Arraignment pending

[JenRuss]

My wife and I live in Rockland County, NY and have 3 hens. We checked out the zoning before we got our chickens and thought we were allowed to have them. As it turns out we are not (the zoning is very confusing in our area). Our problem arose when our neighbor decided he did not want us to have chickens (don't know why) and reported us to Animal Control. The officer was very nice and basically told us he was just checking out the complaint but knew of many other members of our community who had chickens "illegally" and made it a habit of looking the other way. Over the last year we have received 3 zoning violations notices which we have ignored. Now I have received a summons to be arraigned in court on May 15th. We do not want to give up our chickens and have made arrangements for them to be temporarily cared for off our property. We are trying to have the zoning in our area changed to allow for fowl but this will obviously take time.

I am wondering if there is anyone out there who is a lawyer in my area who could give me legal advice about how to handle my arraignment and possible help in our effort to have the zoning changed.

Thanks,

Russ

 

[bj taylor]

i can't be of any help to you, but i thought i would suggest two things on your behalf...
1. emphasize how the ordinance is confusing.
2. take pictures & show them how nice your coop/run is (assuming it looks nice).
if nothing else that may mitigate how high the penalty fee is.
best of luck to you

 

[snoggle]

Get a copy of the book City Chicks. There is a section in there on getting ordinances like this changed. One of the big things she encourages is not only showing how chickens aren't a nuisance, but showing the advantage to the community. They eliminate a lot of excess kitchen waste that would end up in the city dump, etc. There was a city in Europe that gave away like 2000 hens (don't quote me on that number) to families in the community and they showed that in just a few months the amount of garbage being produced by that community had gone down a significant amount.