As you may be aware, on Monday the Mayor and Council voted to approve a new “Ordinance to Amend Chapter 3 of the Rockville City Code entitled ‘Animal Control’ so as to Require the Licensing of Cats and Ferrets; Create New Requirements for Tethering and Sheltering Animals; Establish a Trap/Neuter/Return Program for Feral Cats; [and] Allow Certain Livestock (Chickens and Goats) under Certain Conditions.”
The provision allowing residents to keep up to five chickens in their yard was the issue that sparked the most controversy.
At our meeting on May 27th, the topic of chickens came up for discussion, and I was requested to send a letter to the Mayor and Council from the CGCA voicing our opposition to this part of the Ordinance. I delivered this letter both by hard copy and by email.I know that several other residents of our community sent letters as well.
In response to the letter, I received the following from Julie Palakovich Carr:
I have given the issue a lot of thought and spent a considerable amount of time researching how other jurisdictions regulate backyard hens. I think that the proposed ordinance is a fair compromise and will protect neighbors by banning roosters, limiting owners to 5 hens, and requiring the coop to be set back 5 feet from the property line and 40 feet from adjacent homes. Moreover, chicken owners will be required to keep the coop clean and to remove waste daily.
You may be interested to know that the ten largest cities in America all allow the keeping of chickens at residential properties. If they can make it work in much more densely populated places like New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago, I believe we can find a way to make it work in Rockville. Moreover, several jurisdictions in this area allow hens, including Montgomery County, Gaithersburg, Annapolis, and Takoma Park.
I also saw the following comment to a Twinbrook resident from Tom Moore, who voted in favor of the Ordinance:
Though there’s been a lot of fear-mongering on the backyard-hen issue, what I keep going back to is that we had ‘em in Rockville for more than a hundred years with no controls whatsoever up until 2006, and never had a major problem with them. We’re bringing them back now with tight controls on the sizes of yards they will be allowed in and with other protections for neighbors. There’s no reason to think there is a nightmare in the making in Twinbrook or elsewhere. For one thing, the typical Twinbrook back yard is not big enough to allow chickens under Rockville’s new rules.
My feeling is that the Ordinance change will not end up being a big issue for our neighborhood, but I would ask that people keep their eyes open and let everyone know if you see any evidence of this happening.
WTOP wrote a pretty good piece about what happened: “Rockville says ‘yes’ to keeping chickens'”