- Thread starter
- #11
Lenny Bob Jim Joe
In the Brooder
- Sep 6, 2022
- 14
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Hi, thanks you for the reply. The City Council is the culprit in accessing fines and trying to call out construction, hardwire, and being repressive in my opinion. The Planning Board, of which I am a member, will look to make changes to the City's proposed ordinance. They also want the dog catcher in charge of approving coops or policing. It seems they are trying to make having chickens legal but unattainable by the standards they set in the ordinance.Sounds like a solution looking for a non-existent problem. I would think you are more likely to get complaints about noise and/or smell. Roosters make noise and are often banned within city limits. A properly maintained chicken coop and run should not smell - but I can imagine neighbors complaining about it anyway. Most likely they feel their property values will suffer if someone in the neighborhood is raising small animals.
Where I live, chicken coops come in all shapes and sizes. Hardly anyone has electricity in the coop. In the winter, I run an extension cord out to the coop for the water heater to prevent the water from freezing. I suppose I would be in violation of any hard wire code. But the extension cord is on a GFCI outlet and the draw on the circuit is about 30 watts, significantly lower than my typical 100-watt lightbulb used in the house. I don't use any heat lamps. If anything caught fire in my coop, it might burn the coop down, but it's too far away from the house to worry about.
I was thinking your local firehouse might be able to tell you how many coop fires they have responded to over the years. Local insurance agents might be able to give you a report on coop fires. We all know that insurance companies look for any way to increase your rates. If chicken coop fires are on their radar, they would have an increase in rate for that.
I don't know what concerns a Planning Board needs to consider, but if there is not a problem currently, why is the board writing up all kinds of regulations and fines? Good that you are asking for feedback before you write or adopt any policy. I would just ask, if you don't currently have any problems, why do you need a policy on these issues?
I live outside of the city limits, so I don't have to worry about community regulations. I have read many complaints about chicken owners who are having difficult times with city boards and regulations written by people who have never raised chickens. I usually suggest that they move out of the city where they can enjoy their lifestyle without having to deal with complaining neighbors or fines from the city.
Hope you can find a way forward that allows people to have a small backyard flock without overregulating and fining them out of existence. But I do understand that city life may have to be much more regulated than those of us outside city limits.