City of Bradenton heartless, rude to family over chickens, flooding

I want to thank Herald reporter Mark Young for his well-researched reporting about the Ware’s Creek flooding of my next door neighbors and their drowned pet chicken, in the Herald on Dec. 1.

I knew part of the story and was disgusted but when I read his article I was really disgusted. The whole affair was heartless, rude, inexcusable, and totally unacceptable on a professional/humane basis.

My neighbors, the Blanchards, have three small children and, for a learning experience on several levels, were raising six small chickens. One chicken drowned in the Hermine hurricane flooding of Ware’s Creek.

This was in the paper as an item of human interest. It was seen by our ever-alert and on-top-of-things councilman, Patrick Roff.

He went to City Hall and, by his own admission, was joking about the flood and chicken drowning (nothing like a good sense of humor!) to none other than Volker Reiss, community services and compliance manager, who immediately dispatched a code enforcement officer to rectify this horrible transgression of the law.

There was no concern for the loss of property, mess to be cleaned up, or emotional upset to the children for the loss of their pet. The young mother was told to get rid of the rest of the pets in 10 days or it would be 60 days in jail and/or $500 fine. If this is not a threat, it will do until a threat comes along!

Then for Mark Young’s article, Reiss tried to impugn Caitlin’s version and then said he cannot control what the officers say. I have news for him: If he cannot control what comes out of his office, then he should step aside so someone who can control it can be hired!

This story was originally published December 25, 2016 at 4:59 PM with the headline "City of Bradenton heartless, rude to family over chickens, flooding."