Wednesday, March 16, 2016
By BRUCE WALTON
Youngstown
An East Side couple moved one step closer to keeping their chickens.
Neither Victor Rojas nor Luz Sepulveda attended Tuesday’s meeting of the Board of Zoning Appeals and City Planning Commission when the commission approved the couple’s request to keep the chickens they own.
Rojas and Sepulveda have struggled with the city since a health-department inspection Oct. 27 found 40 prized poultry on their Stewart Avenue property. They kept the chickens in their garage in sanitized spaces, with a rooster kept in a separate enclosure.
Since 40 chickens greatly exceeded the department’s recommended number of eight nondomesticated animals kept in a residential area, the two agreed to decrease the number of chickens to comply with the city zoning ordinance.
Sepulveda said they keep some as pets, eat others and use some for eggs, but they agreed to cull the numbers.
The couple, however, had to receive permission from the health department, the planning commission and council to earn a permit to keep any livestock, including chickens, under city law.
The decision would have come sooner, but officials postponed it to allow the city health department to inspect the home for compliance.
Tara Cioffi, the city health department’s environmental-health director, went to the couple’s home Jan. 27 to inspect the area and reported finding seven chickens.
Now, with approval from the health department and the commission, Rojas and Sepulveda must receive council’s blessing.
Commission officials said they would send their recommendation to council to approve the couple’s request to keep their birds.