Wednesday, January 20, 2016
YOUNGSTOWN
An East Side couple is asking city officials to allow them to keep their chickens – some that they eat and a couple they keep as pets.
The city’s planning commission met Tuesday to consider the request from Victor Rojas and Luz Sepulveda, who live on Stewart Street. A decision was postponed until next month to allow the city health department to inspect their home again.
An Oct. 27 inspection showed there were more than 40 chickens in the garage of the couple’s property in a residential neighborhood.
“It appeared the owner did have control of the chickens, and [they] were kept in a sanitary manner,” city Health Commissioner Erin Bishop wrote in a letter to the couple and the planning commission. “The number of chickens/roosters exceeds the health department’s” recommendation “to prevent a public health nuisance.”
That recommended number is eight.
Sepulveda said Tuesday the couple has nine chickens living in their basement – it’s too cold to have them in the garage – and she’d be willing to get rid of the two roosters to bring that number to seven.
“Two are pets, and the rest we eat,” she said. “We get eggs from them, too.”
Tara Cioffi, the health department’s environmental health director, will inspect the house Monday to determine how many chickens are there.
The discussion before a vote to wait a month showed that commission members were split on whether to allow the chickens to remain.
While those living near the Rojas and Sepulveda house were sent letters to attend Tuesday’s hearing, only one showed up, and she objected to the chickens, though she said she was used to them.
In order to have livestock – goats, chickens, ducks and rabbits, for examples – under city law, permission is needed from the health department, the planning commission and council before a permit is issued.
Sepulveda acknowledged that the couple has had chickens for about three years, and it was only a few months ago she learned a permit was needed.
In October, the planning commission refused to grant permits to three other East Side residents who had chickens, ducks, French guineas and goats on their properties.
The issue was that the three let the animals outside while Sepulveda and Rojas keep their chickens caged, said Law Director Martin Hume and Charles Shasho, deputy director of the public-works commission. Both are planning-commission members.
In the other cases, one resident has since moved and the two other got rid of their animals, Hume said.