Well Lompoc, you finally did it. Chickens are officially allowed to be man’s best friend within city limits. It only took you three years to figure it out.
Chickens have been hip since, like, at least 2015.
Even Lompoc City Councilmember Victor Vega knows how hip they are: “This has been a pretty popular item as far as from where I’m sitting,” he said.
They’re cool. They cluck. They strut. They peck, peck, peck at those pesky bugs. They lay eggs. And “They’re fun to hang out with,” according to Lompoc resident Anthony “Legalize Chickens” Loverde.
If it took three years for the city to rework an ordinance about what animals residents are allowed to keep in their backyards, how long will it take for the city to deal with homelessness?
Get in there, sweep out the riverbed, put the homeless in a park, triage them with services, and get them out of there. Problem solved!
Problem solved?
Negative, ghostchicken.
Although I don’t agree with the tone of our regular opinion writer from Lompoc, Ron Fink, on page 18, I do agree that it seems like nobody cares. I also believe that one of the only people at the city who genuinely cared about doing something to help is retiring.
Lompoc Police Chief Pat Walsh asked residents to open up their homes in September 2018 in the midst of the Santa Ynez Riverbed cleanup.
“Housing is in short supply and many of these individuals are desperate for housing,” he wrote in a letter to the community.
The last the city mentioned anything about the cleanup, it touted “hallmarks of progress … toward cleaning up the Santa Ynez Riverbed” in a press release sent out by the city’s Public Information Officer Samantha Scroggin. It cost $423,000, and the city removed 462 tons of trash, 499 pounds of human waste, five truckloads of tarps, and seven structures.
Take that, chicken ordinance! Water quality saved!
Those numbers are very specific. Now, what about humans? “Eviction of riverbed occupants, with triage services offered and accepted.”
Take that, newly allowed backyard barn animals! Wait—that chicken ordinance was more specific about the number of chickens you can have in your backyard than the city was about the number of people it helped.
One of the benefits highlighted in this press release: “Removing inhabitants of the riverbed reducing the potential for swift-water rescue.”
I’m glad all of those human beings—yes Lompoc, those “inhabitants” and “occupants” you evicted are real, live, humans—weren’t in the riverbed during the recent heavy rains, but what became of the removed and triaged?
If it took three years to sort out a goofy chicken ordinance, it’s going to take a lot longer than five months to figure out workable solutions to homelessness.
The canary is happy to live in a birdcage at canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Feb 14-21, 2019.