Just told I have 14 days OR ELSE (Chicken Laws in South FLORIDA)

[Catstar68]

Quote:
Publically FLOGGED!

 

[Jenski]

OP, do you have a rooster(s)?

If so, it may not matter what the zoning laws are. Your neighbors will invoke a noise/disturbing the peace law.

 

[DragonEggs]

Quote:
Yep. We've already talked to the post office about that and they sent her a warning. My dad tried to write her a polite letter asking her not to and she came over and knocked on our door and started an argument and called the police. That was when we got the PO involved. I tried to go over there today and talk to her but she just blew up on me and accused me of coming to her house and harassing her and called the police on me again! I explained the situation to the cop who told me just to leave her alone, ignore her, don't knock on her door, don't have anything to do with her, to which I happily agreed. She's not even some crazy old lady, she's pretty young and has 2 young sons and a young husband. She's just a witch minus the w add a b.

 

[DragonEggs]

Quote:
I do have 2 roosters, a silkie and a serama, both soft crowers, which when discussed with the other neighbors, the noise doesn't bother them.

I called the code enforcement officer (who is also a royal witch minus the w add a b) who said the specific complaint was that I have chickens in a residential area.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Okay, I can complain that a neighbor has a purple house (trim) and several others drive golf carts. Oh, and the guy down the street has a large garden with corn. Just because I complain about something, doesn't mean that my complaint trumps their rights, or that it has any legal standing. (For the record, none of these things bother me--just listed as examples.)

IFF (mathematical If and Only If) there is an ordinance prohibiting chickens in a residential zone, and that is your zone, she may have a legitimate complaint. However, since they have not provided you with a specific ordinance that you are violating, TOUGH.

She sounds a bit bizarre, and you need to make sure the PO charges her for mail theft or interference. You may want to request that the PO hold your mail and pick it up at the PO if you cannot trust her to keep her hands off. Or get a locking mail box. I agree, do not make personal contact--she could be dangerous.

 

[theFox]

Theft of or tampering with the US mail is indeed a federal offense and when (note, I didn't say if) the postal inspectors get done (do not change anything about where your mail goes) she will be arrested and then her fun will really start (well it won't be fun).

 

[Catstar68]

Quote:
Report it to the postmaster. It IS a federal offense to tamper with the US mail.

 

[ihvpower]

The chicken owner said that the neighbor keeps "sending back the mail" not intercepting the mail. From my perspective, she is sending mail back that the chicken lady had sent....


Neighbor STILL sucks though...

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote:
I will agree that exactly what was meant is unclear, but I definitly received the impression (correctly or not) that the neighbor was in some manner messing with mail sent to the OP. Perhaps the OP can clarify what she meant. Yes, refusing to accept delivery of mail addressed to oneself is not criminal; I'm a bit unclear of the legal requirements for dealing with mail addressed to someone else, but delivered to one's own mailbox--I've always simply taken it to the correct person if I knew who that was, or marked the envelope with "unknown, return to sender" or "delivered to wrong address."

 

[DragonEggs]

Okay sorry if I wasn't clear. we do have 2 seperate mailboxes that are next to each other.The houses have the same address, one is labeled A and the other is B. Sometimes the postman puts our mail in her box and vice versa. We just take the mail with her name on it and put it in her box. Instead of doing that for us she was writing "this is not ours" on anote and paper clipping it to the mail and putting it back in her box. Curious why we would go a week or more without seeing mail then all of a sudden get tons of it and wondering why our paychecks and bank statements weren't coming we asked the postman to check her box, he did and there was said letter, a very important check she was about to send back that had been post dated 20 days prior, telling us that no only was she sending it back she had actually been holding on to it for quite awhile. That was when my dad wrote her the polite note asking her not to send our mail back, that if she didn't want to knock on our door and hand it to us she could just put it in our mailbox, she came over and started an argument then called the police saying we were going through her mail and so on and so forth. We later ran into the cop who was at my house earlier today on her most recent complaint of harassment and even he said he didn't think she was all there. The exact wording of the complaint filed stated because I knocked on her door.... seriously?

After she called the police the first time was when we contacted the post office and they sent her a notice. My dad is over at the landlords place right now discussing the recent events.

Still working on this chicken thing. Seems moving is still the best option. thing is, I refuse to move right back to the house and situation we moved AWAY from. I have no problem going back to the town, no one there has problems with chickens, but I wont go back to the same living situation. We're also looking for places around here too. My dad is tired of his neighbor from hell. I keep looking through municode.com under Palm Beach County and I STILL don't see anything that specifically addresses chickens. The code enforcement officer who served me yesterday said she mailed all the information to me and I should be getting it in the mail next week. If we still live here next week...