wisconsin ordinance into the most repressive, restrictive, paternalistic, and un-American residential ordinance ever, but who at least took my phone calls or called me back. The President of city council who spoke kindly about hens and their supporters and who challenged the city administrators who claimed to speak for a majority. The president gave a very even-handed summation of the events at one city meeting. Another city councilman who picked up the ordinance even after the sub-committee voted against it in a split vote and then the planning commission voted unanimously against it (0-7). He bravely picked it up, even when people were speaking with such vitriol.
And then I learned a lot from the darker side. I learned a lot from my own Ward representative who only ultimately spoke to me when I emailed him multiple times and finally called him at his work place. He was always patronizing, dismissive, unkind. He did not have a single kind thing to say about the fact that I was being harassed to give up my hens. And it was clear in watching him at city council meetings that he was only motivated to serve the interests of the Rental Lords of our town. And I learned a lot from our Mayor who never once spoke at all to any of the hen supporters and who used the start of one pivotal meeting to excoriate hens and the city council for picking up the hen issue. And I learned a lot from another city councilperson who worked me like a dog to serve the pro-hen factions -- call 5 cities and learn about their ordinances, bring people to meetings, look up the Top 10 small cities to see if they have hen ordinances, etc. And this councilperson would tell me all the time that the pediatrican "had a better case than me." This city councilperson threw me to the wolves at one meeting, making me the bad guy and using an undocumented accusation against me to make a case for the preferred pediatrician. I learned a lot. A lot. And so...
And so, as it became clear that the Mayor and others would not permit a backyard hen ordinance, I needed to make some decisions. Towards the end, and especially after the brave city councilman said that he wanted to pick up the ordinance for consideration anyway, things went from dark to black. My Ward representative said that if the city council were going to consider the measure that it would need to go BACK to the director of city planning AGAIN to be looked over (because 20 months and multiple committees is not enough) and the city attorney worked on revising it and sent it to Zoning. The city attorney created clauses which would require that EVERY single adjacent neighbor must give initial and YEARLY permission for a person to get and keep a permit for hens. So, basically, I lived in a town where I could buy and possess as many long guns, hand guns, and assault weapons as I wanted without permit, license, or registration, but my HENS had to be monitored constantly and would not be mine -- they would be held hostage to the caprice of my neighbors.
And that's when I realized with horror that I was a better Republican and Conservative than the city attorney, city prosecutor, my ward representative and my mayor -- I NEVER would turn someone's neighbors into their landlords. I would NEVER treat someone who is an employed, mortgage-holding, tax-paying citizen with such paternalism.
I realized that I had reached my limit and needed to make plans for my hens.