By JENNY MCCLEAN
I believe that if a person buys a property that is zoned “rural” then they should be entitled to the confidence that the zoning will remain. Obviously people buying lands on Salt Spring do some research if they are interested in raising chickens.
If a property is allowed to have chickens and roosters, and people who wish to continue to live in the regular Salt Spring manner with animals allowed and have sought to buy a place where roosters are allowed, then it would seem that the onus is on others who hope for a lifestyle free from small-scale farming to seek out the properly zoned property before they buy.
Some properties have already been removed from the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) on Salt Spring Island. Those lands that are intended for our food security needs in perpetuity are never replaced by any other lands. For example, the secondary school built in 1994 was from lands that were in the ALR.
Young farmers who have heritage chickens they breed themselves, which are healthier and less prone to disease than the ones that are ordered in from large off island breeding companies, should be allowed to continue their chicken breeding as it always has been on rural lands. I would like to see that the Capital Regional District does some leg work to figure out how they wish to coordinate the existing noise bylaws under their wing with the uses allowed on rurally zoned lands.
If a family buys a rurally zoned land in good faith and the Salt Spring Local Trust Committee then changes that zoning, the property value is affected for that farming family. It is not fair to harm the one who researched the zoning before they bought in favour of the ones who buy rural land and hope to change it to residential.
The idea being floated about having roosters only on lands greater than two acres is not really the correct solution as a rooster can be heard for a distance further than that. It is more about the sensitivities to rooster noise of certain people and how they may wish to take responsibility to not live in a rurally zoned area. The ones living according to the current zoning permitting chickens, including roosters, are within their rights, according to the current zoning of their land. It is unfair to uproot people and make them have to sell and move when they are living according to the rural-zoned land they have purchased.
Please do not rush to change land zoning due to pressures when we have no idea what kind of people may wish to live on Salt Spring in another 20 years. Let us keep the possibilities open to neighbourhood farms, which we have always enjoyed on Salt Spring Island. Do not remove land potential without something comparable to replace it with. Do not punish people living in accord with the current zoning of their purchased lands.