Above: The Watershed Post's resident rooster, Wellington. He's good company out here in rural Delaware County, but we're guessing he wouldn't fit in too well in your average tiny Kingston backyard. Photo by Lissa Harris.
Looks like the urban-farming movement is catching on in Kingston -- and where there's urban farming, there are zoning battles about chickens.
The Kingston Times reported earlier this week about an effort by city officials to figure out exactly what the city law on chickens is. Code enforcement officer Mike Madsen is trying to get to the bottom of it, and he's leaving no pun unturned in his quest to clarify Kingston's vague chicken laws:
“Let’s just say there’s been a flock of people asking about chickens for a long time,” said Mike Madsen, a former alderman and county lawmaker who was recently appointed Kingston’s zoning code enforcement officer.
In a communication to the Common Council, Madsen wrote that his reading of the city’s zoning code appeared to allow for the keeping of chickens and other small livestock provided that they are kept inside or in “an enclosed yard or other enclosure suitable for the sanitary confinement of such animal or fowl.” But, Madsen said, the language is vague and it is unclear whether the animals were restricted to owner-occupied properties, i.e., could renters keep chickens. Conflicting opinions issued from the Corporation Counsel’s Office over the years provided little guidance, Madsen stated.
There are almost as many different urban chicken laws as there are cities in America. The website City Chicken has a guide to hundreds of urban chicken ordinances, though Kingston's isn't on it. (Fun New York State chicken fact: New York City allows for anyone to keep an unlimited number of hens, but you can't have a chicken in comparatively rural Oswego, unless it was "grandfathered in.")
Daily Freeman Life editor (and inveterate tweeter) Ivan Lajara is working on a story about the issue this week, and he's looking for real live Kingston chicken-keepers to weigh in on it. Here's Lajara's Storify account of a chicken-pun-riddled Twitter exchange between Lajara, Madsen and Common Council Majority Leader Tom Hoffay on the topic.
