Chicken bylaw coming to West Nipissing
Council votes to allow chickens but opts for comprehensive bylaw & licencing system.
At this week’s meeting, council discussed the findings of the recent public consultation regarding backyard chickens.
When the municipality sought public input on allowing backyard chickens 442 people responded to an online survey and the consensus was obvious. 79% of respondents supported chickens on urban residential properties, while 92% supported chickens on rural residential properties. Both are currently not allowed according to the municipal zoning bylaws.
Most councillors were in favour of allowing chickens, but they were divided on how to proceed. Councillor Kris Rivard opened discussions by stating that he wanted chickens to be allowed in urban zones as many homes already have chickens and this would make them compliant with the zoning bylaw. Rivard noted that he would not be in favour of a licencing system though.
Councillor Katelyn Nicol offered her support of allowing urban and rural residential chickens. She also proposed that a simple zoning bylaw amendment be made to allow a set number of hens and no rooster on urban properties. Nicol said that while there may be some issues, these could easily be dealt with by the existing noise and property standards bylaws. Councillor Fern Pellerin was also in agreement with allowing chickens and voiced concerns over regulating the practice. He noted that some proposed stipulations do not have any rationale such as the prohibition of keeping chickens on waterfront properties. He also shared that the proposed requirement to have heated coops goes against common chicken raising standards.
When it came time to vote, siding with the 79% of survey respondents, 6 of 8 councillors voted to allow backyard chickens.* Mayor Kathleen Thorne-Rochon and councillor Daniel Gagne voted against allowing backyard chickens regardless of the regulations.
*Councillor Jamie Restoule was absent.
Then, council was faced with two more choices. To either proceed with a zoning amendment that would allow a certain number of backyard hens in rural residential and urban zones or to implement a separate bylaw and licencing system. This time, council was more divided.
At first, 4 councillors (Pellerin, Nicol, Tessier and Rivard) wanted to simply amend the zoning bylaw while 4 wanted a licencing system (Thorne-Rochon, Gagne, St-Louis, Pharand). Then councillor Kris Rivard changed his vote to side with a bylaw and licensing system contradicting his earlier statements. So, council directed staff to proceed with a bylaw which is sure to be a contentious issue in the coming months.
During the deliberations yesterday, some councillors proposed scraping any potential fee to register chickens while mayor Thorne-Rochon stated a fee should be required. Staff are currently proposing a fee of approximately $20 per chicken per year.
Councillors also did not seem to agree on lot size requirements or coop standards. Councillor Roch St-Louis stated that residents should have a minimum of a half-acre to own chickens but then acknowledged that almost all urban lots would not meet this criteria.
Council will likely have to do the same as they did with the AirBnB bylaw and vote on each rule line-by-line which is sure to take up a lot of valuable time on the upcoming agendas.
A draft of the staff-prepared licencing bylaw will come back to council in the near future.
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Why do the citizens not get to vote on such things, no taxation without representation. Worry about our potholes as much as people having chickens and we'll start seeing some progress. Instead of paying building companies to redo a side walk 3 times.
Is this municipality so broke that they would actually impose a $20 each fee or say for instance $120 per year plus licence, inspection etc, etc….for a family to have 6 backyard chickens?
What is this community coming to? It is one new bylaw after another plus outrageous fees for just about everything that is going on in West Nipissing!
I see absolutely nothing wrong with families having some hens for their own eggs/ meat if they have the appropriate yard to do so. Also for children to be able to learn about and participate in the care of raising these birds is a wonderful thing.
I don’t think the issue here is about anyone having hundreds of birds….. The issue here is people want to grow a garden and perhaps have a few chickens(and eggs) to supplement their own food supply so that they know where their food is coming from. People around here are not having chickens to make money. That is ridiculous when the birds and care cost are all factored in.
To impose all of these bylaw regulations and fees is frankly too extreme. This council is getting out of hand and I can assure that there will be big push back