Anyone want to change the laws for backyard chickens in the town of Rocky Mount VA.?

[bobsworld]

Hello,

My family and I recently was led to believe we were allowed to have chickens in our little town and who would have thought otherwise if you lived here, so we bought some and was ready to go. Well, I thought it would be best to check for sure after a week having them. To my surprise I found out that buried in the town zoning is a nuisance code which makes chicken keeping for any R1 and R2 zones illegal. For RA it is OK but where is that? certainly not where I am.

Anyhow I called our town planner for absolute verification and with the intent on putting forth some questions to maybe getting the ball rolling on getting these laws changed. Well I did not have to, it seems that He (our town planner) has been overwhelmed with requests for chicken keeping in residential areas and he feels that the times are changing. These are his words. I did not have to say anything. He is taking names and numbers of people interested to town council to get this tabled and on the agenda and is going to call each of those parties to let us know when to show up for the meeting. See it sounds like we already have our in.

I am going to drop his name on here and his number, I mean you can find it easily with a simple internet search anyhow.

contact

Patrick Rust
540-483-0907

Let him know either you want to keep chickens or are in favor of such and you want to be put on the list.
This guy took over this position in 2011 and is probably eager and young since he just recently graduated.
You can read about him here
http://www.rockymountva.org/index.cfm/go/news.details/ID/129

Oh by the way we have to get rid of the chicks we have because the final answer was NO for now he said. So I think this guy is really going to try and help.

 

[sawhite]

If you are interested in keeping chickens in Rocky Mount, give Patrick Rust a call!

We have asked the town to consider letting folks raise chickens and they are looking into it right now. If you are interested then now is a great time to voice your support/concerns on how to go about it.

 

[bobsworld]

We have double checked with the Patrick awhile back and he said the town had no desire to change the laws concerning chickens, and that we would have to go about the long task of petitioning the council. So this means that this little town of Rocky Mount VA I guess I would have to find enough people that would want to sign and possibly show up at some meetings to get this thing rolling. This could be really tough. I think a Facebook page will be started to get the word out locally. Wonder if it is ok to link it to here, what about that
Sawhite do you know some new info?

 

[sawhite]

We have submitted a letter to the town asking them to consider changing the policies. They voted to have the planning/zoning dept perform a study, which I believe will be done some time in July. I suppose after that they'll decide whether or not to adopt new policies.

It may be helpful to call in or voice your opinion in the meetings, but I'll post any information if I hear of a way to support this change.

 

[bobsworld]

Sounds promising! Patrick did give us kind of a runaround last time and told us what we wanted to hear and never heard from him again until we called and received negative response.
Do you think there is a need for any local advertisement to get more people interested and get there voice in there? Not many know of this site. I was thinking to start with a FB page and go from there. Nice to know there are others here in Rocky Mount that want to raise chickens. I am willing to help in any way I can, let me know.