Streetsboro should continue its ban on chickens in residential areas, committee says

Image of Streetsboro resident Margaret Gotschall posing with her chicken, Stacy
Streetsboro resident Margaret Gotschall poses with her chicken, Stacy. Submitted photo

Streetsboro residents would be allowed to keep their livestock a little bit closer to the road or their neighbors’ property lines under the latest version of a zoning update targeting chicken ownership, the Streetsboro Service Committee decided Monday.

But the legislation would not change the existing ban on chickens in residential areas, a disappointment to the city’s poultry fans.

“There has never been a problem,” said one urban chicken owner, Margaret Gotschall, who doesn’t understand the city’s anti-chicken attitude. “There’s a lot more in the city than the city even realizes.”

Under Streetsboro’s current zoning code, all livestock must be kept at least 200 feet from all property lines in the city’s rural areas. The proposed code will reduce the setback to 100 feet.

More controversial has been the debate raging since April about who can keep chickens, how many and where. Unable to resolve the issue, council recently sent the matter back to its Service Committee, which on Monday briefly debated tweaking the zoning code so as to allow backyard chickens in 12 lots in Brugman Acres, 35 in the Hale subdivision, 14 in Windgate Ridge and perhaps 15 in Wiencek Allotment. The committee ultimately struck those areas from the proposal.

If council approves the zoning update, only areas zoned R-R or O-C will be chicken-friendly, and anyone keeping chickens already in other neighborhoods will have to give them up.

Or not, if they’re feeling lucky. Enforcement will likely come down to neighbor complaints, Councilman Chuck Kocisko said after the meeting.

City officials cannot just go onto residents’ properties and knock their chicken coops down, Mayor Glenn Broska said, cautioning council that enforcing zoning code violations can potentially take months to resolve.

“We’d have to have the chicken police,” he said.

The chicken debate is rooted in an email from a resident to city council, Planning Department Clerk Bridget Pavlick said. The resident, who indicated she wished to keep birds without breaking the law, was simply asking about local ordinances. That led to Streetsboro’s Planning and Zoning Department getting involved, and to the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission drafting proposed changes to the city’s zoning code.

Noting that the proposed ordinance would only have impacted about a dozen city residents, Kocisko questioned the need for any legislation at all.

“Don’t do anything. Leave it alone,” he urged his fellow committee members.

Kocisko cast the only vote in opposition to forward the revised legislation to full council, saying, “I just don’t feel it’s necessary. We should just leave things the way they are at this point.”

Kocisko cast the outcome as a compromise.

“If you had chickens next door to you, how would you feel about it?” he asked.

Gotschall, a resident of Briar Drive, wants an answer to that question, too. She casts the service committee’s action as a lose for city residents, some of whom, like herself, keep chickens in residential neighborhoods.

She is considering starting a petition to see how many people are actually in favor of urban farming, including keeping bees, rabbits and other small animals.

Gotschall said she was cited recently for keeping chickens. She paid the required $150 to file an appeal, only to have the check returned with advice to become more involved in the evolving issue.

Gotschall said she is doing so, and has neighbors calling the city on her behalf.

“I got chickens a couple years ago. I thought it was legal because I know people who have them in my area,” she said, noting that neighbors on a nearby street have kept chickens for over a decade.

“Streetsboro’s motto is ‘Gateway to Progress,’” she said. “As Mother Earth gets smaller and smaller, I think Streetsboro could be a little more progressive. It would be nice if Streetsboro could be one of the first in the area to say urban farming is healthy. Most people want to know where their food is coming from.”

Gotschall said her chickens are more like pets than farm animals and that she enjoys sitting with them in her backyard.

“They eat from my hand and they follow me around, and each has a name,” she said.

The zoning code, at least as far as it pertains to keeping chickens, definitely needs more research, Councilman Tony Lombardo said after the meeting.

“I don’t think we know enough about how the residents feel. I think we need more feedback on what the residents want,” he said.

Councilman Justin Ring, who belongs to the service committee and voted in favor of putting the matter before full council, said he supported the zoning tweak only after stipulations affecting lots in residential districts were removed.

“I’m not against backyard chickens. My problem is that it was ghost legislation. It looked like it did something that it didn’t do. The legislation appeared to allow the residents to have backyard chickens when it really didn’t,” he said.

Ring said he had been contacted by multiple residents who were excited that they could start keeping chickens when none of them qualified.

“It targeted very specific pockets of the city, essentially three subdivisions, a total of 243 lots in the entire city. That’s less than 5% of the lots in the city,” he said. “It sounds great but it really doesn’t do much.”

Noting that the code was written without council’s input or discussion, Ring said he plans to speak with city Planning and Zoning Director John Cieszkowski to craft a solution that isn’t so limited.

“There may not be one, I don’t know, but we definitely need to have that conversation,” Ring said.

City council will consider the revised code at its June 28 and July 12 meetings.

+ posts

Wendy DiAlesandro is a former Record Publishing Co. reporter and contributing writer for The Portager.