Local chicken law debated at board meeting

The village of Warwick continued reviewing the possibility of revising local law to allow residents to keep chickens on their property.

During the June 16 Warwick Village Board meeting, Trustee Carly Foster argued in favor of the change, claiming the current law appeared like an area of legislative overreach. She referenced growing support across the United States to allow chickens in more urban areas and people’s desire to have more control over their food supply as reasons to amend the code in favor of permitting chickens in the village. She cited a petition in support of the law, which had 113 signatures, while acknowledging about 20 to 25 of those signatures came from people who live outside of the village.

Foster said she recognized the potential issues chickens can pose on the community, such as noise, odor and attracting predators and that these matters can be handled through proper oversight.

“I feel that as a board we should be regulating to just the minimum necessary to ensure health safety and well-being within our community. So to disallow chickens altogether when the issues associated can be remediated as demonstrated by other urban communities throughout the country,” she said.

Trustee Thomas McKnight was less supportive of revisiting the chicken ban, as he expressed his concerns about village density and the ability for residents to raise chickens on such small lots. Citing tax records, McKnight claimed the majority of residential parcels in the village were less than half an acre. He questioned whether the zoning code could accommodate the necessary requirements for housing chickens on village properties and also speculated that allowing village residents to own chickens could lead to more neighborly disputes.

“There’s other things we have to kind of focus on and clean up and tighten up before we start incorporating new policies,” Collura said.

Foster challenged this point by asking whether the potential inconvenience to the village is justification for making something illegal. She commented that neighbors always have to navigate nuisances and other inconveniences, which is part of what it means to live in a community.

The board discussed whether limiting the law to properties of a certain size was fair or if the code should focus on requiring a certain amount of square feet per chicken.