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Host says buried chicken ordinance notice spurred Community Lens civic reporting
Summary
The Community Lens host said discovering a small public notice about a proposed chicken restriction and a related lighting ordinance that threatened local farmers led community members to mobilize and inspired the host to create Community Lens to improve civic awareness.
The host said Community Lens was born after finding a buried public notice in a local feed store about a proposed change that would have limited chickens and included a lighting ordinance affecting commercial farmers. "I was in tractor supply keeping my chicken food, and there was a flyer there saying North Bay Bridge is trying to take our chickens. And I was like, what?" the host said.
That buried notice, the host said, showed how legal notices placed only in a single local paper and on a town web page can fail to reach many residents; community members organized, went to meetings and succeeded in getting the item removed. The host said that episode prompted a broader effort to make meeting items and public notices more visible to residents through Community Lens and short shareable clips.
