By Ward Peck
Editor
    Get ready for more chicken puns.
    Ten-year-old Olivia Collins’ campaign to allow chickens as a permitted pet in South Portland drew a sizable crowd to city council workshop Monday as well as bemused admiration from the council members with several wondering if she is willing to run their next reelection campaign.
    The normally empty seats at Monday’s workshop were filled with about 50 supporters of Collins’ proposal to allow residents to maintain urban or city chicken coops with about 10 of the audience members a decade or more away from their first opportunity to vote. Several audience held up placards with the now familiar “Give peeps a chance,” motto Collins has used to gather support and more than 260 signatures.
    South Portland’s residential zoning ordinances currently state “the keeping of farm-type animals, including but not limited to horses, ponies, cattle, pigs and fowl, the keeping of dogs, cats, and rabbits for commercial purposes and other uses offensive and detrimental to the neighborhood are prohibited.”
    Collins along with her mother Stacy and father Neil are requesting the ordinance be amended to allow chickens and crafted ordinance language with several requirements including the number of chickens allowed (roosters would remain prohibited) building standards for coops and pens as well as consent for neighbors.
    At an earlier workshop, Collin’s proposal was met with some skepticism from several councilors and city staff.
    South Portland Planning Director Tex Haeuser repeated that skepticism at Monday’s workshop.
    “We’re asking for trouble,” Haeuser said. “The business of zoning is to limit nuisances. That’s what zoning is for.”
    Haeuser warned the council that allowing chickens would create “a new class of complaints,” which will require the time and attention of police, code enforcement and animal control employees.
    Haeuser referred to a letter written by State Veterinarian Donald Hoenig in which Hoenig affirmed that chickens in urban settings do not pose immediate threat to public safety or neighborhood harmony with several qualifications. Haeuser read the letter, stressing the qualifications, which included proper carcass disposal and manure management, the need to follow best agricultural management practices and keeping the birds segregated from wild birds that are potential carriers of avian flu.
    “This is about maintenance,” Haeuser said. “There is no way to tell who will be a better maintainer.”
    Haeuser recommended the council maintain the prohibition on chickens but include a provision that would allow the city’s planning board or city council to grant exceptions on a case-by-case basis provided certain criteria are met, including the consent of all the neighbors within a certain distance of the applicant.
    Olivia Collin’s mother, referred to Hoenig’s letter as well, although with a different interpretation that stressed the veterinarian’s conclusion that the risks of backyard chickens are minimal and easily managed. Stacy Collins said Hoenig’s qualifications apply to the care required for other pets that are allowed, such as dogs and cats.
    Olivia, as she has done over the last month in newspaper stories, letters, on websites, petition drives and television news, stressed the environmental benefits of chickens similar to the benefits of a home vegetable garden: knowing where one’s food comes from, reduced consumption of fossil fuel consumption due to transportation, increased recycling at both ends of the chicken (they eat garden scraps and their manure can be used as fertilizer) and chemical-free pest control (chickens eat bugs, including ticks, Olivia Collins said).
    When asked for a legal opinion on the proposed ordinance, Mary Kahl, the city’s attorney expressed her own reservations about its ability to pass constitutional muster. Kahl said land use and property rights laws must be applied uniformly. Kahl said allowing neighbors to hold a veto power over what another resident does on their property would be unfair since the reason for the veto might be arbitrary or unrelated to the chickens themselves, such as a property dispute.
    “It must meet basic standards of fairness,” Kahl said of the proposed ordinance. “Allowing one neighbor to keep someone from doing something would not be appropriate.”
    Kahl suggested rather than regulate chickens through zoning regulations, the city could create a licensing mechanism that would require certain performance guarantees and could be subject to enforcement and could be rescinded if not followed.
    Regardless of whether the law was a zoning regulation or a licensing regulation, Kahl said the neighborhood consent would be problematic and recommended against it.
    Following a lengthy discussion about the details of the performance standards, the council agreed to move forward and set a public hearing on the yet-to-be-drafted regulations.
    Councilor Linda Boudreau said, while she was against the idea of chickens living next to her property, she is supportive of the change.
    Because the zoning ordinance expressly prohibits chickens within the city, the planning board will first need to discuss the issue and draft a recommendation to the city council on changing the zoning language.
    According to Haeuser, the first opportunity the planning board has to discuss the changes will be July 24.
    Mayor Claude Morgan, visibly eager to get the new laws on the books seemed to be counting his chickens before they hatched when he attempted to schedule a formal council hearing on the matter before the planning board was even aware they would be making a recommendation.
    Morgan set a public hearing for Aug. 6, the first opportunity following the July 24 Planning Board meeting.