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The counTry life
Bill radford bill.radford@gazette.com/636-0272
Tour gives scoop on building your coop Our chickens have it pretty good: an enclosure that protects them from predators, a fenced side yard to roam in at times and a coop that’s decent-sized and quite sturdy. The coop is a bit plain, though, compared to some where chickens truly live in style. This weekend offers an opportunity to see a variety of abodes for chickens. About 20 coops — most in Colorado Springs, a couple in Black Forest — will be open to view during the fifth annual Take a Peak Chicken Coop Tour. The free, self-guided tour is the brainchild of John Conner, whose coop in the Shooks Run neighborhood has been part of the tour since the start. He got chickens about seven years ago after spotting another home with them. “I wondered, ‘Is that legal here?’ I went and looked and sure enough, it is. I thought that sounded like something fun to do.” Homeowners are allowed to keep up to 10 chickens — no roosters — in Colorado Springs. (There’s no restriction on flock size — or roosters — out in the country where I live.) I asked Conner how many chickens he has and got a surprising answer. “At the moment, I’ve got about 45 of them,” he said with a laugh. Most of them, though, are chicks that he’s raising in his garage for other people; he has five adult hens of his own. He built his chicken coop, based on plans for what is called the Playhouse Coop. “It’s a coop that you see all over the Internet,” he said. You can spend as little or as much as you’d like on a coop. The Big R in Falcon has one for sale that I’ve always admired: a red “Amish style,” with two windows, a chicken door and a walk-in door, five nesting boxes — and a price tag of $1,400. Looking online, I found other high-end coops. The Alexandria Chicken Coop & Run from Williams-Sonoma will run you about $1,500. It’s hand-built from solid pine, has an “easy-care” linoleum floor and is topped with a cedar-shake roof; the coop also has large rubber wheels so you can move it. For the same price, Williams-Sonoma has its Cedar Chicken Coop & Run with Planter; the planter box is equipped with a drainage system that keeps water from falling into the run below. Conner has also eyed some extravagant coops. “I’ve seen some really extreme ones, like Martha Stewart’s,” he said. Some get —
see COUnTRY • page 2
tuesday, may 13, 2014
Council to vote on blight Members split on when, why Springs can use eminent domain by monica mendoza monica.mendoza@gazette.com —
Colorado Springs City Council member Joel Miller will likely find out Tuesday if his fellow council members support his proposal to tighten the city’s rules on government takeover of private property. Miller’s proposed eminent domain
ordinance has rallied supporters who believe it is necessary to protect property owners from government’s grip as the city moves forward with a number of urban renewal projects. It also has galvanized critics who say the ordinance would strangle economic development. Miller began pursuing changes to
the city’s eminent domain policy in January shortly after the city released artist renderings of the City for Champions project. Some property owners wondered aloud why the drawings of a downtown stadium, parking structure and U.S. Olympic museum were —
CITY COUNCIL
The Colorado Springs City Council will meet at 1 p.m. Tuesday in City Hall, 107 N. Nevada Ave. The council is expected to vote on a proposed ordinance calling for changes to the city’s use of eminent domain.
see COUNCIL • page 4
A sweet kiss home
julia moss, the gazette
Beth Jacks kisses her husband, Spc. Erik Johansson, on Monday evening during a Fort Carson homecoming ceremony for the 28 members of the 749th Ordnance Company at the Special Events Center. The soldiers had been deployed in Afghanistan since October.
Utilities’ Forte updates council on Drake blaze by Monica Mendoza monica.mendoza@gazette.com —
Colorado Springs firefighters and police officers made split-second decisions that got the Martin Drake Power Plant fire knocked down quickly, the CEO of Colorado Springs Utilities told the City Council on Monday. Utilities chief Jerry Forte recounted the details of the fire, including the thoughts of one firefighter who climbed to the roof the morning of the May 5 blaze. “He said he wasn’t sure if he was going to come off that roof,” Forte said in an update to the council a week after a fire broke out in the city’s downtown coal-fired power plant. Forte added that first responders were on scene in five minutes and that no one
was injured. “They used a technique they had just trained on and were able to save the structure and minimize the damage,” Forte said. Half of the 90 employees assigned to Drake will be back to work Tuesday. They will work with contractors to assess damage and design a restoration plan, Forte said. The rest of the employees will temporarily work at other Utilities properties. Drake’s electrical wiring took the hardest hit and will be the area that needs the most attention, said Dan Higgins, Utilities interim general manager of energy supply. “There will be miles and miles of —
see DRAKe • pAge 4
D-2 to offer students free breakfast, lunch New government program to start in fall by debbie Kelley debbie.kelley@gazette.com —
It will be a free-for-all in cafeterias in Harrison School District 2 starting in the fall. No, not a food fight. A fight against hunger. Every student in the district will be able to eat breakfast and lunch for free at school, regardless of household income or other qualifiers. The opportunity comes through a new government program to “improve access to free school meals for highpoverty schools,” according to the Colorado Department of Education.
“We’re going to give it a try. We believe it is a good offering to our students — breakfast and lunch at no charge,” said Tammy Brunnar, supervisor of nutrition services for Harrison D-2. The district just barely met the requirements. To participate, districts or individual schools must have at least 40 percent of a “student identifier” formula that counts students who are homeless, migrant youth, foster children, Head Start enrollees or those whose families receive —
see FOOD • pAge 4