Chickens, goats, rabbits and honey bees are in the news these days. Recently USA Today featured a story about miniature goats, and just this week the City of New York determined that the ban on keeping bees in the City should be lifted as they pose little or no health risk.

Urban animals were commonplace up until the 1950’s and 60’s when the suburbs grew in popularity and the age of happy motoring, shiny green lawns and a hidden, increasingly mechanized and industrialized food supply lulled us into a false sense of security and happiness. We are facing the impacts of these trends in obesity rates, salmonella poisoning and a disconnect from our food supply.

The rural city of 7,500 that we live in, Castlegar BC, ironically the place where the Russian immigrants known as the Dukhobors created a thriving community through farming and local produce, has an animal control bylaw that prohibits just about every animal other than a cat or dog in residential zones. Additionally, it is against the zoning bylaw to grow crops in residential areas.

I’ve written about this before, you can find a bunch of the posts here. Anyway, on with some stories of forward thinking municipalities who are working seriously on food security and community sustainability…

Recent Goat News

The Carbondale, Ill., Planning Commission was debating this month whether to allow residents to keep chickens when Priscilla Pimentel, a member of the city’s Sustainability Commission, added goats to the mix.

“If you can have a 250-pound dog in town, why not a miniature goat that can produce milk?” she says. “It’s just common sense.” The Planning Commission hasn’t made a recommendation yet.

Read More: USA Today – Goat Fans, Cities butting heads

Recent Chicken News

In Ottawa:

Lyssa Rhodes, who lives in the suburb of Kanata, said it’s a homeowner’s political right to have chickens in their backyard.

“I just feel that as a citizen, we should have a right to knowing where our food is and having our right to our own food, healthy food that is chemical free,” Rhodes told CBC News Monday.

She isn’t the only one who feels that way — an online petition demanding the city allow chickens to be raised in the municipality has been signed by 150 people. A Facebook page devoted to the issue has nearly 200 members.

Read more: CBC – Ottawa Urban Chickens

In Calgary:

A pilot program that would temporarily allow backyard coops is in the works after city bylaw boss Bill Bruce held a summit earlier this week with Calgary Liberated Urban Chick Klub (CLUCK) president Paul Hughes, who last month was handed a court summons for illegally keeping poultry. Hughes, who recently announced his intentions to run for mayor in October’s civic election, said Calgary is seeing a growing urban agriculture movement that won’t stand for being hen-pecked by city bureaucrats.

“The city is aware there is a massively growing trend towards urban food production and we’re going to keep going with it,” he said. “We’ve got a good poker hand and if the city is going to block urban agriculture, that’s going to be some bad optics.”

Raising chickens within large centres is becoming a common practise in cities like Vancouver and New York as organic food lovers harvest daily eggs alongside urban vegetable gardens.

Read More: Calgary Sun -Urban chicken-keepers cry fowl, win reprieve

Recent Rabbit News

Rabbits have a much smaller carbon footprint than other animals because they convert calories into pounds more efficiently. According to Slow Food USA, “Rabbit can produce six pounds of meat on the same amount of feed and water it takes a cow to produce just one pound.”

Read more: Good Magazine – Backyard Bunnies Are the New Urban Chickens

Recent Bee News

New York City is among the few jurisdictions in the country that deem beekeeping illegal, lumping the honeybee together with hyenas, tarantulas, cobras, dingoes and other animals considered too dangerous or venomous for city life. But the honeybee’s bad rap — and the days of urban beekeepers being outlaws — may soon be over.

On Tuesday, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s board will take up the issue of amending the health code to allow residents to keep hives of Apis mellifera, the common, nonaggressive honeybee. Health department officials said the change was being considered after research showed that the reports of bee stings in the city were minimal and that honeybees did not pose a public health threat.

The officials were also prodded by beekeepers who, in a petition and at a public hearing last month, argued that their hives promoted sustainable agriculture in the city.

Read More: NYTimes -Bees in the City? New York May Let the Hives Come Out of Hiding

See a video of the bee hives on the new Vancouver Convention Centre below.

This post was written by Mike Thomas for UrbanWorkbench.com ©2010.

Originally posted as A Barnyard in Your Backyard

Have you noticed the disconnect between reality and expectations for housing options in the Baby Boomer crowd?

A recent AARP study, for example, found a massive disconnect between perceptions of aging and its reality. The vast majority of people surveyed expressed optimism that they would not only be in good physical health in their later years, but that they would always be able to drive.

Source: Sightline Daily – Boom Towns

For all the focus on “lifestyle” in this demographic, heck there’s even magazines touting the boomer lifestyle, not too much consideration is being given to realistic age-friendly housing.

Something that I see all too often is the construction of large multi storey houses with long or steep driveways away from the centre of town or bus routes. Who is going to plow the snow from the driveway? Are you going to feel safe walking up or down the driveway when it is slippery? How are you going to look after all that house? What happens when the stairs are too much for you? How are you going to get into town?

Now, I understand that much of the existing housing stock may not meet all of the criteria we would wish for in an age-friendly development, but it is ridiculous that we continue to permit poorly laid out housing. It is a waste of energy and materials and, for the moment, continues to perpetuate the myth that as we age we will remain as mobile as we were in our youth.

I get the sense that this is a really unpopular topic among almost all generations, and one that is not being adequately addressed by the Building Code, Municipalities or planners in general.

This post was written by Mike Thomas for UrbanWorkbench.com ©2010.

Originally posted as Boomer Housing Denial

Technorati Tags: age-friendly housing, ageing, Baby Boomers, elderly, Housing, lifestyle, mobility

Walking from the large brick building that used to house the airport terminal operations, but now was given new life as a fruit farming centre, Janie scanned the snow line on the mountains surrounding the valley.  The flat land around what was once known as the West Kootenay Regional Airport was once a living farm. In fact, it was only a generation before, that this land was used for pasture and orchards. The hardy pioneers who tamed this valley were known as the Doukhobors, and their heritage in the Castlegar valley held a mythical quality for the likes of Janie, a scrawny fourteen year old girl with strong tanned arms from working the land on her daddy’s community farm. The heritage of these Russian immigrants somehow survived the arrival of the automobile and the airplane, and was rekindled in less than a generation from when these vehicles stopped their noisy incessant travels, at least that’s how her daddy described it, she smiled.

But for Janie, she only remembers the time after that time, when the hopeful believers in technology insisted that the runways be maintained -she could imagine the arguments in the Council Chambers, where her daddy now sat as Mayor, there was violence at the meeting that decided it. She guessed that these people were hanging onto a hope of sameness. Unfortunately, they just didn’t understand or accept that the rest of the world could no longer keep sacrificing itself to maintain North America;s standard of living. But when troubles in far away lands began impacting the supply of technology, the inter-related parts of the economy and supply chain crumbled, particularly in the remote parts of British Columbia.

So, for many years the runway was preserved, cracks were filled, weeds were burnt down, even the tower was manned long after the last planes left or rotted on the edges of the tarmac. Hope.

Janie knew these actions, they were from the same place deep down inside every human who plants a seed and believes that the effort of cultivating, watering, weeding and finally harvesting will produce fruit. It is hope for a harvest, it is hope for good to overcome adversity. At fourteen, she had already seen this hope shrivel in some of the old timers. It was the young folks like her dad who stood together, shoulder to the wheel to re-building the critical infrastructure while many of the older folk sat around waiting for a handout, or as they put it, “a solution” from the government. Her daddy had a quotable quote for everything – “Some people give up, others put up, but the winners git back up”.

Janie put the wheelbarrow of tools down, drawing up to the orchard that now filled the defunct runway. Sandbags and shallow ditches had been strategically placed to divert rainwater to the well mulched fruit trees, each occupying a hole carved out of the runway in a grid laid out along the fading runway painted lines. Janie’s job during the months of March and April was to prune the community orchard in preparation for the growing season to come. Although only fourteen, the skills she had inherited from her mother through her Doukhobor bloodlines made her one of the most qualified orchard operators in the valley, being responsible for managing the tree nursery during the summer months. She smiled at the stories her daddy told her of how children used to go to school, sometimes until they were in their twenties or thirties to learn esoteric arts with little benefit to the communities they came from, often returning to live with their parents, not because that was how society was meant to function, but because society, despite encouraging this level of study found little use for the results of such an educational. These were the days when food was trucked from Mexico and California, when you could go to the supermarket and buy anything for a fraction of its true value. Just like most of the products that lined the shelves, communities treated their youth as disposable, the strength found in young bodies that could have been useful in building communities, wasted in telelmarketing factories selling even more disposable crapola to overfed North Americans.

As Janie studied the closest tree, analyzing the new growth and pruning lines from last Spring, she considered the importance of this project and these trees. Less than a generation old, planted in the middle of a monument to a previous generation, planted as an object of hope, of community, of permanence, planted to ensure the resilience of the community, planted in the spirit of the Doukhobor pioneers, planted against the will of many of the old timers stuck in a dreamland, these trees and the fruit they will produce this season were a symbol of hope and reality for the future.

Peak Oil Vignettes are fictional snapshots of a future life without cheap plentiful oil.

This post was written by Mike Thomas for UrbanWorkbench.com ©2010.

Originally posted as Peak Oil Vignette 5 – Hope and Reality

Technorati Tags: Castlegar, farming, fiction, fuit, Kootenays, orchard, peak oil, stories, Transitions, urban agriculture, urban farming

While Castlegar City Council makes an impassioned plea for residents to understand the tough times the City is facing, it seems that all the good work, energy and momentum that was generated during the Integrated Community Sustainability Planning (ICSP) sessions seems to have fallen to the wayside.

Council still has a focus on attracting new businesses to the City, with little idea of what a sustainable economy looks like. Do we want another car yard? More pubs? Costco? Walmart? It may not seem to be time to be picky as a municipality, but the truth is that positioning the City for long term resilience is far more important than doing whatever it takes to attract business – from the City’s recent press release (gag warning, excessively florid language ahead)…

The city’s diligent promotion and attraction of new business and commercial opportunities works to achieve a more diversified, versatile, and sustainable economy. At the same new economic growth will diminish the single-industry reliance that has ultimately crippled so many municipalities in this modern economy. Relentless and creative grant applications continue to forward city goals and projects without draining the city budget.

A few weeks ago, Castlegar council and some members of the community heard from a panel of CBT experts on the risks of climate change and opportunities to adapt to the potential changes we could face.  Of the various areas discussed, George Penfold’s discussion on food security was by far the most lively and inspirational, and probably the most serious for humanity as a whole, rather than just our community. Missing from this discussion was a recognition of the economic and fossil fuel spheres of influence – something that was addressed at a high level during the initial ICSP discussions. If we examine the vulnerabilities the community faces due to climate change through a lense that includes a less prosperous economy and less abundant fossil fuels, chances are that food would not just be the most engaging topic, it would become evident that it was by far the most important one to focus on.

Without cheap, abundant fossil fuels most of the food we consume would be impossible to grow or transport. Without a robust, prosperous economy, most of what we eat will become too expensive to produce  as supplies decrease or too expensive for the consumer to purchase as incomes decline relative to the cost of goods. The twin effects of abundant fossil fuels and a strong economic climate have made the cost of food in our society shrink to less than 10% of our average family income, in developing countries such as India, this figure is still closer to 50%.

As oil prices rose again this week, up 10% from a month ago, and a full 100% over this time last year we can expect to start seeing many of our food products increasing in cost as well. The food system that has developed under these “fertile” economic conditions in the western world is extremely complex and far removed from the end consumer. This complexity decreases resilience and removes the ability for the average person to have any meaningful control over their food production or how the food they eat is grown or raised. This complex system is heavily dependent on fossil fuels, forcing us all to consider what we can do to increase our individual and community resilience to even simple price fluctuations of fossil fuels, but more significantly a supply of a finite resource that one day will become less abundant, or constrained by greenhouse gas taxes or targets.

The issue of food is way bigger than just the impacts we may feel in Castlegar, but it is apparent that the development of genuine local solutions to foreboding issues such as food security and peak oil will build community and create a tighter more engaged citizenry that is more likely to stick together through tough times. We need to start considering where our food is grown, finding ways to grow more of it locally and removing barriers to building community resilience, which is not going to come from big box stores, the airport, car yards or a gaming centre.

This post was written by Mike Thomas for UrbanWorkbench.com ©2010.

Originally posted as A Focus on Food

Technorati Tags: Castlegar, economy, farming, food, future, Kootenays, peak oil, Resilience, Sustainability, urban farming

I’m a twitterer. I’m bored of the monologue style of media that still dominates the old school thinking. Telling people what you want them to hear with no easy opportunity for dialog is so 90’s.   That’s why I think it is essential for municipalities to embrace social media and build participation in the demographics that are currently untapped for input. Twitter is the poster child for social media, less a teenage fan site, more a snappy communication tool, it is being embraced by businesses across the world. It is time for municipalities to step up to the challenge.

I twitter on several fronts, some of them in a government capacity as follows:

@RosslandBC – general announcements from the City of Rossland,
@RosslandSnow – Rossland Public Works and Snow Removal announcements

Twitter is useful for municipalities as seen in this list quoted from Dave Fleet:

• Early-warning issues management - identify emerging issues early before they bubble up to the media;
• Monitoring reaction - through persistent Twitter searches, departments can track sentiment, content and other trends in reaction to announcements;
• Direct-to-citizen communication – Twitter, and other social media tools, can help organizations communicate directly with their target audiences rather than going through the filter of the media;
• Put a face on the organization – government often suffer from being faceless organizations, while politicians seem aloof. Social media tools in general can help to counteract this;
• Emergency management - emergency coordinators need to get information out quickly to people in an emergency; Twitter could even work at a hyper-local level;
• Raise awareness of resources – government websites can be impenetrable mazes, designed by committee to placate competing silos with information buried deep inside the site. Twitter can help to point people to the right place;
• Identifying resources and information – a more individual use, which worked for me – Twitter can be invaluable for finding answers and identifying resources for those last-minute requests (contrary to popular opinion, government communications can move very quickly at times) - just throw the request or question out there for a rapid response;

Governments Experimenting With Twitter | davefleet.com.

There is no one tool that can perform all of the necessary functions of communication, but Twitter is too good a tool to ignore. Short headline-like announcements, linking to more details is required.

Twitter can be linked to SMS on cell phones, it is possible to set up dedicated twitter accounts for emergency response, where residents can receive messages on their cellphones in an emergency. We have no other simple technology that can do that at this stage.

Many people have expressed concern over corporate communications and the control of information – years ago this was used as a reason for corporations to not blog about their activities or products, but almost all corporations are actively promoting their work online these days. Simple rule, if it can’t be said in 140 characters, write a blog post and link to it through twitter!

And of course you can follow me on twitter too! @UrbanWorkbench

This post was written by Mike Thomas for UrbanWorkbench.com ©2010.

Originally posted as Twitter for Municipalities

In the quest for useful plants to grow in our urban farm, we are looking at basket willow as a resource that has multiple uses:

1. Fedges – A cross between a fence and a hedge.
2. Living Structures
3. Basket-weaving
4. Coppicing for sustainable timber harvesting, and
5. Carbon sequestration

I’d like to give a plug to a local Kootenay Boundary grower of a variety of willow plants, Joybilee Farm, home to angora rabbits, llamas, sheep and goats for fiber and a source of natural dyes and yarns as well as many handcrafted products.

Joybilee Farm is open to the public May 1 to October 17, 2010. Tuesday to Saturday 10am to 5pm. At other times, call to arrange a visit. Theye’re located right on Highway 3 between Greenwood and Grand Forks–a great place to stop.

This post was written by Mike Thomas for UrbanWorkbench.com ©2010.

Originally posted as Basket Willows

Technorati Tags: basket weaving, farming, Kootenays, sustainable farming, urban farming, willow

GTD, or “Getting Things Done” is about the only way that I can stay on top of the multitude of tasks and projects that I am responsible for. Having a smooth online system is pretty key to improved productivity. For me it’s not about it being the only system, but one that compliments my index card based system.

The most promising software in recent months is Nirvana, which has been rolling out the features and listens to the community of users through blog posts and forums. This is more than just a todo list, it allows you to collect, process and complete tasks with ease. Check out this video for a glimpse of the basic set of features…

Nirvana Quick Tour from plu on Vimeo.

This post was written by Mike Thomas for UrbanWorkbench.com ©2010.

Originally posted as GTD with Nirvana

This weekend I installed a HydroRight  dual flush converter on our upstairs toilet. As the toilet is an old one and had a ballcock, I also installed a HydroClean Fill Valve which regulates how much water is returned to the bowl after the flush. There is so much talk of water conservation and dual flush toilets, however, the marginal price of water in most communities precludes the feasibility of replacing your whole toilet for s few less litres per flush. For a tenth of the price of a new toilet, you can reduce your water consumption easily with these products and they can be installed without any special tools or knowledge of plumbing.

This is a high quality product that is simple to install and has a lower lifecycle cost than replacing a whole toilet. If it ain’t broke, don’t trash it, just upgrade the working parts.

If you are in Canada, this is available at most Canadian Tire stores across the country.

This post was written by Mike Thomas for UrbanWorkbench.com ©2010.

Originally posted as HydroRight

Technorati Tags: hydroright, sewer, toilet, Water

You know the situation in the Province is not looking good when the stories that grace the local newspapers are about service and funding cuts in Health and Education. This time it’s Selkirk College and the Kootenay Boundary Regional Hospital in Trail, and that’s not even touching on the issues facing the local School District (SD 20). For Selkirk College, their future rests on providing regionally contextual courses that can tie into other local activities and needs, healthcare and forestry being two obvious ones, aviation being another – but funding for this regional college is tight, forcing administration to choose between staff, students and facilities, it looks like the students won out, but it is a short term victory without ongoing maintenance of the facilities.

At Selkirk, the allowance for upgrades and maintenance to facilities is expected to be slashed by 74 per cent, reducing it from $1.4 million to $368,000. “There are many routine things, like putting fresh paint on the wall, that just won’t happen this year,” explained Selkirk College president Marilyn Luscombe. The college is working internally to put aside contingency funds to use for emergency maintenance that may be needed through the year, though it hasn’t disclosed where that money will come from.

Selkirk budgets for cuts and for the latest (in a long line of issues) facing healthcare in the Kootenays, now it is operating capacity that is being cut…

“The standard of care in this region cannot afford any more cuts. There are significant costs associated with longer wait times for surgery. More people waiting longer for procedures will further burden an already overwhelmed system,” said Mungall. Conroy and Mungall are asking that the Minister meet with the hospital’s surgical team to listen and work with them to make sure that health care in the Kootenay – Boundary region is protected.

Boundary Sentinel: KBRH OP/ED All levels of government are torn between the priorities of those who lobby them. The two-faced PR campaign that we’ve seen over the past year, claiming economic stimulus on one hand, while making cuts from other areas of society, is something we’ve grown accustomed to, and during times of economic turmoil, (and make no doubt about it folks, we have not reached the other side of the river yet on that one!), the pull of money away from long term benefiting projects to ones of seeming immediate need will continue.

“Few of the [stimulus] projects are transformative,” said Joseph Schofer, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University.

CityScapes – Chicago Tribune We should be aiming to position society into a clean energy descent, equipped with simplified systems and increased resilience in the vital areas of health, education, and civic infrastructure. Some of what we value now will show itself to be less than valuable in the cold hard light of a future with less carbon based fuel consumption.

This post was written by Mike Thomas for UrbanWorkbench.com ©2010.

Originally posted as Education and Healthcare in the Kootenays

The Grade-A services we enjoy in Castlegar from the library, water, sewer, streets and sidewalks, right through to the snow clearing operation comes with a hefty price tag. There is an indication out there that we are about to find this out, either through reduced services or increased taxes, as council balances a shift of taxes away from the industrial tax base, predominantly funded by the Celgar pulp mill.

We are not in too different a situation from the city of Colorado Springs, in which they found that municipal revenues were down some 28.9 million dollars or 8% from the 2009 budget. (Admittedly the tax structure is very different, as are the state laws on how much say taxpayers get in raising taxes, but the lack of revenue is similar).

In Colorado Springs, every third streetlight is dark. Buses no longer run at night or on weekends. City pools will soon be dry, trash bins have disappeared and the verdant grass in the city’s famed parks will soon grow long, turn brown and die.

The city no longer offers basic services that people expect from their local government

Read more: National Post – Budget crisis sees Colorado Springs go dark

Culbreth-Graft’s proposed $209.9 million general-fund budget, down 8 percent from the revised 2009 operating budget, will be formally presented to the City Council next week.

“The City Council will have a task that I have never seen a council have to deal with in my 32 years of experience that will (involve) some of the most egregious and horrific cuts that this city has ever had to experience,” a somber-looking Culbreth-Graft said.

“While the council has grappled with extremely difficult issues for the last two fiscal years, this one will be unparalleled to the pain and the agony in which they had to experience in the previous years,” she said.

Read more: The Gazette – City Unveiling 2010 Budget

As you can imagine, not everyone is thrilled with the situation, and some members of the business community have taken to forming a group to audit the City’s plans, they are called, “The City Committee”:

The problem is not confined to Colorado Springs – cities all across the United States are struggling, said Chuck Fowler, a committee member.

“Atlas is shrugging,” Mr. Fowler said.

“We have to manage our limited resources better. We’re looking to run a good, clean, efficient government. Nobody has a political agenda here. We’re really just trying to operate our city government within its diminishing means.”

Read more: National Post – Budget crisis sees Colorado Springs go dark

In Castlegar, we don’t have helicopters to sell or a police force we can cut, but we can be more restrained in how we develop infrastructure such as the plans to service the airport lands and the proposed gaming centre.

Castlegar Council recently met with members of the Chamber of Commerce to discuss taxation strategies and identify potential issues with the situation they are facing. Unfortunately, the invitation to attend the meeting came too late for me to attend, and was not from the City in any case, rather it was through a member of the Chamber – as far as I can tell, it was not announced publicly. Kyra at the Castlegar Source has done a write up of the meeting, which is posted here.

The City still hasn’t announced it’s schedule for public meetings or bylaw considerations for the financial plan, my guess is that they are waiting to see what the supreme court says about the Celgar issue, from this article on the Castlegar Source, it sounds like the Mayor is optomistic…

Chernoff said he expects the city’s position to be similarly vindicated in court [as for the other municipalities in similar cases], but the basics of the situation remain the same, by his lights.

“We still need to work with Celgar to make sure our largest employer is viable and healthy,” he said. “But we also need to see that (tax) bill paid.”

This goes to court on the 22nd and 23rd of March 2010, so I guess we’ll wait and see which way the budget will go. In the meantime, the question of core services and levels of service needs to be addressed. The infrastructure bill is rising, (and that’s just for what the City already has), there are legislated upgrades required to the water system, and the other levels of government are not flush with cash. Municipalities across North America are realizing as their industry or business tax revenue declines, that they are having to do more with less. Whatever the outcome from the court case, it is likely that the City will offer a reduction in taxes to Celgar, this slack is either picked up by residents as taxes, or in reduced services. Which will it be?

This post was written by Mike Thomas for UrbanWorkbench.com ©2010.

Originally posted as Castlegar Springs

Technorati Tags: Castlegar, Castlegar British Columbia, Castlegar City, Castlegar City Council, Celgar, Kootenays, Mercer, municipalities, taxes